vegetarian cookbook best

Stuffed Cabbage Rolls in Tomato Sauce
Stuffed Cabbage Rolls in Tomato Sauce

Stuffed Cabbage Rolls in Tomato Sauce excerpted from Veg-Table: Recipes, Techniques + Plant Science for Big Flavored, Vegetable-Focused Meals by Nik Sharma. © 2023. Published by Chronicle Books. Photographs © Nik Sharma.

Veg-Table: Recipes, Techniques, and Plant Science for Big-Flavored, Vegetable-Focused Meals by Nik Sharma

Nik Sharma, blogger at A Brown Table, Serious Eats columnist, and author of the bestselling cookbooks The Flavor Equation and Season, brings us his most cookable collection of recipes yet in Veg-Table.

Vegetable-focused recipes are organized into chapter by plant family, with storage, buying, and cooking methods for all. Here is a technique-focused repertoire for weeknight mains for cooks of all skill levels looking to add more delicious and satisfying vegetable dishes to their diet. Combining the scientific underpinnings of The Flavor Equation with the inviting and personal recipes of Season, this book features more than fifty vegetables, revealing their origins, biology, and unique characteristics and resulting in a recipe collection of flavours and techniques that are tried, true, and perfected by rigorous testing and a deep scientific lens.

Veg-Table includes Sharma’s first-ever pasta recipes published in a cookbook: Pasta with Broccoli Miso Sauce, Shallot and Spicy Mushroom Pasta, and more. And vegetable-focused doesn’t mean strictly vegetarian; bring plants and meat together with delicious recipes like Chicken Katsu with Poppy Seed Coleslaw. A wide variety of hot and cold soups, salads, sides, sauces, and rice-, egg-, and bean-based dishes round out this collection. (more…)

Crispy Smoked Tofu with Black Polish Sauce
Crispy Smoked Tofu with Black Polish Sauce

Crispy Smoked Tofu with Black Polish Sauce excerpted from Polish’d: Modern Vegetarian Cooking from Global Poland © Michał Korkosz, 2023. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, The Experiment.

Polish’d: Modern Vegetarian Cooking from Global Poland by Michal Korkosz

Michał Korkosz’s first book, Fresh from Poland—a Booklist Top 10 Cookbook of 2020 hailed as “a vegetable wonderland” by The San Francisco Chronicle—brought a Polish vegetarian cookbook to American readers for the first time. Now, he moves from celebrating Poland’s history with vegetarian versions of traditional recipes to exploring Polish cooking’s rich present with 100 exciting recipes.

Polish’d includes both typical Polish favourites made vegetarian, like Kakory (Potato Empanadas) Filled with Roasted Vegetables and Cheese, and new flavours brought to Poland through immigration and cultural exchange, like Miso Żurek with Mashed Potatoes, Roasted Mushrooms, and Dill. Its recipes showcase fresh vegetables, grains, and herbs, but there’s also plenty of buttery, sugary, and cheesy comfort-food goodness to be found. Readers will see, and taste, Polish food in a new way as they enjoy dishes like:

  • Chilled Cucumber-Melon Soup with Goat Cheese, Crispy Apple, and Mint
  • Kopytka with Umami Sauce, Spinach, Hazelnuts, and Poppy Furikake
  • Nettle Pesto Pasta with Radishes and Asparagus
  • Grilled Broccoli with Lemon Mayo, Umami Bomb Sauce and Poppy Seeds
  • Tomatoes and Peaches with Soft Goat Cheese, Crispy Sage, and Superior Brown Butter Sauce
  • Carmelized Twaróg Basque Cheesecake

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Spicy Chilli French Bean Mapo Tofu
Spicy Chilli French Bean Mapo Tofu

Spicy Chilli French Bean Mapo Tofu, Asian Green: Everyday plant-based recipes inspired by the East by Ching-He Huang. Photography by Tamin Jones.

Asian Green
Asian food has always included a variety of meat and dairy-free recipes. Focusing entirely on these plant-based dishes, Ching-He Huang draws inspiration from across Asia to create simple, everyday, healthy home cooking that features protein-rich ingredients such as tofu, seitan, pulses, beans and grains.
The inspiration behind the book is Ching’s husband, Jamie. From birth, he suffered from asthma and eczema but three and a half years ago, three months after adopting a vegan diet, he was cured. Ching has always believed in the age-old Chinese maxim that “food is medicine”, and having experienced first-hand the transformation of her husband’s health, she firmly believes in the healing power of plants to reduce inflammation, to restore, nourish and replenish.
This book is full of inspiring, quick and simple recipes, perfect for vegetarians, vegans and people looking to reduce the amount of meat in their diets.

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Rosemary Butternut Squash Soup with Toasted-Hazelnut Milk
Rosemary Butternut Squash Soup with Toasted-Hazelnut Milk, Whole Food Cooking Every Day by Amy Chaplin (Artisan Books). Copyright © 2019. Photographs by Anson Smart.

Rosemary Butternut Squash Soup with Toasted-Hazelnut Milk, Whole Food Cooking Every Day by Amy Chaplin (Artisan Books). Copyright © 2019. Photographs by Anson Smart.

Eating whole foods can transform a diet, and mastering the art of cooking these foods can be easy with the proper techniques and strategies.

In 20 chapters, Amy Chaplin, former executive chef of New York’s renowned vegan restaurant Angelica Kitchen, shares ingenious recipes incorporating the foods that are key to a healthy diet: seeds and nuts, fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and other plant-based foods. Chaplin offers her secrets for eating healthy every day: mastering some key recipes and reliable techniques and then varying the ingredients based on the occasion, the season, and what you’re craving. (more…)

Cherry Tomato Focaccia
Cherry Tomato Focaccia, The Veggie Cookbook by Camilla Stephens, Photography by Dan Jones

Cherry Tomato Focaccia, The Veggie Cookbook by Camilla Stephens, Photography by Dan Jones

With bold flavour combinations and clever use of everyday ingredients, Camilla Stephens shows how to create exciting vegetarian dishes that will have even the most dedicated of meat-eaters calling for seconds.

The focus is on food for every day—whether that’s a comforting pie to plonk on the kitchen table after work and school or a lunchbox-friendly frittata. Alongside Higgidy classics such as Garden Pea and Potato Quiche and Squash Mac and Cheese Pie, you will find ingenious ideas such as a 10-minute Fridge to Frittata.

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Charred Corn Salad
Milli's Charred Corn Salad , Bazaar cookbook by Sabrina Ghayour, Photography by Kris Kirkham

Milli’s Charred Corn Salad , Bazaar cookbook by Sabrina Ghayour, Photography by Kris Kirkham

Bazaar is a colourful, flavourful and satisfying celebration of vegetable dishes, designed to suit every occasion and every palate. The magic of this cookbook is that you won’t feel like anything is missing, with dishes full of easy-to-achieve flavours and depth that would win over even the most die-hard carnivore.

Each recipe utilizes the abundance of varied flavour profiles of the East, from spices, herbs and perfumed aromatics to hearty staples such as grains and pulses, combined with plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables. You will find salads for all seasons, spectacular sides, bowl comfort, moreish mains and sweet treats. (more…)

Cookbook Review: New Feasts

New Feast, Middle Eastern Vegetarian

The Middle Eastern diet (with some regional differences) is largely vegetarian: it relies heavily on vegetables and fruit, herbs and spices and complex carbohydrates, such as pulses and grains. There are some dairy and plenty of olive oil. A limited mount of meat, poultry and fish are eaten, but they are rarely added extras to the daily diet.

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Cookbook Review: Vegetarian Heartland

In Vegetarian Heartland, photographer and blogger Shelly Westerhausen presents 100 wholesome, meatless recipes for everything from drinks to desserts. Organized by the adventures that make a weekend special—picnics, brunch, camping and more—this beautifully photographed book will inspire folks to eat well, wherever their vegetarian ventures lead them.

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Cookbook Review: The Yoga Kitchen 

The Yoga Kitchen teaches you that by eating holistic recipes you can nourish your mind, strengthen your body and bring more balance into your life. All the recipes are vegetarian and gluten-free, allowing you to improve your health, build your inner-core, increase your energy and support your spiritual development. (more…)