The best Vegetarian Cooking books: Reddit reviews

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

YTA

Jesus I don’t even know where to begin with this. I’m gonna break it down the way I would for my toddlers.

I understand that you feel badly for being mean to Sarah, but do you think the problem will be solved by being mean to Luke and Scott? How would you feel if they sat you down and said “listen dad. We’ve been giving mom a really hard time lately so we’ve decided that for Mother’s Day this year we’re going to send her on an all expenses paid trip to Hawaii for the weekend. You’re gonna go too, but you have to pay your own way. Also, we’re giving you a new set of grill tongs for Father’s Day. Fair is fair!” You’d probably feel like they don’t care about you as much right?

The way to solve this problem is not by throwing money at your daughter and shoving your other kids’ faces in it. You could have avoided this ENTIRELY by not telling them IN FRONT OF SARAH exactly what you were giving her as a birthday gift. Also, once weekly veggie burger night is like the bare minimum you can be doing for your daughter food wise. Buy this book and do better.

Second vote for Katz's The Art of Fermentation more accessible for the home cook than the Noma one.

For sausages though, The Art of Making Fermented Sausages by Stanley Marianski is legendary in charcuterie circles.

I think he has a vegetarian version as well. I skimmed through my copy and it looks like about half of the original book is devoted to meat which still leaves you with around 450 pages of vegetarian options. If I were you I would probably check out the vegetarian version though as it's far more relevant for your diet.

I agree with the ATK book posted here by /u/PM_ME_A_FACT, but would also like to add the book "Plenty: Vibrant Vegetable Recipes from London's Ottolenghi." The ATK book is more of a begginers book than Plenty, but both are great resources.

Plenty on Amazon

>In fact, you could probably consider vegan diet to be colonialist and imperialist since it was created with European climate in mind.

Decolonize Your Diet is a vegan Mexican food cookbook.

I'm vegetarian. Food never need be boring or bland. Much of Indian cuisine is vegetarian and that food is super spicy (not hot-spicy but tasty spicy).

Two great resources:

• Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian: More Than 650 Meatless Recipes from Around the World: A Cookbook. Invest in this book. It has great info on how to cook beans and vegetable and a zillion recipes from around the world (African, Indonesian, Indian, Chinese). I'll post one of my faves below.
• 101 Cookbooks. This is a blog site with a lot of whole food veg recipes. Gorgeous photos. Fairly simple preps. One of my favorites is her Lemony Chickpea Stir-fry Recipe. *chef's kiss*

Easy recipes include:

• Pan roast a bunch of veggies (onions, eggplant) and make a sandwich with sliced hard boiled egg, fresh spinach, and some spicy mayo (add some cayenne and garlic salt to mayo. Add anything your heart desires, actually!)
• Beans and rice. Use canned black beans. Add a quarter onion, jalapeno, and a few cloves of garlic and let simmer. Beans over rice = full protein. Add some salsa or sour cream.
• Greek yogurt and fruit. Lots of protein. Or make a greek yogurt dip by adding spice blends then dip carrots, celery sticks in it.

Vegetarian eating gets a bad rap because people think they need to replace their usual hunk of meat with tofu or another meat substitute. If you look at cultures that eat vegetarian (India, Buddhist China), you see they eat stews and saucy stir-frys.

Good luck and have fun experimenting!

100%. My wife is the most hardcore recycler I know, she knows what they actually recycle, what stuff can't be recycled, and what stuff she has to load into the car and haul off to the specialty recycler by the airport, which she does a couple times a month (styrofoam, etc). She knows it's a drop in the bucket, she knows that for-all-she-knows half of it ends up in a landfill, but she's like "At least I'm doing something", and we're both really conscious about choosing things that are less wasteful. And the big one for us, both serious cooks, trying to only do meat a couple times a week. Re-learning to cook vegetarian and still have awesome meals? That's a "journey" for sure (but thanks Ottoleghi!!)

(She's also like "This is a FOIL-COATED PLASTIC BAG, it does NOT go in the recycling!!!" She's awesome so I just say "yes dear" a lot around here!)

Madhur Jaffrey's books are always good. How about her 'World Vegetarian' book?

The No Meat Athlete Cookbook

https://www.amazon.com/Meat-Athlete-Cookbook-Plant-Based-Workouts_and/dp/1615192662

Everyday Vegan Cheat Sheet

https://www.amazon.com/Everyday-Vegan-Cheat-Sheet-Plant-Based/dp/1510768653

https://www.amazon.ca/Decolonize-Your-Diet-Plant-Based-Mexican-American/dp/1551525925 the most prominent one I can find is this. I've seen some other works on my social media but it doesn't seem like they're popular works so I'll have to re-find them again. I can dm you sources once I do!

Oh cool. Thanks for the link.

When I went vegan I found tons of recipes and even cookbooks from WW1, the Depression, and WW2 scanned on to the internet and at Project Gutenberg as well as cooking videos by very aged people but the old vegan and vegetarian stuff I have read is mainly from old books still in the library although a few have been re-released in digital editions. My favorite is The New Farm Vegetarian Cookbook. I guess most of the vegan stuff is not yet in the public domain.

For fermentation, this has been my go to resource. The Art of Fermentation by Sandro Ellix Katz.

Gives all the science and a lot of recipes, but also how to alter the recipe without ruining your cultures. Been experimenting for 5 years with this book.

https://www.amazon.ca/Art-Fermentation-Depth-Exploration-Essential/dp/160358286X

This is my favorite The Vegetarian Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity with Vegetables, Fruits, Grains, Legumes, Nuts, Seeds, and More, Based on the Wisdom of Leading American Chefs https://www.amazon.ca/dp/031624418X/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_i_6RY3JEMQ5CQMD20S5YXH?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

I'll second the recommendations for The Compleat Meadmaker that have been offered below. I'll also add The Art of Fermentation as a not-bad reference, as it has a nice little section on mead. It suffers from the same issue that The Compleat Meadmaker does, however, in that it was published long enough ago that almost everything is outdated. But for the kind of assignment you're dealing with, that shouldn't be a big problem.

Sounds like your nailing it tbh.
Checkout a cookbook called No Meat Athlete, I've found a few new dishes and it's great nutritional advice for rigorous exercise.

Only other advice is you can get frozen edamame which can come in handy when pairing with tofu etc...

Also Huel gang rise up

World Vegetarian by Madhur Jaffery has so much information in it, it is wonderful! I am no longer a vegetarian but still love that cookbook.

https://www.amazon.com/Madhur-Jaffreys-World-Vegetarian-Meatless/dp/0609809237

Plenty & the follow up Plenty More

Plenty: Vibrant Vegetable Recipes from London's Ottolenghi https://www.amazon.com/dp/1452101248/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_DAJBNAKKBT48PBE398D8

Gjelina

Gjelina: Cooking from Venice, California (California Cooking, Restaurant Cookbooks, Cal-Med Cookbook) https://www.amazon.com/dp/145212809X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_R224PVYZ96K3HA3RYPM0

Thanks ill check it out!

https://www.amazon.com/Plenty-Vibrant-Vegetable-Recipes-Ottolenghi/dp/1452101248

is this one good? do you know?

I’ll also add No Meat Athlete Cookbook, this author also recently wrote The Plant Based Athlete. Lots of whole food recipes in this one

I don't really have any quick stuff. Check out r/fermentation if you are interested.

I got into kombucha, and then pickles. Ended up buying myself this book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/160358286X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_fabc_3MY90331A9B682W2W2YA?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

It spiraled from there. Now I have a problem.

Here you go!

It isn't necessarily a page turner to read cover to cover, but more of a cross reference manual to find interesting pairings for ingredients.

Ottolenghi’s books are all great. Beautiful to look at and very creative. He has a new one out, but my favorite (and probably his bestselling) is Plenty. Plenty: Vibrant Vegetable Recipes from London's Ottolenghi https://www.amazon.com/dp/1452101248/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glc_i_4d42FbT24HSZH

Yotam Ottolenghi has several great cookbooks for health conscious people who enjoy tasty food. I particularly like Plenty. Vegetarians also tend to like his work. He has meat dishes, but he's super good at elevating veggies and making complex, tasty dishes.

Another home brewer here.

It’s a different kind of fermentation (or are you trying to make a pepper beer?). LAB is literally covering everything. It’s one of the main reasons we boil our wort, it’s all up in the barley too. There are plenty of commercially available cultures, but if you’re trying to make lacto peppers, you really don’t need them.

Different LAB cultures don’t really offer the flavor variations that beer yeast does, either. Think of sourdough bread - sure, you could make a starter and pitch some red star instant yeast, but it won’t make your sourdough better. Better to cultivate naturally occurring organisms and let them do their thing. It’s been working for thousands of years.

Check out The Art of Fermentation: An In-Depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes from around the World by Sandor Katz. It’s all in there.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/160358286X/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_8Z9HFbKCB9AP9

The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz. He also runs the website WildFermentation.com with a lot of information and workshops.

Cider or country wines are probably the easiest. Kombucha is also easy. Once you get started you’ll see they are all very similar.

You should check out this book:

The Art of Fermentation: An In-Depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes from around the World https://smile.amazon.com/dp/160358286X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_fab_DDGCFbZ8T6WZT

He won a James Beard award for it, it goes into much detail about all types of fermentation, including all of the drinks you mentioned (and more). Highly recommended!

The New Farm Vegetarian Cookbook

Very simple vegetarian recipes, limited ingredients, wholesome and delicious. Plus the photos and personal notes are priceless.

I just got Yotam Ottolenghi's cookbook Plenty, which is all about vegetables, and I'm really liking it so far. The recipes are great and the pictures are beautiful.

Whatever you end up getting, I hope it works out well. Congratulations on a year together!

Weeeelllll... Not technically. There are laws that discourage and punish the acts leading up to and surrounding it, but a lot of places don't have laws specifically targeting cannibalism. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e6l6k76cFqM

Brings to mind all of the women who give birth then eat the placenta to replenish nutrients. There are even published cookbooks for that. https://www.amazon.com/25-Placenta-Recipes-Delicious-placenta-ebook/dp/B00BN2JP78

Humans and what are basically double standards, am I right?

I recommend Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty.

Or if you know that your friend likes Indian cuisine, here’s the bible on the subject: Pushpesh Pant’s India: The Cookbook.