Best Vegan Cookbooks for Thanksgiving & Christmas

For many, Thanksgiving and Christmas are synonymous with turkey, gravy, meat-pie, and eggnog.  The good news is that you can keep all those traditional holiday meals in vegan form.

While they’re different holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas do share some similarities in terms of the dishes that are traditionally served.  They both usually have some sort of a centerpiece with a lot of side dishes. Potatoes are an important part of the meal, gravy features heavily in both celebrations and there’s a variety of cheese and snacks to prep our bellies for the main event.  These are comforting foods, with the oven getting plenty of action!

There are still some differences though. Pumpkins and yams feature heavily in Thanksgiving, whereas mint and cinnamon are often used in Christmas cookies and drinks (think vegan eggnog), as well as lots of dried fruit for that Christmas pudding and cake.

There are many vegan cookbooks out there, with more written up each year, and it can be quite difficult to choose one!  With that in mind, here are 5 proven winners that will have your bases covered for this festive season.  Whether you buy them for yourself or give them as a gift, any one of these is going to up your vegan holiday cooking game!

The Vegan Table, by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau

This book might have been the first cookbook I ever bought!   I was a huge fan of Colleen Patrick-Goudreau’s podcast and it is still very much a faithful standby in our house, especially when it comes to seasonal eating.  Each chapter is helpfully broken-up into different types of meals.  For example, chapter 3 is ‘Pulling out the stops: Formal Dining for six to ten people’ — very useful! —  while, more to this article’s point, Chapter 5 is ‘Honoring tradition: Feasts for the holidays”.  This particular chapter is then broken up into seasons.  Easy!!  Whether is it mashed potatoes with caramelized onions, a lentil loaf, a mushroom walnut pâté, or sensational stuffing with nuts, Colleen has you covered!  As an added bonus, all the recipes are simple and contain readily available ingredients. The Vegan Table belongs on every vegan’s cookbook shelf!

The Superfun Times Vegan Holiday Cookbook, by Isa Chandra Moskovitz

This tome of a cookbook by one of the OG vegan cookbook writer is cleverly laid out, starting with New Years at Chapter one and moving on from there.  Thanksgiving is in Chapter 15 while Christmas is in Chapter 17.  Isa is known for her delicious and easy recipes but, by the very nature of this book, and since these dishes are all a little bit more special and decadent, the recipes here are a teeny-weeny bit more complicated.  It’s all very much worth the effort though — you’re cooking for a special occasion after all!  There are tons of recipes for each holiday (over twenty), with plenty of appetizers, mains, side dishes, and desserts.

We have way too many favorites, but if we had to name a few: the green bean casserole, the roast stuffed with leeks and shiitakes, the chocolate pecan pie (from the Thanksgiving section), the banana eggnog pancakes, the candy cane fudge cookies (yes!!) and for a real showstopper, you simply must try the spinach and pine nut stuffed cheesy roast.  As an added bonus, this book is simply beautifully photographed, perfectly at home in the kitchen or on your coffee table!

Vegan Christmas, by Gaz Oakley

Relatively new to the vegan cookbook scene is Gaz, a classically trained chef who makes beautifully presented food on his YouTube channel.  He is also the proud author of 3 cookbooks, including the one that interests us here: Vegan Christmas.  Like the full title suggests, it contains over 70 delicious recipes, including many of those beautiful centerpieces that are ubiquitous during these holidays, like the Ultimate Christmas Wellington, “Turkey” Roast, and the Festive Nut Roast Wreath.  Gaz is Welsh, so his recipes are catered more towards British traditions; think mince pies and Christmas pudding, but with so many recipes to choose from, you will surely find one for nearly every component of your Christmas, with many dishes also fitting in very well for your Thanksgiving meal.

Party Vegan, by Robin Robertson

Robin has been quietly churning out vegan cookbooks for decades (including this one, a regular in our house, with 1,000 recipes!).  Party Vegan is broken up into two parts: the first one contains dishes for any kind of gatherings — think of a Friday night meetup with friends, etc.   The 2nd part is split up into several different events, such as Hanukkah, Cinco de Mayo, and, of course, Thanksgiving and Christmas.  You’ll find incredible recipes for pumpkin and pecan pies, porcini-stuffed seitan with wild-mushroom sauce, roasted autumn vegetables (with Brussel Sprouts of course), and a chestnut bisque.  We’re salivating just talking about it!

Vegan Holiday Cooking: 60 Meatless, Dairy-Free Recipes Full of Festive Flavors, by Hannah Kaminski

This is the only cookbook on our list that is 100% dedicated to both the holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas (with just a few bonus ones for Easter).  Hannah is the author of at least 8 cookbooks and her latest is just brimming with recipes that will make your holiday season a huge success, and ensure that your non-vegan friends and family members won’t miss the meat at all!  The exquisite and mouthwatering photography will inspire you to reach to the back of the kitchen cupboards for the likes of pie pans, pie weights for the cinnamon apple pie, and that rarely-used shallow baking tray for the chocolate yule log.  Yummy!

Let’s Discuss!

Now, we’d love to hear from you!  Do you have any questions?  Ideas?  Do you agree?  Do you have a favorite cookbook you’d like to share with the community?  We might include it in a future article update!

Let’s have a discussion in the comments below.  We’d love to hear from you!