14 best vegan cookbooks to inspire your plant-based culinary repertoire
It doesn’t matter whether you’re completely new to vegan food or your plant-based meal rotation has lost its sparkle (sorry tomato pasta) and you’re looking for some new material, even just one great vegan cookbook can offer some very welcome guidance.
Constructing a plate of food without everything on it orbiting around meat, fish or dairy of some description can be daunting. So, having one in the first instance can help you to get your bearings – especially once the novelty of the plant-based section in the supermarket has worn off.
There are vegan cookbooks doing brilliant things with vegetables, while others are putting their twist on vegan meat and cheese alternatives. Some even offer guidance on how to make your own plant-based mozzarella or a vegan fried egg, while others help to scratch an itch that only simple and slightly nostalgic dishes can.
Whether you’re looking to follow these cookbooks to the letter or flick through for inspiration on how to whip up memorable meals for guests, cook more mindfully by reducing food waste or what to put in your sandwiches, these are some of our favourites.
As well as fairly new arrivals we’ve included cookbooks that have got us through years of weeknight meals, dinner parties and special occasions aplenty, with vegans and meat eaters alike leaving our home satisfied (well, they at least pretended to be).
How we tested
For many of the cookbooks below, we have been testing them for numerous years. For the newer releases, we gave at least two recipes a go and judged them on simplicity, clarity and, of course, tastiness. We also judged them on how vegan they were – our favourite books tend to be vegan-friendly rather than vegan-exclusive examples, but we understand that the stress of having to substitute foods, or parse an ingredients list before you get going, is not for everyone. However, we tend to think vegetarian and meat-eating chefs often do plant-based food the best, and as you become a
