Category guide
Vegan
recipes.
Good vegan cooking isn't about fake meat — it's about cooking the plant kingdom on its own terms. Many of the world's oldest cuisines are largely plant-based by accident: Italian pasta e fagioli, Indian dal, Levantine mezze, Mexican beans-and-rice, Ethiopian misir wat. The technique is to lean into umami where it naturally lives (mushrooms, miso, soy, nutritional yeast, fermented things, slow-caramelised onion), to use fat aggressively (vegan dishes often fail because they're underseasoned and underfat), and to layer texture as deliberately as flavour. Treated this way, vegan cooking is not a restriction; it's a different palette.
Vegan recipes
7 dishes to cook from
How to cook in this category
Three pillars to anchor what you cook.
Beans, lentils, and pulses
The protein engine. Chickpeas, black beans, kidney beans, brown and green lentils, red lentils, split peas, mung beans. Cooked from dried (with a bay leaf, an onion, no salt until the end) they're vastly better than canned. Soak overnight, simmer until tender, salt at the finish.
Mushrooms, miso, and the umami palette
Mushrooms (especially dried porcini, shiitake) bring deep umami; miso adds salty fermented depth; soy and tamari and nutritional yeast all do the same job from different angles. Slowly caramelised onions add another umami axis. A vegan stock made from these tastes nothing like 'mushroom water'.
Whole grains and the carb backbone
Brown rice, farro, freekeh, barley, bulgur, quinoa, millet. Cooked properly (rested, fluffed, lightly oiled), grains are the structure most vegan dishes need. Pair with one or two roasted vegetables, a herby dressing, and a protein and the meal is complete.
Pantry staples
What to keep on hand.
Olive oil and good neutral oil, kosher salt, soy sauce or tamari, miso (white and red), nutritional yeast, dried mushrooms (porcini, shiitake), garlic, onions, lemons, vinegars, tahini, almond and cashew butter, coconut milk, tofu, tempeh, lentils and beans (dried preferred), whole grains, fresh herbs.
You don't need everything at once. Build the pantry as recipes call for it; most of these are shelf-stable and useful across many dishes.
Core techniques
A few moves to learn well.
- Slow-caramelising onions deeply (40+ minutes) for a major flavour foundation
- Toasting whole spices and grinding fresh — vegan dishes lean hard on spice work
- Pressing tofu before cooking so it browns rather than steams
- Building umami from at least two non-meat sources (mushroom + miso, soy + nutritional yeast) for depth