7 Best Vegetarian Cookbooks That Make Vegetables Exciting

For a long time vegetarian cooking meant the sad plate of steamed vegetables next to the real food. These seven cookbooks put that idea to rest. From the London chef whose book made vegetables genuinely exciting to a James Beard winner's season-by-season produce masterclass, this is cooking where vegetables are the star and no one misses the meat. Whether you are fully vegetarian or just want to eat more plants, these books make it a pleasure rather than a sacrifice.

We describe and compare these books rather than reprinting recipes. Pick one and rediscover the produce aisle.

Quick picks:

• Best overall: Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi. View on Amazon
• Best for produce lovers: Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden. View on Amazon
• Best for weeknights: Ottolenghi Simple by Yotam Ottolenghi. View on Amazon

Vegetable-forward cooking

Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi

Yotam Ottolenghi is a world-famous London chef. The book that made vegetables exciting, bold, produce-forward cooking that changed how a generation eats.

Best for: Exciting vegetables.

Ottolenghi Simple by Yotam Ottolenghi

Yotam Ottolenghi is a world-famous chef. All his signature flavor with far less effort, organized by what makes a recipe simple. His most weeknight-friendly book.

Best for: Weeknight Ottolenghi.

Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden

Joshua McFadden is a James Beard Award winner. A produce-obsessed masterclass organized by vegetable and season, the book that teaches you to truly cook vegetables.

Best for: Seasonal produce.

Vegetable Kingdom by Bryant Terry

Bryant Terry is a chef and author rooted in Afro-diasporic cooking. Vibrant, plant-based cooking with real cultural depth, as nourishing to read as to cook from.

Best for: Plant-based with soul.

Everyday vegetarian

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman

Mark Bittman is a longtime food journalist. The comprehensive vegetarian reference, hundreds of building-block recipes, the one meat-free book to own.

Best for: Vegetarian reference.

The Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen

Mollie Katzen is the author of a vegetarian institution. The counterculture classic that taught America meat-free cooking, warm, hand-lettered and timeless.

Best for: The vegetarian classic.

Love Real Food by Kathryne Taylor

Kathryne Taylor is a blogger with a large Pinterest following. Wholesome, vegetarian, genuinely crave-able food from a beloved online source, approachable and bright.

Best for: Wholesome vegetarian.

How we chose these

We looked past the marketing to the people behind the books: working chefs, award winners, food scientists, culture-bearers and the recipe developers whose food people actually cook again and again. Where an author is a food writer or blogger rather than a trained chef, that is a feature, not a knock: many of the most reliable, most-loved cookbooks come from obsessive home cooks. We describe and compare these books; we never republish their recipes.