While there must be an infinite number of ways to harness the power of Google to find the best plant-based recipe books out there, a simple search for the “top plant-based recipe books” for 2018 and 2019 returns a list of 18 publications, each featuring between 1 and 18 recipe books. Quite a list!
But What Exactly Is a Plant-Based Diet?
Before we dive into these search results, let’s first find the answer to the question: “What is a plant-based diet?” Many attempts have been made to define this clearly. Katherine D. McManus, MS, RD, LDN at Harvard Medical School best describes it as focused “on foods primarily from plants. This includes not only fruits and vegetables but also nuts, seeds, oils, whole grains, legumes, and beans. It doesn’t mean that you are vegetarian or vegan and never eat meat or dairy. Rather, you are proportionately choosing more of your foods from plant sources.” Bear in mind that the vegan recipe books reviewed for this article all offer outstanding plant-based recipes. However, being vegan, some of them might include items not typically found in a plant-based diet like sugar and other refined products that no longer resemble their original plant form.
And the Results Are In!
In the quest to come up with the list of six plant-based recipe books, each book had to meet the following criteria:- Be available on Amazon
- Awarded least 4.5 stars in the reviews
- Reviewed by at least 200 customers
- The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook for Your Instant Pot: 80 Easy and Delicious Plant-Based Recipes That You Can Make in Half the Time (2017 – 208 reviews)
- Afro-Vegan: Farm-Fresh African, Caribbean, and Southern Flavors Remixed (2014 – 254 reviews)
- Minimalist Baker's Everyday Cooking: 101 Entirely Plant-based, Mostly Gluten-Free, Easy and Delicious Recipes (2016 – 509 reviews)
- Isa Does It: Amazingly Easy, Wildly Delicious Vegan Recipes for Every Day of the Week (2013 – 825 reviews)
- The Oh She Glows Cookbook: Over 100 Vegan Recipes to Glow from the Inside Out (2014 – 1,874 reviews)
- Forks Over Knives―The Cookbook: Over 300 Recipes for Plant-Based Eating All Through the Year (2012 – 2,251 reviews)
