Home Ec 101 Cookbook Review: Cooking Light Way to Cook Vegetarian

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Heather says:

This cookbook started off with two strikes against it, I’m not a vegetarian and I have little interest in cooking light. That said, I spent two hours last night poring over the book and I believe Cooking Light’s Way to Cook Vegetarian: The Complete Visual Guide to Healthy Vegetarian Cooking would be a valuable addition to almost any cook’s library.

Why?

Cooking Light’s Way to Cook Vegetarian¹ is written exactly as I hope to someday write a cookbook. It’s a large cookbook, just over 400 pages and contains 150 recipes with over 700 pictures.

Each chapter teaches cooking techniques and then gives recipes that apply the lesson. The photos are gorgeous, but they are also key to the instructional value of this cookbook. After reading many of the tutorials, I believe almost any novice to intermediate cook would find Way to Cook Vegetarian a fantastic resource. The value lies not only in the variety of recipes, from appetizers to soups and stews, but also in the information on diet and technique.

I was surprised by the range of techniques taught in this book. Included are tutorials for making yogurt and ricotta. Don’t worry, many of the tutorials cover very basic techniques such as roasting vegetables or julienning carrots.

The only drawback to this book I found is some of the ingredients may be difficult to find in some areas. As an example I don’t believe my local grocery store carries tamarind pulp, but I haven’t tried the nearest Asian grocery store. I can find quinoa, but it’s at the fancy grocery store about 40 minutes from here. That said, most of the recipes in this book are diverse without venturing into the scarily exotic. Perhaps some, I’m a meat and potatoes only type people would turn up their nose at the tempeh coconut curry, but you can’t please everyone all the time.

Despite my overwhelmingly large pile of recipes to try, I have added several to my list, including Potato Roti Curry and Winter Minestrone. Most of the recipes, if not all, can be found online or are from past issues of Cooking Light. Personally I enjoy the experience of flipping through a cookbook for ideas; I’m tactile like that.

Ready for the fun part?

I will be giving away my review copy of Cooking Light Way to Cook Vegetarian: The Complete Visual Guide to Healthy Vegetarian Cooking to a lucky reader. How does one enter this amazing giveaway? It’s simple and open to residents of the US and Canada. (Anyone else, I just can’t afford shipping, I’m sorry).  Each reader can have up to 3 entries and the winner will be chosen by random selection.

  1. A plain, old-fashioned how ya doin style comment. Just tell me how excited you are to enter.
  2. A link to a tweet on Twitter sharing this post.
  3. A link to a blog post or Facebook entry referencing this post. (just copy the url of the timestamp for Facebook)

The comments will close on Sunday October 24 at 6pm Eastern. If you aren’t the winner, don’t worry this will become a weekly occurrence and you will have another chance soon. I plan on supplementing the review cookbooks with ones I find on my own.

Good luck.

¹Affiliate link.

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46 thoughts on “Home Ec 101 Cookbook Review: Cooking Light Way to Cook Vegetarian”

  2. As a vegetarian, I am usually a bit dubious about meat & potatoes people reviewing a vegetarian cookbook. Ya did good! Oh, and I'd love to add this one to my collection.

  3. My husband and I started doing "Meatless Mondays" a couple months ago and I'm running out of ideas that appeal to us and aren't 90% cheese, so I would be so excited to try out this cookbook to perk up our Mondays!

  5. My husband is a vegetarian whereas I'm more a pescetarian (I eat fish and seafood) but last year I was told that I have high cholesterol. How does this happen? Eating too much dairy and pasta and having a job that keeps me sitting on my butt all day long! This book sounds like a great way to explore healthier meals and I love the concept of teaching cooking techniques followed by recipes that apply the lesson. So in short, I'd love to give this cookbook a try or in other words, pick me! pick me! 🙂

  7. A very genuine and heartfelt review–but I wouldn't expect otherwise! 🙂 I follow a mostly vegan diet with the occasional celebratory venture into omnivore territory.

  11. I started a vegan lifestyle less than 5 weeks ago and am loving it! I'd love to have this cook book as a resource when menu planing, I spend an enormous amount of time each week looking for recipes for breakfast lunch and dinner on the internet:)

  12. how does it compare to Mark Bittman's cookbook, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian? That is one of my bibles?

  13. I've been wanting to work more vegetarian meals into the menu (and it would give me yet another excuse to go to the Farmer's Market) Thanks for the contest!

  14. I love Cooking Light cookbooks, and I have been hoping to incorporate more vegetarian meals into our routine!

  17. I have another Cooking Light cookbook and like it. I'd love to try this one since I'm always looking for vegetable recipes, even though I'm not a vegetarian. I am vegetarian-friendly, I guess.

  18. Even as a loyal meat eater, I’ve had a subscription to Cooking Light and various vegetarian magazines because I like to know what to do with all parts of a meal. I don’t think meat always has to be the main focus (even though it usually is in my household). I think being a good cook is going outside your comfort zone and for me that is appreciating what the ground provides.

  21. Real live vegetarian here! This looks like a great cookbook. As long as the flavor remains when the bad-for-you ingredients are omitted, I'm all for it.

  22. I need to get out of my "vegetarian eats too much dairy" rut. Especially because all of my kids are varying degrees of dairy intolerant.

  24. I would love to take a look at this cookbook! Living in the Deep South which has such a long growing season, I have become almost an "accidental" vegetarian because there are so many yummy veggies available for so long. I'd love to expand my "repertoire!"

    Lee

  25. I love cooking and / or eating adventures! As a runner I'm definitely in to 'light' – less to haul around the miles with me! We're not vegetarians – we try to eat a little of everything, but especially more oily fish and less red meat and cheese. Being very frugal, we are always looking for new bean and lentil recipes. Sadly, a lot of vegetarian recipes seem to rely on cheese, nuts and other fats for flavour, so a 'lite veggie' cookbook sounds fab. I have my fingers and toes crossed!

  27. I need this book! I've been trying to find recipes that satisfy a lot of guys that don't always include meat. I know it's not impossible, but it definately gets tricky. I can't eat a lot of meat due to internal medical issues, so this book would keep us from having more of the baked potatoes or grilled cheese sandwich dinners.

  45. I suspect a ‘real meat andpotatoes’ type would turn their noseup long before they got to the tempeh curry. Luckily we are not ‘real’ m&p types here. I’m not sure if I’d keep it or pass it on to my daughter. We are sometime. Vegeterian but her husband iscompletely veg.

  46. I am a huge fan of the Cooking Light cookbooks, and this one sounds like another one to add to the list. We are not vegetarian, but have started buying local, organic meat– due to the cost involved, we are eating vegetarian more often : ) If you haven't seen it, Cooking Light Through the Seasons is one I am loving right now– we have a CSA, so we get produce from the local farm weekly, so the "Through the Seasons" cookbook is great because it provides recipes based on what is in season.

    Happy to have entered the contest!

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