The 20 Best Vegan Cookbooks for Every Type of Meal

Essential Vegan Air Fryer Cookbook

Orig. $17 $12 at Amazon $12 at Walmart $17 at Barnesandnoble.com

Air fryers are some of the most convenient and versatile kitchen appliances, making it easy to quickly cook almost any ingredient or dish with powerful convection cooking. Whether or not you enjoy the usual animal-based fare typically marketed toward air fryer cooking, you'll surely find a new favorite in this cookbook, like crispy salt and pepper tofu, an easy lasagna, and even chocolate cake!

Not only does The Essential Vegan Air Fryer Cookbook include nearly 80 plant-based recipes that will satisfy your cravings for crispy fried food, but author Tess Challis also teaches you the basics of how to cook with an air fryer to achieve the best results, including handy cook times for common ingredients.

Vegetable Kingdom

Orig. $30 $17 at Amazon Orig. $30 $26 at Barnesandnoble.com

James Beard award-winning chef Bryant Terry draws on the flavors and textures of East Asia, the Southern United States, and the Caribbean for his ode to veggies. Vegetable Kingdom centers on whole foods, avoiding meat substitutes or overly processed ingredients. Terry's 100+ recipes offer casual, family-oriented fare: grilled spring onions with lemon-thyme oil; oven-roasted zucchini, jerk tofu wrapped in collard leaves; spinach and kale grit cakes; barbecue carrots with slow-cooked white beans. The book is categorized by ingredient type (roots, lentils, fruits, etc.), and each dish comes with a recommended soundtrack!

Anything You Can Cook, I Can Cook Vegan

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Transitioning into a vegan diet can be daunting, especially if you're used to some tried and true meaty dishes. Make plant-based eating easy (and enjoyable!) and win over omnivores with Richard Makin's "veganize anything" approach to cooking. If you think being vegan means giving up things like cajun fried shrimp or chocolate pie, think again; Makin's recipes perfectly capture the flavors and textures of all your favorite dishes, just without the meat, dairy, or eggs.

All of Makin's recipes are super approachable and focused on good flavor, so even if you're a newbie to plant-based cooking or even cooking in general, you'll find yourself sailing through these recipes. Crack open Anything You Can Cook, I Can Cook Vegan, tuck into a big slice of homemade tres leches cake or a buttery lobster roll, and win over any omnivore, even yourself.

Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook

Orig. $35 $28 at Amazon

Often called "The Joy of Vegan Cooking," Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero's Veganomicon eschews fake meat products and egg replacements and offers over 250 recipes featuring nearly every fruit, vegetable, legume, and grain on the planet. Notable recipes include baby bok choy with crispy shallots, roasted eggplant and spinach muffuletta, asparagus and lemongrass risotto, and chocolate hazelnut biscotti.

The breakfasts, holiday recipes, desserts, and chatty cooking notes accompanying each recipe are great for beginner vegans; Veganomicon is like having an experienced vegan friend in the kitchen with you. Moskowitz and Romero also include soy-free, gluten-free, and low-fat options.

Vegan: The Cookbook

$57 at Amazon

European chef and restaurateur Jean-Christian Jury collects 500 recipes from 200 countries, including Persian beet borani and South Indian potato masala, in this illustrated compendium that is as beautiful as it is practical. Vegan stresses that most recipes aren't "veganized" but naturally vegan favorites.

Organized by meals or courses (breakfast, salads and soups, desserts), the book highlights international culinary traditions and regional fruits and vegetables. This is the perfect book to remind you that veganism is so much more about what you can eat than what you can't.

You Can Cook This!

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According to the USDA, approximately 30-40% of the food grown in the United States is wasted yearly. Max La Manna took to his social media platforms and asked his followers: what do you throw away the most? Using the responses as a guide, La Manna created 135 easy and delicious vegan recipes designed to combat food waste and promote eating more plants. Save money and reduce food waste with recipes like tofu butter chicken, coffee ground pancakes, and even a triple chocolate birthday cake. Kitchen scraps never tasted so good!

Veganistan

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Sally Butcher's most recent cookbook, Veganistan, is a deep-dive into the many naturally vegan dishes of the Middle East, Central Asia, and Eastern Africa. Inspired by the groceries stocked at Persepolis, the London cafe and specialty food store Butcher runs with her husband, Veganistan, puts the focus squarely on vegetables. Her recipes celebrate the unique flavors and textures of the produce while also leaning on the varied and complex flavor profiles of the area's cuisines. Butcher manages to strike the perfect balance of staple dinners for one and show-stopper recipes your dinner party guests will be raving about for ages.

Crossroads

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Stepping into Tal Ronnen's LA restaurant, Crossroads Kitchen, you're instantly met with the light, airy vibe of a California upscale dining restaurant. With Mediterranean small plates like figs and feta and stuffed zucchini blossoms, plus a full cocktail program, it might take you a few courses to realize it's entirely vegan.

Ronnen's cooking style breathes fine dining refinement into vegan fare without all the fussiness, and animal products, of traditional upscale restaurants. Bring the spirit of innovative vegan cooking from Crossroads into your home kitchen with dishes like smoked white bean hummus or artichoke oysters with tomato bearnaise and kelp caviar.

Isa Does It

Orig. $32 $18 at Amazon

The second cookbook title from Isa Chandra Moskowitz in this roundup focuses on fast meals: She promises most of the 150 dishes will be on the dinner table in less than 30 minutes. It draws inspiration from American comfort food with flavors from cuisines around the world — think sweet potato and red curry soup, Korean BBQ portobello burgers, and ancho-lentil tacos. Moskowitz speaks to the vegan-curious with conversational headnotes and photo tutorials on "vegan butchery," perfect for the busy vegan.

Raw

$53 at Amazon

Eight-time James Beard Award winner, cookbook author, and infamous Chicago restauranter Charlie Trotter teamed up with California chef Roxanne Klein to ask food lovers to rethink raw foods in this 2007 vegan classic. Noteworthy recipes include broccoli flower couscous with curry oil, and portabello mushroom pave' with white asparagus vinaigrette, accompanied by extensive wine paring notes.

Forgoing traditional cooking methods, Trotter and Klien shine a light on juicing — "a natural extension of the raw-food repertoire," their refreshing concoctions include prickly pear and pomegranate juice and cucumber-lime water. In addition to juicing, Raw uses dehydrating and other methods of transforming raw produce without sacrificing the nutrients and unique flavors and textures.

The Vegan Pastry Bible

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Baking and pastry are often the most challenging tasks when switching to a vegan diet. Baking is a delicate science that often relies on eggs, butter, and milk, but taking a scientific approach, Toni Rodríguez has cracked the code.

The Vegan Pastry Bible reads like a half-cookbook, half-culinary school textbook. Rodriguez smartly formats this tome by starting with handy ingredient explainers and a deep dive into the theory of vegan baking, giving even the most amateur vegan bakers the foundation they need to produce show-stopping Viennoiserie like millefeuille, or a perfect batch of weekend morning waffles.

Aaron Adams, chef and owner of Portland's acclaimed vegan fine dining restaurant, Astera, calls The Vegan Pastry Bible his "go-to resource" for solving pastry problems. "It has solid base recipes, along with some Viennoiserie that can be applied to restaurant desserts," says Adams.

Provecho: 100 Vegan Mexican Recipes to Celebrate Culture and Community

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Chef, recipe developer, food stylist, and photographer Edgar Castrejón turns the traditional meat-centric dishes of his Mexican American childhood into plant-based creations with Salvadoran and Columbian influences. Recipes for comfort classics with a vegan twist, like pozole verde, elote asado, oat milk horchata, stress convenience. Many of his 100 recipes are on the table in less than 30 minutes using pantry ingredients most of us have on hand.

Blending his love for the Mexican flavors he grew up with and his academic background in nutrition, Castrejón chronicles the cherished hours spent in the kitchen with his family into a cookbook that makes you feel like you're sitting at the kitchen table with him.

PlantYou

Orig. $30 $16 at Amazon $16 at Target View on Hachettebookgroup.com

If you've spent any time scrolling through social media looking for vegan meal inspo, you've likely seen a few of Carleigh Bodrug's videos. Founder of PlantYou, a blog with an impressive library of delicious vegan recipes, Bodrug makes plant-based eating simple in this volume of over 140 recipes with only one goal: to help you eat more plants.

Whether you're a meat eater through and through or a long-time committed vegan, this cookbook will open your eyes to a world of vegan cooking with delicious recipes that don't require hard-to-come-by ingredients or lots of time-consuming prep. And more than just a compilation of recipes, it's essentially an all-in-one guidebook to a plant-based lifestyle, with infographics accompanying every recipe, basic cooking and prep tips, and even a sample shopping list for those new to plant-based cooking.

The Korean Vegan Cookbook

Orig. $35 $18 at Amazon Orig. $35 $28 at Barnesandnoble.com Orig. $35 $33 at Bookshop.org

Joanne Lee Molinaro not only reinterprets the Korean classics she grew up with as vegan fare, such as jjajangmyeon and kkanpunggi, but also provides Korean-inspired riffs on Western dishes, such as Angry Penne Pasta (with gochujang and gochugaru) and sweet potato chocolate cake.

Korean Vegan is deeply personal: Molinaro's headnotes include touching anecdotes about cooking with her omma, her endless inspiration, and stories from her parents' youths in Korea. Being vegan can sometimes feel exclusionary, and Molinaro is here to remind us that food and cooking build connection and community.

Minimalist Baker's Everyday Cooking

Orig. $36 $20 at Amazon

Since 2012, Dana Shultz has run the vegan blog, The Minimalist Baker, constantly churning out approachable recipes that come together quickly and without many fancy ingredients. Shultz's repertoire includes more than just baking; you'll find recipes for vegan parmesan, three-bean chili, and butternut squash-garlic mac 'n' "cheese."

All 101 recipes in Minimalist Baker's Everyday Cooking are vegan; most are gluten-free and are either ten ingredients or less, one-bowl, or ready in 30 minutes. The book is perfect for any beginner, it provides tips for building an essential plant-based pantry and includes detailed instructions for making your own vegan staples like almond milk and coconut whipped cream.

The Homemade Vegan Pantry

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If the name Miyoko Schinner looks familiar to you, it might be because Schinner founded Miyoko's Creamery, a hugely popular brand of vegan dairy products known for its cheese. Schinner is also well known for her cookbook Artisan Vegan Cheese, and she shares her trade secrets for oil-free melty "pepper jack," almond "feta," and vegan shaved "parmesan" in The Homemade Vegan Pantry. This guide to making homemade vegan basics is expansive — Schinner covers condiments, stocks, prepared foods, and more. You'll be well on your way to a fully vegan larder with recipes for mayonnaises, sauces, non-dairy milk, egg alternatives, and a variety of "meats" like breakfast unsausage and peppy unpepperoni.

The Modern Tiffin

Orig. $25 $14 at Amazon $14 at Target $20 at Barnesandnoble.com

Priyanka Naik, an Instagram influencer and TV personality, challenges Americans' conceptions about vegan food in 11 Indian-inspired, global-cuisine lunch menus, each portioned for two and meant to be portable — like an Indian tiffin. Each chapter focuses on a tiffin with flavors from another part of the world; you'll find green chutney quesadillas in the Mexican tiffin and chili-maple skillet cornbread in the American Comfort tiffin. The Maharashtrian tiffin, a nod to her parents' heritage, includes shaboodani (made with couscous), chickpea bhelpuri, and coconut masala-stuffed okra. Naik takes fusion to another level, riffing on traditional Indian flavors and putting her vegan spin on classics.

Sweet Potato Soul

Orig. $20 $14 at Amazon $15 at Walmart Orig. $20 $18 at Barnesandnoble.com

Private chef Jenné Claiborne celebrates the versatility of Southern ingredients — dandelion greens, okra, and black-eyed peas — with 100 plant-based recipes. She includes variations on several soul food classics, such as Creole red bean "sausages," sweet potato pie, and coconut collard salad. She also shares new flavors, such as Georgia watermelon and peach salad and peach date BBQ jackfruit sliders — all deeply rooted in traditions of eating locally and seasonally. Southern food often leans on animal products, but with Sweet Potato Soul, you'll never have to give up those comfort food classics.

La Vida Verde: Plant-Based Mexican Cooking with Authentic Flavor

Orig. $23 $17 at Amazon $17 at Walmart

Jocelyn Ramirez started Todo Verde, her catering and cooking class company, to share the foods she grew up eating with the vegan community in Los Angeles, picking up some Californian influences along the way. Friends, neighbors, and fellow chefs loved her veganized takes on classic Mexican flavors, like tacos de yaca carnitas made with jackfruit or Ramirez's take on flan using coconut milk; the only thing left to do was write a book. Cooking your way through La Vida Verde takes you on a tour of the dynamic and nuanced flavors of traditional Mexican cuisine; you won't even notice there are no animal products to be found.

Modern Vegan Baking

Orig. $20 $15 at Amazon $20 at Barnesandnoble.com View on Booksamillion.com

This compendium features 100+ recipes for baked goods that are both savory and sweet. Gretchen Price, a professional pastry chef and graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, leverages her 20+ years of experience to demonstrate just how good vegan baking can be. With mouth-watering recipes like triple chocolate glazed donuts, New York-style strawberry cheesecake, and her aquafaba Swiss buttercream, it will be hard to believe they're made without eggs or dairy.

But even more than just recipes, Price uses her extensive knowledge and tried-and-true methods to show the techniques and ingredients that will take your vegan baking to the next level — and maybe even convert some non-vegans.