When you make a purchase using links on our site, The Week may earn a commission. All reviews are written independently by our editorial team.
Repeat after us: There is no paucity in veganism. Plant-based eating — phenomenally delicious plant-based eating, that is — has long existed in many of the world’s great cuisines. As with any kind of cooking, how a dish tastes is all in how it is cooked. Cook it poorly, with mediocre ingredients, and you get an insipid meal. Prepare it with care, smart technique and sublime ingredients? Welcome to the world of top-tier vegan cooking. These six cookbooks all show you how to achieve that goal, from six different angles.
‘Cool Beans: The Ultimate Guide to Cooking With the World’s Most Versatile Plant-Based Protein, With 125 Recipes’ by Joe Yonan
An adeptness, a fluidity, a knowingness with beans is a godsend when cooking vegan. It is akin to learning a new alphabet, then hurtling toward fluency using that new language’s architecture. With “Cool Beans,” the author, Joe Yonan, convinces you to “handily add beans to your cooking arsenal,” said Eater. Over the course of the book, he “evokes the incredible versatility of the bean,” said Daniel Modlin at The Daily Beast, with recipes like Nigerian Stewed Black Eyed Peas with fried plantains, Tunisian Chickpea Stew that “will change your winter” and Cuban Style Black Beans that will have you gladly not “make any other kind of black beans” again. ($33, Ten Speed Press, Amazon)
‘The Korean Vegan Cookbook: Reflections and Recipes from Omma’s Kitchen’ by Joanne Lee Molinaro
If you pay the slightest attention to food or cooking on social media, you may already know Joanne Lee Molinaro, aka The Korean Vegan. Her lush videos lure and enjoin viewers to try their hand at her style of vegan cooking.
Molinaro, in her debut, namesake book, “masterfully intertwines delicious recipes with intimate moments from her life, sharing how her Asian American identity has been shaped by her family’s cooking,” said Julia Duarte at Bon Appétit. Americans might think of Korean food as meat-centric, but Molinaro learns from a Korean monk that “Korean plant-based eating is not a new idea. Korean temple food, the cuisine prepared by Korean buddhist monks, has been around for a thousand years, predating Korean BBQ and bibimbap.” Korean vegan food being novel or a bastardization? As if. ($37, Avery, Amazon)
‘Provecho: 100 Vegan Mexican Recipes to Celebrate Culture and Community’ by Edgar Castrejón
Let us begin with aguachile. Bright, supple and plucky, it is a staple seafood treatment in some coastal regions of Mexico. Author Edgar Castrejón, when he decided to no longer consume animal products, realized an apt substitute for fish, shrimp and their kin is young coconut. The same slip and bite, nary an animal employed.
Such is the galvanizing approach that anchors “Provecho,” a book that proclaims the monumental possibility of Mexican veganism. There are jackfruit tacos, cauliflower roasted in the semi-style of carne asada, pozole rojo loaded with mushrooms. These are “quick, relatively straightforward recipes,” said Library Journal, that are a “solid starting point” for people who want to play in a vegan remodel of the Mexican-cooking playground. ($35, Ten Speed Press, Amazon)
‘Superiority Burger Cookbook: The Vegetarian Hamburger Is Now Delicious’ by Brooks Headley
Come for the recipe for the New York City restaurant’s legendary vegetable burger, stay for the monstrously delicious dishes that orbit that burger’s well-deserved fame. What with a battery of ingredients, making the burger is an ordeal of sorts, but the result is a paragon of the genre: “crisp outside and a soft but not-boring inside that’s lightly spiced and spicy, with plenty of vegetables and meat-free umami,” said Josephine Scott at Edible Manhattan.
Not every recipe in the text is vegan, but most are — or can be made so. Dishes like burnt broccoli salad, salt-and-vinegar string beans and BBQ carrots with cashew cream and corn chips are “infinitely craveable, combining textures and flavors in unexpected ways,” said Library Journal. 224 pages of incontrovertible evidence that vegan cooking can electrify. ($30, Norton, Amazon)
‘The Vegan Chinese Kitchen: Recipes and Modern Stories From a Thousand-Year-Old Tradition’ by Hannah Che
Hannah Che discovered that her present-day vegan approach to eating has a centuries-old history in China. The book she created as she pulled the thread from her present to her ancestral past is “as much a cookbook as it is a historical document and educational resource to turn to time and again,” said Dayna Evans at Eater.
There is, of course, a chapter on tofu that shows readers how to treat it like both a hearty stew and an invigorating salad, among endless other treatments including an additional chapter on tofu skin. Bonus: “Many of the dishes are served room temperature or cold — which means that not only are they great for do-ahead entertaining, but also that they’re great for summer picnics and potlucks,” said Leslie Brenner at Cooks Without Borders. ($35, Clarkson Potter, Amazon)
‘Vegetable Kingdom: The Abundant World of Vegan Recipes’ by Bryant Terry
In “Vegetable Kingdom,” Bryant Terry, a food justice advocate and author, skips across the Black and African diaspora, pulling inspiration from boundless sources. Spinach salad with blackened chickpeas, a panko-crusted cauliflower take on the Kenyan chicken and coconut curry called kuku paka, jerk tofu enveloped in collards — this is a book for “anyone who wants to expand their vegan cooking repertoire and make their beans and greens more exciting,” said Bettina Makalintal at Bon Appétit.
For people with children, know this: Terry wrote “Vegetable Kingdom” in part to show kids, including his own, how thrilling vegetables can be. The book is a tool to “provide a few recipes for vegetables — something that’s simple and easy — that might be a way to sneak a vegetable in as an initial contact” for picky kids, he said to The Kitchn. ($30, Ten Speed Press, Amazon)