Mostly Plants: 101 Delicious Flexitarian Recipes from t… (2024)

I’m always looking for good meatless recipes and thought this looked promising. I’m an experienced cook, and I hate to think about the experiences of a newbie with this book. Comparing the exactitude of Julia Child, Marcella Hazan, Pierre Franey, or Maida Heatter to this book makes the Pollans look like bush league kitchen messes. Neither economy of equipment nor sensible technique are to be found in Mostly Plants.
However, if you already know what you are doing in the kitchen, you can ignore a lot of their labor intensive (for way too little return on the effort) directions and use your own skills to get the job done.
I tried a recipe for penne with roasted vegetables and my notes (oh, yeah, I write in my cookbooks) said to skip the business of grating 2 pounds of tomatoes. I did it, just to see why they’d insist on doing that, and honestly, it would be less work to pop the maters into boiling water a second and peel them, then squeeze with hands, break up with a few zips of the immersion blender and done. Grating took forever and all it did was reduce the tomato to tomato juice, which then had to be greatly reduced. Also, you don’t need to separate the zucchini from the pepper and eggplant. You can absolutely roast all of it on ONE sheet pan. (Who cleans up after these ladies? You can mix the veggies, oil and salt and pepper right on the pan, no extra bowl needed!)
The Three Greens Spanakopita was good, but the directions did not take into consideration the time involved in prepping the greens - thorough washing, chopping, etc. Also, these women are scared of salt. If you are used to grabbing a little with your fingers and just sprinkling, feel free to ignore their meager salt quantities.
So, overall, the recipes so far have been good, but the directions are sketchy where they should be more explicit, and too involved where they could simplify. (Grating tomatoes? Never again!) There is a good variety of dishes, although maybe a little heavy on the pasta offerings. Not that I’m complaining, mind you, but if you are needing to watch carbs, be advised.
I am four starring this book because quite honestly, some of the dishes are very creative and tasty. I think they must have someone else cleaning the kitchen after them because they use too many bowls and pans, and I also think they must not think it is necessary to wash greens that come in boxes from organic farms. But the fact is, you must, so gauge your time accordingly. Much of that work can be done in advance. They just don’t tell you that! But, good food is important, and there are some winner recipes in here.

As my kitchen continues to get messier and my taste palette evolves, I attempted to make some plant based meals from this cookbook. The recipes I tried were a complete disaster. Everything tastes so plain and the only seasonings ever used were salt and pepper. Where's the flavor???

this week's menu consisted of:

I promptly returned this book back to the library and was glad I did not waste my money purchasing it. I will NEVER cook from this book again. It feels a betrayal to add this book to my "deliciousness" shelf, when nothing about this was delicious.

∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙
Welcome to my journey of "holy f*ck I moved out of my home and now I need to cook everyday." I'll be visiting my local library to pick up cookbooks as I navigate adulthood. Please feel free to recommend me any cookbooks you enjoy.
cooking experiment 1: lunch!
cooking experiment 2: mostly plants

Not what I was expecting. Considering Pollan's emphasis on eating plants, I was surprised to find such a concentration on meat in the recipes in this book.

The Cookbook for my March Cookbook Club. It contains a lot of ideas for meatless meals, however there are recipes here that do include meat. Very entertaining as well information on cutting back on meat. The last year or so, my taste for any kind of meat or chicken has changed dramatically. Meat/chicken seem to fill me up too quickly and I feel sluggish and *bleah* after I eat it.

The Pollens techniques, most I did not like and would never do. This is not a book for the beginning chef, as out of necessity you would have to follow their techniques. Being a long-term Diva of the kitchen, I would never do things they tell you to do (grate 2lbs of tomatoes-WTH, why would you when can get the job done immersing them in hot water, pulling the skins off and blending them-so much easier!) I have a hard time accepting this was a GR's finalist for Best Cookbook of the year when their directions and technique need a lot of work.

I am making roasted chickpeas and a Mango Chutney for the meeting later this month and am looking forward to what the other cooks are bringing.

This is by far the best cookbook of 2019! I loved this book so much I bought it for my collection.

I’ve already made the Watermelon, Feta and Arugula Salad for our Easter Dinner and it was a big hit. I look forward to making more of the 101 amazing recipes.

Good ideas and very nice photos!

Once again, I just found the recipes...uninteresting. There wasn't a single thing that really caught my eye. This might be a good place to start if you're just looking to cut back on meat some and haven't read any other cookbooks, but that's not the place I'm in, so maybe I'm just not the audience for it.

As we expand our repertoire of meatless meals, this is a book that I will now purchase for our home after borrowing a copy from the library. I love the tone of the book and it's flexitarian approach highlighting that it is ok to have a vegan, vegetarian or less meat approach. It has some great recipes that we look forward to trying!

Nice recipe selection for all types of eaters.

What's to like with this offering of recipes:
-Beautiful photographs of the food
-Helpful introduction including Sage Advice and Thyme-Tested Shortcuts
-A list at the end of the recipe of items you will need from your pantry along with a grocery list of what you may need to buy from the store.
-Well-structured, easy to understand recipes and directions
-Good balance of whole-food recipes including meat, vegan and vegetarian options

What's not to like:
-While the photographs are lovely, the structure and thickness of the book itself does not lend itself to laying open on the counter. To me, this is unacceptable for a cookbook; it is super annoying (especially when it's a library book) to constantly flip back pages to your recipe with messy fingers while cooking. This is basic-101 for a cookbook so, it lost a couple stars right there!
-Long ingredient lists. For example, the Buddha Bowl I made had nineteen ingredients, and that's not unusual. Might not be the right book for a beginner.
-I have only tried a few recipes but they didn't sing out with deliciousness. Good, but not spectacular.

Overall, this is a good one to borrow from your local library; it didn't quite earn a now coveted spot on my shelf.

At what point do you say you have read a cookbook? I found a good template for a poblano tahini dressing. I think it’s good to see the book as a collection of ideas for cooking. They aren’t heavy on flavor, which gives you room to improvise. For example, their poblano dressing I make now is a roasted poblano and red pepper tahini dressing. Sometimes heavy on the cumin. Sometimes just as is. It’s really good.

I’m ready to purchase this one and make almost everything in it. I love the focus on plant-forward eating. The recipes are approachable and look/sound fantastic.

All I can say about this book is that I need it on my shelf forever and always.

Lots of cheese and pasta for a cookbook called “Mostly Plants”. I think the idea of a flexitarian cookbook is great, but the meatless recipes are really so unimaginative. Of the 10 salad recipes, 2 have meat, and 3 are vegan, which is great, but the remaining 7 salad recipes ALL call for cheese. In the “vegetable mains” section, there are 6 pasta dishes, a full third of the recipes there. Of those, 4 call for just one vegetable each, and there is only 1 that calls for more than three veggies. In the end, yeah, it’s all fine and fits within their (very broad) parameters of being flexitarian. And kudos to them for putting some thought and effort into the vegan recipes, which honestly look good and don’t appear to rely too heavily on processed vegan meat/dairy substitutes like vegan sausage or sour cream. But their meatless recipes really fall flat and don’t actually seem to come from cooks who love vegetables. This strikes me as very narrow minded and limiting to eager home cooks, especially considering the number of reviews here that mention using this cookbook as a gradual introduction into vegetarian cooking.

I loved how it didn’t focus on removing meat from your diet, but rather adding plants in a way that naturally pushes meat to the side so the veggies can shine. It’s perfect for someone like me that wants to eat more veg and little to no meat, but still cooks for a meat-loving family.

It was average for a cookbook. I made a couple of the recipies, but I was hoping it would be a bit easier to things I consider "staples" (besides noodles).

I would recommend this book for people who may have more time to cook and not be working with young children's pallets. I may give it another chance in five years, when I have both those things. Smile.

I do not think this is the right cookbook for me. I tend to cook solo or for maybe two people and look for bright flavors, a hint of something new (and potentially exotic), and something more exciting than what this book had to offer. One of my go-to books is The Flavor Equation by Nik Sharma (quite opposite to this book!) so that probably says something.

I think this book is good for families looking to add a bit more vegetables in their diet but are unsure how, people looking to branch out a smidge from their normal cooking routine without getting a lot of new ingredients, and those wanting more home-y modern American-ish food that is comfortable to the palate without going overboard.

While there are a few recipes I'm curious about I'm not particularly enthusiastic about any of it; I'll probably cook the handful of recipes that sound interesting to me and then pass it along to someone else that might take more interest in it.

A suggestion for a more exciting cookbook (at least to me!) would be Terry Hope Romano's (of Veganomicon fame) Salad Samurai cookbook. But perhaps that's just my palate.

I picked up this book to take home after reading the intro, eat food, not too much and mostly plants. That was the perfect way to explain how I feel about food now at this point in my life. I have learned so much about how meat is harmful to our bodies. In addition I have experienced the effects of overeating (GERDS) and sugar (inflammatory pain) can have on the body. Since I have made changes I have felt better and am not on regular medication. So this book only added to my knowledge of learning how to eat more plants and more nutritious meals. My top winners from this book was the kale, tomato and cannellini bean soup, roasted corn and avocado salad and red lentil bean chili. The only thing is I needed to add my own amounts of seasoning because the amount listed in the recipes were not enough to add any real flavor to the dishes in my opinion. This beautifully pictured book has tons of recipes to try.

This book gets 5 stars in our house. My meat and potatoes boys liked whatever I cooked from this book! When I take cookbooks home I methodically move through it from start to finish giving it a solid chance to impress me. I love to cook and keep a well stocked pantry. This book got “veggie” enough for me without getting to “veggie” for the boys. I found the recipes hardy yet plant loaded. They are ethnic and alternative enough to be different, but not too out there to turn my boys away.

It’s a great cookbook for someone seeking to get more vegetables in without giving up meat. But you do need to enjoy cooking, have a respectable spice drawer, and take a few extra spins around the produce section.

The intro and tips were very helpful and inspiring.

The recipes are great, BUT they call for so many special ingredients that the authors consider “pantry staples” that most of them can’t be achieved without money or pantry space I don’t have. It was like a Pinterest journey that just wasn’t quite relevant for most people.

That being said, if you are looking to up your recipe game with more vegetables this is a great book.

I've been a fan of Michael Pollen for ages and this seemed a logical book to investigate.
Often I find cookbooks are tiresome because they all want you to reinvent your pantry/kitchen/style. This was more informative, with some really enjoyable recipes. I'll never cut meat out of my diet completely but do agree that less can still fill the void.
I've recommended it to several people.

The "flexitarian" diet is very interesting to me. I'm trying to eat more like that this year. A few of these recipes caught my attention and I definitely will be trying them out. But at the same time, a lot of them look inaccessible. But the pictures were gorgeous and I love the emphasis on a vegetable-heavy diet.

I found the title somewhat misleading.. thinking to find vegan dishes but they are mainly vegetarian and with meat or seafood and dairy.
But if you are not plant based and want to eat whole foods this book is for you.

I expected this book to be strictly vegetarian and or vegan. It was not. I was pleasantly surprised by how many recipes I want to save and try on my own. Lots of variety and great explanations within the recipes. It’s a good reference for unique vegetable faire.

Loved it! “Eat food, not too much. Mostly plants.” Can I be a part of the Pollan family?

- Mediterranean crunch salad
- Roasted tomato soup with gruyere chickpea croutons
- Spinach, mushroom and feta cutlets
- White bean and kale quesadillas
- Sheet pan tacos with crispy brussels sprouts

A fantastic book which provides easy to follow, quick from preparation to table and ALWAYS delicious.

This is my go to along with their first book “The Pollan Family Table.
Thank you Pollans for helping me provide my friends and family with such a great variety of memorable meals.

Excellent. For the experts out there, there’s a lot of ‘seen that’ but it’s an excellent beginning book for new flexetarians. Highly recommend...great for recipe tweaking!

Mostly Plants: 101 Delicious Flexitarian Recipes from the Pollan Family is, true to its name, a cookbook focusing on, but not exclusive to, plants. Compiled by the family of famed food writer and scientist Michael Pollan of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, this one feels like the most traditional of the cookbooks I looked at for this entry, packed full of useful, if not groundbreaking advice on healthy cooking and including dishes geared toward vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free diets in addition to the broader flexitarian style. While not written quite as entertainingly, I felt, as the others, the recipes here had some really good stuff, written in a pretty user-friendly way. It also has a really broad selection, from soups and salads to pasta to dessert. I’ve had a lot of success with what I’ve tried so far, in particular the three greens spanakopita casserole and the amped-up vegetable nachos (I even fried up my own tortilla chips!). Who would have thought kale would have worked so well with nachos? I think I’ll track down a copy of my own!

I write about some other interesting cookbooks I checked out from the library, which has given me plenty of culinary experiments to try out during our quarantine times in this entry of Harris' Tome Corner!

Bardzo przeciętna i pod względem przepisów, jak i wykonania. Dania często wtórne i wcale nie takie fleksi - naprawdę sporo tu mięsa, ryb, jaj i serów - wbrew tytułowi - a co do wartości odżywczych i zdrowotnych potraw można mieć dużo zastrzeżeń - masa tłuszczu i soli i prawie wszystko w bardzo wysokiej temperaturze - min 200, a często 220 i więcej stopni. Nie zwróciłabym na to uwagi - nie jest wszak powiedziane, że książka kulinarna ma zachęcać do zdrowego jedzenia - ale autorki same deklarują na wstępie, że to zdrowe posiłki. Pewnie w zestawieniu z kubełkiem z KFC tak... Książka bardzo na rynek amerykański - wielu składników nie znajdzie się w polskich sklepach. Rady dotyczące zakupów nie wychodzą poza banał i pokazują powierzchowne podejście do tematu - autorkom myli się na przykład dobrostan zwierząt z tym, co korzystne dla planety. Rubryczki pod niektórymi przepisami o właściwościach odżywczych pokarmów są żenujące - jeśli mam przyjmować rady na temat jedzenia od kogoś, kto pisze, że marchewka zawiera nie tylko witaminę A, ale także beta-karoten, to szybko dochodzę do wniosku, że gdzie autorek cztery, tam słaba książka kucharska. Daję 3 za dobre chęci.