Epic Vegan is the standard American diet made into vegan versions. You will find everything from burgers and mac & cheese to cinnamon roll and shakes. This is the type of cookbook that focuses on making vegan food more accessible to the average person. It is easier to get someone to try a vegan version of a food they regularly eat than to convince them to try something entirely different. There are several items in this cookbook that I am excited to try and I love that there are items that get used in multiple recipes so once you know how to make that cheese sauce or meat substitute you have various options to use it with.

Epic Vegan is a gorgeous cookbook for those looking to recreate fast food and comfort foods with vegan ingredients. This would not be the cookbook for those looking to add more plant foods to their diet or with a goal of weight loss - rather these are indulgent recipes for when you are craving a delicious treat!

This book is very American but as I am a huge fan of food from the USA it suited me to a T. Who knew vegan food could actually look and sound tasty. I am already adding ingredients to my shopping list to start making some of these dishes as they look amazing. They are going to help me eat less meat and animal products which is my plan for this year. Great book with lovely ideas and great photos.

Thank you to NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group – Fair Winds Press for an early copy of Epic Vegan by Dustin Harder. This cookbook was so fun to read. Dustin Harder defines epic food as food to wow and that is really true of this cookbook. This book is dedicated to “all the adults who still like to play with their food.” I am not vegan or even vegetarian, but I do like to try all different recipes and I really enjoyed trying the recipes in this book.

This book starts with a very detailed table of contents listing all recipes, not just the chapter headings. And as you go through the recipes, there are “create your epic” sections which tell you how to use that recipe with other recipes…use this sauce over here, etc. The majority of the ingredients are easy to find and the few that are not, the author states are used to take the recipe to the next level, so are definitely worth the trouble of finding them. There is not a picture next to each recipe, which is usually a negative to me, but the recipes were so fun to read, I did not even notice this until I was almost to the end of the book. Many recipes do have pictures and some recipes are featured in group pictures with several recipes shown at once.

Now onto the food, some of my favorite recipes from this book were:
- Quinoa Bacon Bits (this book starts strong, this is the first recipe in the book)
- Easy Creamy Shells and Cheese
- Fudgy AF Brownies
- Sweet Thai Chili Sauce
- Breakfast Nachos
- Bacon Cinnamon Roll Burger with Peanut Butter
- Sweet Thai Peanut Cauliflower Tacos
- Almost Famous Buffalo Chicken Lasagna
- Epic PB&J Bars
- S’mores Cookie Cups

I really enjoyed this book, both just reading it and cooking from it. There is a wide variety of recipes from breakfast, to dinner, to dessert, to sauces, to bacon bits! I highly recommend you go out and get this book today!

The Epic Vegan is the perfect cook book for junk food or comfort food vegans! It is also perfect for vegans who are just starting out. Rather than a bunch of complicated individual recipes, Epic Vegan begins with a few chapters of simple basic recipes, which are then used in the later chapters to make a myriad of other recipes. Essentially, if you master the first few chapters you can make anything later in the book. This is why it is great for newbies, as it starts with simple recipes and works it's way up. It also focuses on vegan alternatives to a lot of comfort food staples; fried chicken, fish, crab Rangoon, and cheese steak. My personal favorite was the vegan lobster roll (made with artichoke hearts and hearts of palm).
However, I do not think this book is for all vegans. If you are a vegan that doesn't like replacing animal products with vegan alternatives, then it may not be for you. I am usually one of those vegans, but I did still found a lot of the basics, especially the sauces, to be worth it.

This is a beautiful vegan cookbook filled with delicious-sounding recipes using normal ingredients and photos. Hallelujah! There are many recipes in here that I want to make right away. In fact, I'm going to a Christmas in July party this weekend and I think the festive cheesy spinach bread will be perfect for that.

Epic Vegan: Wild and Over-the-Top Plant-Based Recipes by Dustin Harder from Quarto Publishing Group is truly epic! A beautiful cookbook full of amazing sounding recipes and I am not a vegan though I have been trying to move in that direction. I had to try a few right away. The Fried Chicken Noodle Soup was excellent. I made it as the recipe is written with the rotini pasta and again at a friends house using some of this summers zucchini crop as zoodles. I also made Mom's Chili for a cookout and it was a hit with everyone. The recipes are formatted to be easily followed, though some ingredients may be new to some. It's easy to navigate through this book and there are beautiful pictures for most recipes and introductions to each recipe. The dessert chapter is my favorite with recipes for cakes, bars (the Sweet N Salty Bookmark bars are to die for), ice cream and more. This book will make you want to go to a vegan life style I highly recommend this book, even for other non-vegans.
I received an ARC and this is my unbiased review.

If you are trying to go vegan or are already a master at eating vegetarian foods, then you will enjoy this book by Dusting Harder. He takes comfort foods and turns them vegan for those who are looking for some of their home cooked favorites with out the meat!

You sort of wanted to be a vegan. (But then you thought of all the good food you'll miss. ) Sure, it would be healthier for you. (But what about the tastes you'll leave behind?)

Harder makes vegan recipes an adventure. They look tasty, the photos are attractive, and the ingredients are mostly basic and easy to find. And you can choose the level of complexity - basic or complex.

Word browsing at the bookstore - and probably worth taking to the check-out! For old-timers, this will give you some new ideas as well.

Recommended by someone who was vegan for 7 years. I would have made these recipes.

This cookbook is full of interesting recipes. The premise is that you can take “basic” recipes and then play with them to create epic variations. You can use a cheese sauce with a bread and seitan for a sandwich or perhaps use the cheese sauce on pasta or on a baked potato. The first chapter has “the basics” and then lists other recipes they can be used in. The rest of the chapters include: sauces, breads, appetizers, giant handheld foods, pizza, pasta, bowls (made of food), beverages and sweets. Some of the recipes looked intriguing but as usual, living where I do overseas, many of the ingredients are not readily available. I can see this as a gift to a vegan wanting to try something different. I did find out that the author has a website with recipes, programs from the past and other items that I plan to look at in the future.

Thank you to NetGalley and Quarto-Fair Winds for the ARC – This is my honest review.

4 Stars

What I love the most about this cookbook is that it is packed with "normal" recipes; things that people wouldn't traditionally think of as something you could recreate as a vegan dish. For me, this is the most exciting part about making vegan meals and this cookbook is a gold mine for just that.

The photography is spot on. There are perfect photos the complement the food and recipes tucked in the book and help draw the reader in and inspire. This cookbook gives you everything you would need, recipe wise, and no excuse to not make something vegan. It is also nice that recipes in this cookbook include ingredients that are also made in the book, so you don't have to run around trying to find an egg replacement for your breakfast sandwich recipe since it is also included in the book! This cookbook becomes more than just a book but a collection of recipes to reference and flip through, and mix and match later.

I found this vegan cookbook totally awesome, especially as it's a bit over the top at times. It basically shows that vegan food can be a lot of fun. It's basically "dedicated to all of the adults who still like to play with their food" and has recipes such as Unicorn French Bread Pizza, among other things.

This is a really fun book.
I love the pictures and the way it is written. I felt like I was reading a letter from a friend, with recipes involved.
I plan to try many of the recipes, like cinnamon buns, donuts, burgers, I can go on.

Definitely for those who have recently turned to a plant based diet but desperately miss fast food. There's certainly more than enough recipes within this book to cure that particular craving.

Liked the layout of the book, it's neatly structured, flows very well, and is easy to follow even when it comes to the slightly tricker recipes. The ratio of food photography and recipes was decent. I also thought the names for particular dishes such as the "I Try To Think About Elvis Ice-cream" were brilliantly original.

Recommended.

With thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the arc.

What can I say? The cover is just selling the cookbook!

However, after reading it, I'm not sold.

I have to start by saying that I'm not a vegan, I just don't eat meat. However, I'm all in for a full vegan food, those tend to be so delicious! But I'm not a fan of dishes like vegan some-traditional-meat-dish-where-the-meat-is-replaced-with-tofu/seitan-or-whatever. I prefer it when the recipes do not try to be a meat dish without the meat, especially with Czech traditional dishes where you usually have a lot of heavy sauces.

As for this cookbook, I wrote down several recipes which I'm going to try. Especially with Cauliflower! I love Cauliflower.

But this cookbook is crying for more pictures; there are only a few which are lovely. I wish there was more of them because it would show the dishes way better.

All cookbooks I ever bought had a picture for all or at least 95% recipes. I need to see what I'm going to cook.

What a great cookbook! The material is well written and presented in an easy to follow manner. I look forward to trying out several of these recipes.

This is a book that will be fabulous for some people and just good for others. Even folks who are not vegan (or not even vegetarian) are likely to enjoy it, but there are some drawbacks for some.

The good--

These recipes are truly epic. These are the sort of dishes you see on shows like "Diners, Dives and Drive-ins" where people drive for hours to get them, or treats that are offered by restaurants trying to out-junkify the competition (think burgers loaded with mac and cheese and bacon, or made with donuts for the buns with a fried egg and cheese in there for good measure). If you lust over those recipes but can't have them because no vegan ones are available, now you can make your own.

The photos and food styling are fantastic. The shakes look impossibly decadent, for instance, with stacks of things like brownies and whipped cream and so on. All of the photos look like something from a drool-worthy ad campaign or late night cravings menu.

The sauce section alone made me consider purchasing it. There are simple, tasty recipes for everything from caramel sauce to red and white barbecue sauce to tartar sauce and more. The ingredients are also mainly real foods like cashews and spices, rather than just store bought processed imitations.

The recipes are indulgent, and likely to appeal to folks who really miss comfort food, late night cravings food, over-the-top desserts and so on.

The bad--

There are not a lot of photos. The ones it has are fabulous, but most recipes don't have one. There are some spreads that show a lot of the recipes in that section in one photo, plus some recipes do have one or even two photos, but this isn't a cookbook with a photo for each recipes. This especially matters in a few recipes that are a little hard to follow, such as the fried phish, which involves wrapping tofu slices in nori and then coating and deep frying it. I really wanted to know what wrapping it looked like and what the finished phish sticks were supposed to look like.

This is incredibly wheat-based. Gluten free vegans are likely to be discouraged by how much wheat and gluten is everywhere. There are entire sections that are just about wheat, like the bread chapter, but most recipes also call for flour for breading and so on. Experienced gluten free cooks can figure out how to swap out flours for recipes (such as which ones will work for the mushroom gravy recipe) but you can't generally just swap GF flour mixes one for one even when the flours promise you can. The many recipes for brownies, waffles, pizza, donuts, etc. will all be out, which doesn't honestly leave a lot for GF folks other than the said sauce chapter or using their own recipes to put together the dishes.

Most of the recipes are very time intensive. Many of the dishes involve making multiple recipes and putting them together (making meat patties and macaroni and cheese and layering them on a bun with a bunch of other stuff, for instance). This isn't a typical weeknight cookbook.

There is no nutritional information provided. Looking at the ingredients in many of them, I can guess that a single recipe would often total in the range of the total number of calories I'm supposed to consume in a day for my weight and age. Many are quite high in fat and low in protein and fiber.

As mentioned, most of these are decidedly junk food recipes. These would be great for an occasional splurge but it's mostly processed white flour that's fried and then put together with a bunch of other high calorie, low nutrition food. There are almost no fruits and vegetables in the whole book, other than the occasional salad or fruit add-in (like mangos in the over the top shakes).

Some processed fake foods are required for many of the recipes and no homemade recipes are provided. While there is a recipe for homemade cream cheese, you're expected to buy imitation vegan versions of shredded cheese, cheese slices, etc.

This is definitely a fun cookbook, and one I do recommend. As mentioned, it will be a better fit for some folks than others. You might want to alternate the recipes with some nice green smoothies though.

My rating system:
1 = hated it
2 = it was okay
3 = liked it
4 = really liked it
5 = love it, plan to purchase, and/or would buy it again if it was lost

I read a digital ARC of the book for the purpose of review.

I have been vegan for over 2 years now and i love buying vegan cook books, Aine Carlin is my all time favourite, some books i buy like the Bosh Boys and find the recipes can be called vegan but more "junk food" vegan - so when i got the opportunity to download Epic Vegan I was excited to see if i could pick up anything new ideas wise.. boy was i not disappointed.. the bread recipes are amazing especially the pizza dough one - so versatile and easy to make..and the cauliflower buffalo bites..and the sweet thai peanut cauliflower tacos... i could go on forever about this book.. regardless of whether you are vegan or not you need to own this book, the ideas are great and the ingredients are mainly ones you would have in your cupboard... 12 out 10 from me!!!

This is a fabulous cookbook with great pictures that really capture your attention. As a vegan married to a meat loving omnivore, this is such a great cookbook. I’m always struggling feeling like a “short order cook” when it comes to making meals for our family. I love when I can find vegan recipes which will appeal to my husband too. This is a great book for both vegans as well as omnivores looking to cut back on their meat consumption without compromising flavor. This would be great for those just starting out with embracing the meatless Monday movement. While many of these recipes fall on the more indulgent side, I appreciate that this author highlights that vegans eat more than what many think of as “bird food.” Yes, there are many hearty, delicious, and VEGAN meals you can make, and many are beautifully photographed and included in this book, which I highly recommend.

Thanks to NetGalley for the eARC of this cookbook. The thoughts expressed in my review above are my own honest opinion.

Awesome cookbook with fantastic recipes and great pictures. You can feel the heart of the writer in every page. I'm going to preorder this book right now to receive a physical copy. Thank you for the sneak peek!