In this post:1. About the book2. How the book is structured3. Why I wrote this cookbook4. Frequently asked questions5. Preorder bonus content!

About the book 

Big Vegan Flavor is the distillation of everything that I knew about cooking excellent vegan food at home. This book has been in the making for three and a half years and it is, hands down, the project I’ve worked the hardest on in my entire life. Even more than studying for the LSAT or the bar exam! I had three main goals in putting this cookbook together.  First, I wanted to share a collection of diverse and flavor-rich recipes you could incorporate both into your weekly repertoire as well as save for special occasions.  Second, I didn’t want this to be an ordinary cookbook you’d flip through once or twice. I wanted it to be a resource you could consult for years to come. So I tried to pack as much useful information in there as possible (without going overboard—a tendency of mine!). And third, I wanted to make sure the photos would get you excited about cooking vegan food!

How the Book is Structured

Part I: Fundamentals of Vegan Cooking

This is where your education in vegan cooking kicks off! While there are no recipes in Part I, it’s actually my favorite section of the book.  Here, you’ll learn the fundamentals of great cooking, practical tips that will make you feel more confident in the kitchen, and techniques for building big flavors and interesting textures using plant-based ingredients from spices and herbs to vinegars and mushrooms. In short, this is where you’ll learn the principles of vegan cooking, allowing you to cook excellent plant-based meals even if you don’t have a recipe. 

Part II: Building Blocks Recipes

If you’ve seen my meal prep videos on YouTube, you might be familiar with what I call “building blocks.” These are components like condiments, grains, proteins, and vegetables that you can mix and match to yield easy yet delicious weeknight meals. There are ~50 high-impact condiment and flavor booster recipes that will make meal planning and prep actually exciting! In these chapters, you’ll find a mix of simpler staples like customizable tahini sauces and weeknight vegetables, but also unique must-have recipes, like my Life-Changing Homemade Chili Crisp and Sticky Coconut Milk–Braised Tofu. At the end of this section, you’ll find a chart that shares how you can use these building blocks for weekly meal planning and meal prep.

Part III: “Wow Worthy” Recipes

The recipes in this section are worthy of special occasions, date nights, dinner parties, or any time you’re in the mood for a spectacular meal. From big personality salads and vegetable main courses to incredible dinners, brunches, and desserts, these recipes are the showstoppers that will blow away your family and friends.

Why I wrote this cookbook 

I wrote this cookbook because it’s the resource I wish I had when I first went vegan.My first year of being vegan, I cooked by subtraction. Since I could no longer eat cheese and meat, I simply cut them out of my diet and ate whatever was leftover. I simply didn’t have the tools or knowledge on how to make food taste great without being able to rely on things like chicken thighs and fish sauce and parmesan and sour cream.  So I ate a lot of boring, tasteless meals…that is, until my taste buds staged a revolt and demanded I learn how to cook better food.  Eventually, I’d find myself spending hours and then weeks and then months researching things like how to best replicate the creamy textures we so often crave and how to draw out the most flavor from simple plant-based ingredients like chickpeas and tofu. I knew I wanted to share all the tips and tricks I had been learning so that other folks—whether newbie vegans or omnivores just interested in eating more plant-based food—would not have the same experience I did. Life, after all, is too short to regularly endure the experience of mediocre food.   Of course, I’ve been sharing this kind of content on my YouTube channel and blog for several years. But, with Big Vegan Flavor, all of this information has now been codified into one big, beautiful cookbook. With all of the educational content in the book plus 150 recipes featuring tons of little tips, my hope is that this book will empower you to feel confident in the plant-based kitchen, whether or not you have a recipe in front of you.  .

Why pre-ordering matters + bonus content if you do! 

My book will be officially published on September 3rd, 2024! But you can pre-order it now, and I would be so grateful if you did. I know folks often wonder, “Why should I order a book when it’s not out yet?” or “I’ll just wait until Christmas to order the book.” So let me share an industry secret.  Preordering a book before its official publication date is so critical to the success of the book as a whole. The strength of preorders determines so many important things, including:(1) which bookstores will carry the book and how many copies they’ll order;(2) whether big box stores will carry the book online only or also in stores (lots of preorders » stores are more likely to stock the book in stores); (3) whether respected media outlets will cover the book (it’s an uphill battle to get mainstream attention on vegan cooking!)  As a thank you to everyone who preorders the book before it’s published, I’m sharing some four pieces of incredible bonus content.  Important Note: If you’ve already pre-ordered Big Vegan Flavor, you can access the bonus content by following the instructions at this page. This is available to EVERYONE who pre-orders from any location or website anytime before September 3, 2024, including international folks.

Thank You!

To everyone who has already pre-ordered Big Vegan Flavor, THANK YOU so very much! You’ve enabled me to achieve a lifelong dream, and for that, I am forever grateful. I cannot wait for this book to be in your hands!

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