The Top Five Vegan Cookbooks

An important tool for anybody considering veganism is an informative cookbook. Some vegans give up animal-based products only to become reliant on store-bought processed food, such as frozen veggie burgers. It is therefore vital that you invest in the necessary cookbooks in order to construct an informed, healthy diet. To that end, here are my top five vegan cookbooks:

1. Vegan with a Vengeance by Isa Chandra Moskowitz

This book boasts over 150 animal-free recipes for everything from entrees to muffins and scones. Moskowitz also provides on overview of the kitchen tools and culinary staples that are necessary when transitioning to a meatless kitchen. While Vegan with a Vengeance offers a number of creative recipes, I particularly enjoy the mushroom and sun-dried tomato risotto and the sweet potato crepes with cilantro-tamarind sauce.

2. The Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau

Patrick-Goudreau's book is especially helpful for the uninitiated (Moskowitz assumes that anyone picking up her book is already vegan). She talks in the book's forward about how she became a "compassionate cook" to provide resources, answers and empowerment to people who want to change to their diets but just don't have the tools to do so. The Joy of Vegan Baking certainly accomplishes that goal: Patrick-Goudreau provides an overview on stocking your vegan pantry, as well as general information about baking terms and tools. Her recommendations for nondairy milk, butter and cream are also very helpful. Pick up this book and you'll be making dairy-free lemon cheesecake in no time.

3. Vegan Brunch by Isa Chandra Moskowitz

Moskowitz is fairly prolific in the world of vegan cookbooks, and with Vegan Brunch she tackles the sort of comfort food that vegans can't usually touch, such as french toast, bacon and omelets. Some of my favorite recipes include chocolate beer waffles, diner home fries and baked hash browns. Since the focus of the book is brunch, she also provides some tips on entertaining.

4. Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero

This one is called Veganomicon for a reason - with over 250 recipes it's a doorstop of cookbook. It's also extremely informative (the book discusses the best ways to cook pretty much every vegetable you can think of). Still, it can be a bit overwhelming as an introductory text. Instead, this makes for a good cookbook when you're further along in your transition to veganism and you're looking to add more variety to your diet. The book's design is also more along the lines of a reference guide, as it lacks the artful photographs that might encourage the tentative chef to try something more exotic.

5. Vegweb.com

While this isn't a traditional cookbook, I've added it to the list because I've found this website to be very helpful for finding new recipes and coming up with cooking ideas. Since the website is made up of user-submitted content, some of the recipes are hit or miss. Still, each recipe has a rating, so you can always sort recipes by the most popular ones. The recipes also have a comments section, which gives you a good idea of how successful a recipe will be. Probably the greatest benefit of using this site over a traditional cookbook though, is the fact that you can access it on your phone through an App. So no longer will you be stuck in the middle of the grocery aisle trying to remember the name of an ingredient you have to buy.

There are plenty of other great vegan cookbooks out there. Veganpeace.com has a number of user-submitted reviews, and a simple search on Amazon brings up over a thousand vegan cookbooks. So peruse a couple titles and get cooking!