The Complete Vegetarian Cookbook: A Fresh Guide to Eating Well With 700 Foolproof Recipes (The Complete ATK Cookbook Series) Paperback – Illustrated, March 1, 2015

Is it too dramatic to say that this cookbook changed my life? Because it DID. Wasn’t the most skilled or confident cook at the time of purchase. I now whip up recipes with confidence and speed.This book not only gives recipes, it teaches and explains the whys and hows in a way that’s easy to understand and follow. I’ve had it for years and finally bought a food processor just so I can make more of the recipes. They are SO good. I love blowing people away with what I’m able to cook now and am never bored, coming back to it again and again for inspiration and new things to try. If you’re a vegetarian, you NEED to own this book.

Love it! Fairly simple recipes, tons of guides and instruction on vegetables and cooking techniques. Mostly familiar ingredients , without a lot of "specialty" ingredients or spices that you are only going to use on one dish. Sooo many interesting recipes!! If you are, as I was, wanting to learn to eat less meat and how to fix more vegetable entrees , you need this book.

I have many vegetarian cookbooks, but I had to get this one because I trust Cooks Illustrated and America's Test Kitchen (ATK is the tv program/CI is the magazine from same company) to get delicious and successful recipes. Everything I have prepared so far for my family has been great. I made a quinoa salad with black beans (and remade for company), quinoa patties/cakes (fyi: I did make them a bit smaller than they suggested), snow peas with lemon zest and garlic (snap peas worked well too), and Thai Style Tofu and Basil Lettuce Cups. All received high praise from the vegetarian (me and older teen daughter) and non vegetarian (teen son and husband) members of my family. I stuck with my usual Moosewood Cookbook gazpacho, but I incorporated some ideas for preparation and ingredients from this book that were helpful. I cannot wait to make more. This will be my new "go-to" cookbook and I am giving it as a gift to two friends.There are many vegan (250) and gluten free (500) recipes. The ones that I have made that are gluten free or vegan were worth the price of the book. The only drawback, as another reviewer noted, is the lack of nutritional info. I wish they would do this with all their cookbooks (and TV show and their website!), but especially in a vegetarian cookbook which would attract some health focused cooks. I do think if they make another edition of this book in the future, that they should include this. That said, the ingredients for the recipes I have made so far were healthful. Perusing the book, I see some recipes that use butter, 1 soup that has butter (creamy cauliflower) and 1 that has cream and butter (creamy butternut squash-I think it would be good without the cream though), pie dough with butter, but I would estimate that there are enough recipes in the book that do not use cream or butter and a small percentage call for eggs to make it valuable for the low fat cook. I see recipes using cheese-some just with parmesan which is lower fat, and then some cheese and egg recipes like soufflé, pizza, and quiche. Again, there are many without cheese as well. It is a big book with a total of 700 recipes!I have the Mark Bittman Everything Vegetarian, which I found helpful as a basic resource for cooking various vegetables (example: the best/recommended way to cook a list of vegetables, with details on timing, etc) and fruits (I always use his plantain recipe), as well as some good recipes. This one has some educational points too-info with photographs of how to shop for and prep various vegetables and fruits for example. I do like the photographs in this one. What I like the best is that every recipe I made so far has been healthful, vegetarian, delicious and successful and my family (and I!) love them and even eat the leftovers.

I love to shop on Amazon, but it can be a risk to order a brand new cookbook without having a physical copy to browse first. I am an America's Test Kitchen fan and have many of their cookbooks, so I am basically comparing this new cookbook to others by them that I have.****The book itself: quite heavy for one of their paperback cookbooks. It's got to be at least as heavy as the many of the hardcovers. The binding isn't that great. Although I am super gentle with my cookbooks, I anticipate that this one will have a crack down the spine. It's about 450 pages and I don't see any full-page pictures, most are a quarter page or so. Its layout is standard America's Test Kitchen style, with sidebars and boxes that highlight certain techniques and ingredients.This book is divided into eleven chapters:Chapter 1--Hearty Vegetable MainsChapter 2--Soups, Stews, and ChilisChapter 3--Pasta, Noodles, and DumplingsChapter 4--Rice and GrainsChapter 5--Beans and SoyChapter 6--Salads Big and SmallChapter 7--Vegetable SidesChapter 8--Savory Flatbreads, Pizzas, Tarts, and MoreChapter 9--Sandwiches, Wraps, Burgers, and MoreChapter 10--Eggs for Breakfast and DinnerChapter 11--Small Bites and Savory SnacksNote: The cover states that of the 700 recipes, 250 are vegan and 500 are gluten-free. At the beginning of each chapter, the recipes are listed and identified as vegan, gluten-free or fast (less than 45 minutes from start to finish.) Just scanning through the recipe lists, I see some repeats from other cookbooks in each chapter as well as ones that I don't recognize.****What I don't like about this cookbook:--Each recipe begins with a small "Why this recipe works" paragraph. I will confess that I love the long articles written by the recipe developers that are included in the annual ATK editions. The little blurbs at the beginning are disappointing to me. I am not a super chef, so I enjoy reading how the recipe was tested. Then I read through the whole recipe. For me, it is kind of like mental imagery that an athlete might do. So by the time I have gone through all that, I feel as if I'm prepared to cook the recipe. I don't enjoy this mini description as much.--Many of the recipes sound too adventurous for me (Homemade Tofu, Israeli Couscous with Carmelized Fennel and Spinach, Black-Eyed Pea Salad with Peaches and Pecans). Some people may enjoy these kind of recipes, but I will probably never attempt them. NOTE: this is why I gave the cookbook only four stars.****What I like about this book:--I feel like I can count on ATK to deliver a consistent, reliable finished recipe. They have taste-tested and honed the recipe to what they believe is the best it can be. I may not always think a recipe sounds great, but the ones that do sound great to me, usually turn out tasting great to me, too.--This cookbook includes plenty of helpful sidebars, which I always enjoy going through. The beginning includes a section about prepping vegetables--very handy for people who haven't learned all that yet. (i.e., I had never bought or prepared bok choy until I made a recipe from this cookbook, and the vegetable guide was quite useful to me.)--I have read complaints about other ATK indices, so to briefly test the index in the back, I looked for "Garlic Mashed Potatoes" under Garlic, Mashed and Potatoes and was able to see an entry for the recipe under each of them.UPDATE: So far I have tried: smashed potatoes, quinoa and vegetable stew, avocado toast with fried egg, curry-yogurt sauce with cilantro for steamed or roasted veggies, cranberry-orange overnight steel-cut oatmeal, and coconut-rice with bok choy and lime. They all turned out well, with the exception of the curry-yogurt sauce. However, I did use a brand of yogurt that I hate--I think it ruined the whole thing. Lesson learned. My family's favorite so far was the Coconut Rice with Bok Choy and Lime, which I served with chicken breast in Trader Joe's Thai Green Curry Simmer Sauce.I will update as I cook through the recipes further!

It's often difficult to buy a cookbook online without being able to thumb through it first, but I am extremely happy with this purchase as I switch to more plant-based cooking. The "Why this recipe works" sections are especially helpful as they often explain different techniques that I did not know before.