Vegan Indian Food

Planning out our meals

My favorite cuisine to cook lately has been Indian food. I like that it has a ton of flavor, many dishes are traditionally vegetarian, and the pressure cooker is used extensively. After stocking up on spices, rice, and lentils from the local Indian grocery store it is a relatively cheap way to eat.

The Indian cookbooks that I have now are:
Vegan Richa's Indian Kitchen. This was my first Indian cookbook and it has a lot of information about ingredients that a non-Indian audience might not be familiar with. There are a good mix of recipes from across India and almost everything I have made from it has been great. I really enjoy that many of the lentil and bean recipes have instructions for both the stove top or pressure cooker. Recommended: Tikka Kathi Rolls, Baigan Patiala, Spice Cabbage Potatoes, Yellow lentils with spinach and coconut milk, kitchari, garlic fenugreek sauce

Indian Instant Pot. I picked up an Instant Pot a few years ago and it has been wonderful for Indian cooking. This cookbook does have a big section of meat recipes, but I usually use the sauces and substitute in tempeh or some frozen fake meat. The ingredient lists, especially spices, and much more simplified from the other cookbooks, but things end up pretty tasty. This is the book I go to when I want something that I can just through in the pot and go about my evening. Recommended: Butter chicken (use tempeh), dal makhani, Punjabi lobia, Chicken tikka masala (I used soy curls)

Prashad at Home. I like looking through this cookbook for inspiration and before we started buying frozen roti we used the roti recipe, but I haven't made many recipes in here. I plan to try the quick uttapam recipe that doesn't require fermentation soon.

Vibrant India. Now that I have a better sense of the cuisines around India, I find myself gravitating toward South Indian flavors - tamarind, curry leaves, coconut, fermented batters - and this book gives a lot of inspiration for that. This weekend I used the dosa batter to make uttapam and paired it with sambar, so good. Recommended: Curry leaf popcorn, any of the vegetable stir-fries.

Vegetarian Indian Cooking. I wasn't sure if I needed another Indian Instant Pot cookbook, but it looked different enough from the other one that I decided to pick it up and I'm glad that I did. I now regularly make dhokla (although I use the microwave instead of the Instant pot) and it has our favorite saag recipe. You will need a well stocked spice cabinet, but I believe it is worth it, but beware that the recipes are laid out in a weird manner and the index is really unhelpful. Recommended: Panchmel dal, saag, khaman dhokla


Dhokla with all the curry leaves! This version was made in the microwave. It keeps surprising well in the fridge for a few days and we had a piece in our lunches.


Aloo saag, panchmel dal, with frozen roti, rice, and Indian pickles