Best Vegan Cookbooks for Beginners: Top 7 Books in 2024

A vegan diet has long been regarded as one of the healthiest diets one can choose. Not only is it excellent for your body, but it’s also healthy for the planet. By eating less animal-based foods and more plants, you’re helping the food industry be more eco-friendly. No matter your reason for becoming vegan, you’re entering a healthier lifestyle. To accompany this change of pace, you should use one of the best vegan cookbooks for beginners as your guide.

When first transitioning to a vegan diet, there are several things to consider. Your body needs a certain amount of nutrients to be healthy, and you have to learn where these nutrients come from. You’re eating new foods and trying new recipes. Cooking from good vegan cookbooks will make your transition to eating a plant-based diet smooth. The best plant-based cookbooks for beginners are full of delicious and healthy recipes sure to make your mouth water. Here, we’ve compiled a list of the best vegan cookbooks for beginners for your reference. 

Our Top Picks: Best Vegan Cookbooks for Beginners

Here’s a look at the top seven cookbooks for all different types of vegan meals:

Beginning a vegan diet can be intimidating, but the recipes don’t have to be. This vegan cookbook is the best option for beginners because it contains easy recipes. They won’t ask you to get any strange ingredients you can’t find at your local supermarket. All recipes are tangible and delicious.

The cookbook comes with more than 150 recipes for you to choose from. They offer good transitional recipes for those just starting on a vegan diet or even those who might still be skeptical of eating plant-based meals. The recipes here are determined to provide plenty of nutrients that vegans are required to get from plants. Healthy and delicious are how we quantify these recipes. 

Those who eat a plant-based diet, and those who don’t, will likely all agree that few kitchen appliances beat a slow cooker. If you love a good slow-cooked meal, then this cookbook is for you. A common misconception is that a vegan diet requires a lot of time for cooking. Using a slow cooker, however, is a quick way to make delicious meals without the hassle. Toss in all your ingredients in the morning before work, and you’ll have a tasty meal ready for you when you return home. A slow cooker is also ideal for soups, curries, and other warm recipes ideal for the chillier months. 

Eating a vegan diet doesn’t mean watching your grocery bill skyrocket. There are countless recipes that are tasty, healthy, and affordable. This cookbook contains recipes that are great for the body and easy on the wallet. Plus, you don’t have to purchase vegan alternatives for normally animal-based foods to sustain a vegan diet.

The author focuses on how to fit healthy and delicious meals into a busy schedule while maintaining a budget. Not only does this cookbook contain recipes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, it also has options for easy and affordable snacks as well as tasty desserts. 

A busy lifestyle doesn’t mean sacrificing a healthy diet. Veganism is not out of reach for those juggling work, families, and social lives. This cookbook is perfect for beginning vegans concerned about maintaining their vegan diet while keeping up with their daily activities. Soups, salads, hearty mains, sandwiches, desserts, and more can be found here. The recipes are simple, require minimal work, and provide for great meal prep so you can cook once and not have to worry about your meals for the rest of the week. You can easily adjust the quantities of ingredients to match the number of people you’re cooking for. Inside this cookbook, you can find easy meal prep and delicious recipes for the whole family. 

It’s no secret that eating vegan while in college can be tricky. Trying to balance coursework with eating healthy is a challenge most shy away from. The College Vegan Cookbook makes maintaining a vegan diet for college students very doable. The book has recipes that are quick, easy, and, most importantly, affordable. They fit nicely with a student’s schedule. These recipes also accommodate students who might be living in the dorms, taking into consideration the cookware and kitchen style they might have access to. Whole foods, healthy, and fun recipes await college students who work from this cookbook. 

Meal prep is essential when planning a successful vegan diet. This cookbook speaks to those who don’t want to spend a lot of their time shopping, prepping, and cooking their meals. Eating vegan is even doable for those who don’t like cooking. This book contains delicious recipes that guide beginning vegans through meal prepping with the utmost efficiency. Cooking doesn’t have to be a chore. The cookbook comes with a 14-week plan for meal prepping your weeks with ease and efficiency. Try a recipe from the Vegan Yack Attack’s Plant-Based Meal Prep to keep your meals exciting and healthy while taking minimal time. 

Comfort food can’t be replaced. Some of our favorite meals are comfort food, and the chances are good that they’re not vegan. If you’re beginning to transition to a vegan diet, finding a version of your favorite comfort food meals that also meets the criteria for a vegan meal can be challenging. That’s why a cookbook like Fuss-Free Vegan is ideal to have in your kitchen. Everything from pizza to brownies is in this cookbook. Each is uniquely made vegan, so you can rest assured you’re still sticking true to your vegan diet while indulging in something delicious. It’s hard to give up our favorite comfort foods. Becoming vegan doesn’t mean removing these meals from your life. 

What to Look for in the Best Vegan Cookbooks for Beginners

If you’re starting to eat vegan, you’ve likely already researched what kinds of nutrients you need to focus on getting. These nutrients might be lacking in a plant-based diet if you aren’t careful about what foods are regularly used in your recipes. Using a cookbook is especially useful to beginning vegans as they focus on using ingredients that are easily accessible in most grocery stores and meet the nutrient needs of vegans. 

1. Price

It’s a common misconception that eating vegan means an increase in your grocery bills. Eating a healthy plant-based diet is achievable for those purchasing their food on a budget. Choosing a cookbook that has recipes with ingredients within your budget is crucial.

A grocery shopping bill will skyrocket if you’re buying vegan alternatives for animal-based products. By eating mostly fruits, vegetables, and grains, and cooking from recipes that honor these ingredients, your grocery bill will remain reasonably priced. 

2. Ingredients

Ingredients go hand-in-hand with price. If you’re short on time, choosing a recipe book with few ingredients and little prep time might be in your interest. Depending on how you want your vegan diet to look, it’s important to consider the ingredients in the recipe. Some recipes might be higher in fat or calories than others. Likewise, some might contain artificial sweeteners or heavily processed foods.

It’s up to you to skim through the ingredients of a recipe and determine if it’s a good fit for your plant-based diet requirements. 

3. Quantity

How much of a recipe you’re making depends on if you’re cooking for one or more. It also depends on if you’re cooking for one meal or hoping to meal prep for several days. The good news is that you can easily scale most meals up based on how much food you want to make. Beginning a vegan diet doesn’t mean spending significantly more time in the kitchen. Smart meal prepping and making the right quantities of meals can actually mean less time spent cooking. 

Finding a cookbook that best fits your lifestyle is especially necessary for those new to a vegan diet. Now, choose your beginner vegan cookbook and get cooking. 

Our Process

For this guide on the best vegan cookbooks for beginners, our team spent 5 hours researching the most popular options from over 15 authors. We then read about one hundred and forty user reviews (both positive and negative) to discover what shoppers thought about each cookbook. After comparing this data, we narrowed our list down to the top 7 vegan cookbooks for beginners on the market. You can count on this research to guide you to a mindful purchasing decision.

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