How to Cook Everything Vegan: Exciting Plant-Based Eating for All

Mark Bittman has spent much of his career encouraging cooks to rely less on recipes and more on an understanding of ingredients and basic techniques. In How to Cook Everything Vegan, he applies that philosophy to plant-based cooking. 

Drawing on more than two decades of eating a largely plant-based diet himself, Bittman offers hundreds of recipes alongside practical advice for making vegetables, grains, beans, and other everyday ingredients the foundation of satisfying meals. His aim isn’t necessarily to persuade readers to become vegan, but to make cooking without animal products easier, more varied, and more appealing. 

Instead of organizing recipes around conventional courses, Bittman devotes chapters to ingredient families, including leaves, roots, grains, noodles, beans, and tofu. He starts with the fundamentals of stocking a vegan kitchen and building flavor, then moves through recipes ranging from barely dressed salads and stir-fried greens to roasted smashed potatoes, spinach gnocchi, and vegetable sushi. 

A chapter on dairy alternatives covers homemade oat, nut, seed, and soy milks, along with cashew, bean, tofu, and coconut spreads. Elsewhere, his playful variations on sashimi include rootshimi, fruitshimi, and tomatoshimi, demonstrating how familiar foods can be reconsidered using vegetables and fruit. 

As in his other How to Cook Everything books, Bittman emphasizes flexibility. Variations, substitutions, and ingredient guides encourage cooks to adapt recipes to their own tastes and pantries, while advice on seasonings, leftovers, and assembling complete meals helps turn individual recipes into everyday cooking. Rather than relying on manufactured meat substitutes or specialty vegan products, he concentrates on what can be accomplished with ordinary ingredients and a few dependable techniques.

The result is a substantial reference for anyone interested in expanding the plant-based portion of their cooking, regardless of how they otherwise choose to eat. 

Hardcover. Color photographs throughout.