What is your most used vegan cookbook?
Posted by Saskia on Feb 26, 2007 · Member since Jan 2007 · 1976 posts
I'm a vegetarian and want to buy a cookbook to help me transition into a vegan diet. I am looking for a vegan cookbook with easy, tasty recipes and ingredients that are easy to find. Can you help me?
Any and all of my Indian cookbooks. :)
Any dish that uses meat can be substituted with firm tofu or other meat-substitue with minor adjustments to the spices if any at all.
Oooh... I love Indian food... could you recommend a good veg Indian cookbook? There aren't many in my neighbourhood Chapters that I can leaf through so I may have to buy it through Amazon.
Sorry to hijack your thread, Saskia! :D
The interception is welcomed, and greatly appreciated, Blackdaisies. I love Indian food too. The Indian cookbooks I flipped through appear complicated and time consuming. If someone has a reader/user-friendly Indian cookbook recommendation, please share.
Tofu Quick and Easy
The TVP Cookbook
I always refer to these for ideas-and they are small and cheap-my favorite! Great for Beginners and those who like it simple.
For everything else, I go to Vegweb or the net.
Any and all of my Indian cookbooks. :)
Any dish that uses meat can be substituted with firm tofu or other meat-substitue with minor adjustments to the spices if any at all.
Oooh... I love Indian food... could you recommend a good veg Indian cookbook? There aren't many in my neighbourhood Chapters that I can leaf through so I may have to buy it through Amazon.
Sorry to hijack your thread, Saskia! :D
Here's my 3 top books:
INDIAN VEGETARIAN COOKING AT YOUR HOUSE
1-57067-004-8
QUICK AND EASY INDIAN COOKING
0-8118-1183-2
INDIAN COOKING
0-8120-6548-4
user friendly....? Great cooking goes back at least as far as my grandparents, if not further so I can't NOT tamper with a reciepe.
Frankly, I've never come across a recipe that didn't need some tampering to improve it. :)
Other than that, I just concoct curries on the fly. ;)
OH! And I should warn you. These are actual curry recipes so there's no using "curry" powder. I think that might be an American concoction. :)
cheers!
I have only one vegan cookbook "How it all Vegan." I bought it when I first switched to vegan from lacto-ovo veggie. I made some really good stuff out of it. But I hardly use it now. Like a few said here, I use this site a lot to find recipes.
Yep! When my BF and I went vegan (from being eating a full-blown carnivore) 3 years ago, "How It All Vegan" helped out SOOOOO much!
I still can't believe it's been 3 years, and that book is great! :) Helped me avoid animal products in all aspects of my life...!
Good luck and long life!
Martha in Austin
I love cookbooks and I've been veg a long time so I have a lot of vegetarian cookbooks (plus magazine clippings!) Not to take anything from this site, but the good thing about a high quality cookbook is that its recipes will have been thoroughly tested by a professional tester and food editor, so you are less likely to encounter recipe disasters! However, it seems lately that every week a new vegan cookbook comes out and you definitely get a sense of deja vu when flipping through.
You cannot go wrong with the Mediterranean Vegan. No tofu, tempeh, seitan or substitutes. All the recipes are based on veggies, beans, rice, grains, pasta. Almost everything is delicious and the good thing about it is if you cook from it for non-veg guests they will love it. She's also got another cookbook--the PDQ vegetarian which is not entirely vegan but nearly all the recipes have vegan options.
Blackdaisy: Julie Sahni's Classic Indian Vegetarian and Grain Cooking is incredible. I've had it for many years but I don't cook from it as much as I used to since the recipes take a little more time to prepare and my kids don't seem to like anything but the blandest of foods. She has a non-veg one too, so be sure to get the right one. I think it is still in print.
I've only found cookbooks helpful AFTER cooking off of VegWeb. It is much less intimidating to have a million recipes to choose from (with pictures, star-ratings, and reviews), and find the one with exactly the ingredients you have at home, than it is to try a recipe in a cookbook of which you have no idea how it will taste, and where you might not know what half the ingredients are (not all cookbooks are bad like that but they all have it a little).
I hardly use my cookbooks but if I had to pick one that I have "used" the most (used=picked up, read, skimmed, drooled over, and actually cooked from), it would be "The Garden of Vegan" (Tanya and Sarah's second book together). Next runner up is a book I picked up while volunteering at a thrift store (they wanted to throw it out because it looked too used and there were too many cookbooks already on the shelf), it's "The Compassionate Cook" compiled by PETA I think.
Overall, I don't trust vegan baking recipes in books, and I tamper with every recipe nowadays anyway. Sometimes I read two similar recipes online and on paper and then make up my own from there.
My most used cookbooks are Vegan Planet, VWaV, and The Vegetarian Slow Cooker. I love my crockpot and, as you can see, Robin Robertson's recipes.
But, I got a new dessert cookbook for my birthday--it's called Sinfully Vegan-- and I'm really enjoying that. It's kind of fancy, dinner party type cakes and pies, but I just like to read the recipes even when I'm not planning to bake anything!
The interception is welcomed, and greatly appreciated, Blackdaisies. I love Indian food too. The Indian cookbooks I flipped through appear complicated and time consuming. If someone has a reader/user-friendly Indian cookbook recommendation, please share.
All of my Indian cookbooks are in storage. :'( but I make a lot of stuff from memory. Don't be scared to try making this stuff at home though. It is really about investing in some new spices. All of the spices you get can be used in other stuff too. Just take your time and follow the recipes closely the first few times and then start experimenting. mmm.... I'm getting hungy.
i love the uncheese cookbook. since its all recipes based on cheese, a lot of the ingredients are similar. a lot of the basic cheese recipies use the same ingredients, with slight alterations. if you buy the ingredients for one thing, youll most likely be able to make 1/4 of the things in the book without having to go to the store. thats my favorite part about it. i have a bunch of other books, but whenever i would want to make something, i would have to go buy tons of ingredients. i hate that.
In addition to those mentioned above, I love The Saucy Vegetarian by Jo Stepaniak. It has great sauces and dressings (no cooking - just mix according to directions) then several suggestions on what combinations of grains, legumes, fruits and veggies to serve each with.
Altho I love surfing the net for recipes, there is a certain irreplacable joy that comes with having a book in your hands (not to mention that food drips cause less damage to a book than to a computer ;))
My main suggestion tho, is to check out cookbooks from the library, and try before you buy - that way you can find the books that you, personally, must have on your shelf. And, it encourages your local library to stock veggie books for others! 8)
Actually, on that whole "try before you buy" thing (which is a great idea, why didn't I think of it?!), you can always look at half-price bookstores or thriftstores. Even though you'd think that books people give away can't be good, sometimes non-veggie people get veggie cookbooks and give them away because they don't like the idea, not because the book is not good. I've found many nice cookbooks at my local half-price bookstore and some for 50 cents at thriftstores.
My books are relatively old, but I'm sure they still can be found. The Single Vegan by Leahman and 150 Vegan Favorites by Solomon.
I'm a book type myself. I'm weird that way.
Tweety--what are your favorite recipes from 150 vegan favorites? I have that book. Also, I didn't really know who Jay Solomon was until I saw his name mentioned in the low-fat moosewood cookbook. Apparently, he was an Ithaca veg chef who inspired the moosewood gang.
i have to chime in to say that i LOVE the sinful vegan. it has contributed to the loss of my good figure!
I really use all my old Betty Crockers and like "church of whatever cookbooks from 1945" the most. I <3 veganizing things.
I change my vote to Vegan Cupcakes Take over the World. There are only two recipes I haven't made out of there
Vegan Vittles and The Mediterranean Vegan. They bath have simple recipes that I go back to, especially when cooking for non-vegans.
Being that I've made four types of cupcakes out of VCTOTW, I'll have to vote for that. I don't think I've made two recipes out of any of my other cookbooks.
The accidental vegan and vegan vittles. Both of these books fall apart when I pull them off the shelf, they have been used so much!
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