Nisha Vora
Cookbook author and blogger in the US
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nisha Vora is an American vegan/plant-based cookbook author and blogger. Her second cookbook, Big Vegan Flavor: Techniques and 150 Recipes to Master Vegan Cooking (2024) was nominated for the 2025 James Beard Award.[1]
The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook: Wholesome, Indulgent Plant-Based Recipes (2019)
Nisha Vora | |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Vegan/Plant-based cookbook author |
| Alma mater | University of California, Berkeley Harvard Law School |
| Subject | Vegan/Plant-based cookbooks |
| Notable works | Big Vegan Flavor: Techniques and 150 Recipes to Master Vegan Cooking (2024) The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook: Wholesome, Indulgent Plant-Based Recipes (2019) |
Early life and education
Vora's parents emigrated from Mumbai, India[2] to New Jersey in 1982.[3][4] Her father, who is a physician, moved the family to Barstow, California, when he heard that there was a need for doctors there,[3] and Vora grew up in Barstow.[2][5]
At the age of 14, Vora began to teach herself how to cook by watching chefs such as Ina Garten and Alton Brown on the Food Network,[3] spending time in the cookbook section of bookstores,[5] and learning from her mother, who cooked Indian vegetarian cuisine.[2][3]
Vora's family had given her three career paths to choose from (medicine, engineering, law), so she chose law.[5] She continued to cook for her friends in college and law school,[3] and received her degree in political science from the University of California, Berkeley in 2009[3] and her JD from Harvard Law School in 2012.[6]
Career
After law school, Vora worked in "a big law firm and a smaller nonprofit," but realized that she did not like the legal profession.[3][5] She used cooking and eventually food blogging as a way to cope with the stress of legal work, and became involved in food photography and recipe development.[5] Ultimately, she left her career as a lawyer in 2016 in order to focus fully on being a vegan food blogger, which was "inspired by documentaries about factory farming."[3]
In 2017, Vora worked for a food startup while maintaining her social media presence.[5] In 2018, she was contacted by Penguin Random House with an offer to turn recipes from her fledgling vegan cooking blog, "Rainbow Plant Life," into a book (The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook: Wholesome, Indulgent Plant-Based Recipes, 2019).[3][5] Vora does credit law school with the writing, research, and analytical skills needed for her current work saying that when she "was developing a chocolate chip recipe, I did a mountain of research on ingredient ratios in non-vegan chocolate chip cookies, the percentage of butter, the percentage of fat, the percentage of eggs, so that I could come up with a recipe that tastes just as delicious and is just as chewy and has crispy edges like a regular chocolate chip cookie. I bring this super analytical lens that I think comes from having that background as a law student and as a lawyer.”[3]
In 2024, Gotham named her cooking channel as one of the "8 Vegetarian and Vegan Youtube Channels That Make Plant-Based Cooking Easy."[7]
The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook (2019)
Forbes named her first cookbook, The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook: Wholesome, Indulgent Plant-Based Recipes (2019) as one of the "Best Vegan Cookbooks" of 2019,[8] Food & Wine called it one of "The 18 Best Vegan Cookbooks for Every Type of Meal" in 2023,[9] Parade listed it as one of the "Best Vegan Cookbooks to Add to Your Collection Right Now" in 2019,[10] and Good Housekeeping named it as one of the "14 Best Healthy Cookbooks, According to Cooking and Nutrition Experts" in 2023.[11] VegNews listed The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook as one of the "Top 100 Vegan Cookbooks of All Time" in 2024.[12]
- The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook: Wholesome, Indulgent Plant-Based Recipes. Avery, 2019. ISBN 978-0525540953.
Big Vegan Flavor (2024)
Her second cookbook, Big Vegan Flavor: Techniques and 150 Recipes to Master Vegan Cooking (2024) was nominated for the 2025 James Beard Award (Media: Vegetable-Focused Cooking).[1] It was also #3 on The New York Times Best Seller list for the week of September 22, 2024.[13] Kristin Montemarano states in Food & Wine that it is "filled with...essential flavor-building steps you should always be taking,"[14] while Washington Post Food and Dining Editor Joe Yonan suggests that it demonstrates how a plant-based diet "is a distinct cuisine with its own principles and strategies."[15] In addition, New York (magazine) listed Big Vegan Flavor as one of "The Best Cookbooks to Gift This Year [2024],"[16] Chowhound lists it as one of the "15 Best Vegetarian Cookbooks Of 2024,"[17] Civil Eats includes it in its "2024 Food and Farming Holiday Book Gift Guide,"[18] columnist Avery Yale Kamila listed it among "The year’s best vegan cookbooks" in the Portland Press Herald,[19] and VegNews listed it as one of "The Best Vegan Cookbooks of 2024."[20]
- Big Vegan Flavor: Techniques and 150 Recipes to Master Vegan Cooking. Avery, 2024. ISBN 978-0593328934.