Chinese Homestyle Cooking: 90 Plant-Based Recipes for Homemade Sauces, Favorite Takeout and DimSum, and Everyday Meals
Maggie Zhu
Author Maggie Zhu begins her cookbook with a list of items you will want to have in your pantry and a list of items will wish to have in your pantry. I do not cook Chinese food frequently but occasionally I get a craving for egg rolls, spring rolls, General Tso’s Chicken, Orange Chicken, etc. I should have looked closer before requesting this cookbook. I am not a vegan, and this is a plant-based cookbook. I did try several of the recipes. Shredded Potato Salad is better than the recipe I normally use, it packs a bit of a kick. Easy Cucumber Salad is very good.
In lieu of chicken or beef most of the recipes have tofu, cauliflower or mushrooms. I don’t care for tofu, cauliflower or mushrooms. I have used some of the recipes and replaced the above mentioned ingredients with chicken; they turned out rather tasty. The Vegetable Spring Rolls are delicious; I only added a bit of chicken.
All in all this is a great cookbook.

Chinese Homestyle is a fabulous book to guide you through crave-worthy, plant based Chinese cooking at home. I learned so much about new ways to use tofu and other ingredients like bean paste, hoisin sauce, and sichuan pepper - all ingredients that I am familiar with but feel so much more comfortable playing around with with this new knowledge. I loved the dishes shared in the book - many were familiar takeout staples like mapo tofu, dan dan noodles, and orange cauliflower.

Don't miss this one! Chinese Homestyle is out now. Thank you to Netgalley and Quarto Publishing Group for the ARC.

This is an absolutely gorgeous cookbook. I love that there are more and more vegan cookbooks on asian cuisines, as they are my favourite to make and this one was simply fantastic. I tried several recipes so far and they all turned out great! Such comfort food! The pictures are so appealing and make your mouth water immediately and the explanations and instructions are very nice and easy to follow. Amazing read!

Great beginner cookbook for someone looking to dive into Chinese cuisine! As someone who grew up with Chinese parents that provided home-cooked meals daily, it was lovely to see so many dishes I grew up eating in one book. Although it's not a fully exhaustive list (there are so many regions to cover after all!), Maggie's cookbook is PACKED!

I like that it's all plant-based which makes many of the recipes more accessible, but you can still easily add meat to any of the recipes if you'd like. The photos are also all lovely and have a "darker" vibe compared to other cookbooks out on the market these days that are always so brightly lit.

Well written, nicely organized, and tons of delicious and easy-to-follow recipes I can't wait to make at home!

This is an excellent collection of recipes. The photos and descriptions are easy to follow.

Highly recommend!

One of the things I love with a cookbook is treating it like a challenge and getting to try out some new things - enter Maggie Zhu.

Chinese Homemade gives some great recipes for all your favourite takeaway style Chinese meals, with an excellent plant-based twist. Of course, if that's not quite your thing, then the recipes are easily amended for meat - but I found the range and styling of the dishes to be exactly what I was looking for.

There's a section on what you should be expecting to keep in your pantry, as well as details on how long some items will last which I found really helpful when trying to manage the pantry and items in the fridge. Some of the items might be slightly difficult for those not in a more central location, luckily we have a few speciality stores where the more authentic ingredients can be purchased - which will make all the difference.

Finally, the photography is also wonderful, often cookbooks will be as much about the images as the recipe and this ticks the box. I look forward to working my way through more of the recipes and seeing what else Maggie does on social media!

Such a well written and photographed book. So many of these recipes are easy to understand and make from scratch; no need for take-out anymore. The sauces are exceptional.

This cookbook was such a great book for anyone wanting to add new menu ideas. I love the photos and how the author covers everything in the very beginning set you up for success. The were items I hadn’t seen before I was willing to try, and if you have a meet eater/someone with allergies- the cookbook is set up to allow for easy substitutes.

I really enjoyed this cookbook, especially the tips on pantry supplies and all the general advice. As a kind of person who doesn't like to follow step-by-step recipes and appreciates creative freedom in the kitchen, I found this book to contain just the right amount of information and a general direction you need to feel like a chef in your own right. Loved it!

Can’t wait to start digging into these recipes! Everything sounds delicious and seems relatively straight forward. There is a good primer at the beginning that covers most specialty ingredients and the best brands to find, Awesome resource for anyone who is plant-based role vegan.

If you’re like me and usually spend way more than is healthy or necessary on your Chinese takeout, then let this one inspire you to start whipping up your chow down favorites on your own time. With an entire section dedicated to “Favorite Takeout” this one gives you your favorite basics – just add sweatpants and movies. This one is vegan, so it doesn’t have some of your classic meat options, but I would not sleep on the vegetable fried rice, orange cauliflower, or mushroom fried rice. Absolutely mouthwatering!

An excellent cookbook filled with vegan Chinese recipes that will replace a lot of your takeout orders. When Maggie Zhu says her food is plant-based, she means it. From eggless egg drop soup to a pork-free mapo tofu, Zhu's recipes create superlative food without the meat or eggs. Measurements are given in imperial and metric, by volume. Chinese Homestyle also has one of my favorite cookbook innovations: an estimate of prep time that includes the time to chop the ingredients or soak beans. Vegan or hoping to eat more plant-based food? You can't go wrong with Chinese Homestyle.

I've heard a lot about Maggie and Omnivore's Cookbook over social media so was excited for a cookbook by her. I'm extremely enthused for more asian representation especially in cooking and this one is plant based to boot. More people need to know that chinese cooking isn't just fast food, oily, and unhealthy. It's my culture, my taste preference, and can be healthy and accommodating. I once had a classmate say that I'm so lucky to eat chicken balls on the regular; I've never even had it before, they just assumed it was my culture....

Maggie's book is more geared towards those who don't really cook chinese at home already, a beginners guide with the 'american' taste in mind. Some of these recipes I wouldn't consider 'authentic' but is adapted with a mix of american chinese food and homestyle cooking. The book also includes a small section on 'the Chinese Pantry" which I think is super helpful including pictures and key brands. I think this makes such a big difference in the taste and cooking of these recipes. Included also is how to cut certain foods such as bamboo shoot.

Solid cookbook, I will definitely try some of these recipes.
(I received this book via NetGalley for my honest opinion)

I received an ARC of this cookbook from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is a wonderful cookbook. Every recipe looks delicious and the pictures are beautiful. The recipes are also well written, with clear instructions on how to follow each one.

I'm not going to lie, when I saw this title, I was immediately excited! There are so many great plant based recipes in this book and I can't wait to try every single one! I loved how this cookbook was organized - with some "foundation" recipes listed at the beginning of the book that are referenced through out and then organized by type of recipe. It was really easy to read and find the different kinds of recipes I was looking for. Suffice to say that I will be buying this cookbook as soon as it's released!

An amazing vegan Chinese cookbook that had me wanting to cook absolutely everything in there.
I love Chinese food, and admittedly I am not vegetarian so many of the things I cook use meat/fish/eggs. But my kids love tofu and I only have a few recipes I make with it... and some add meat on top such as mapo tofu which is one of my favorites.
This will definitely be broadening my horizons and inspired me to try many new things.
I highly recommend it to people who are vegan or want to cook a few more plant-based meals a week as well as anyone who likes Chinese food, as this is not a gimmick, there is a long tradition in all Asian countries of vegan meals prepared and eaten by buddist priests.

Plant based Chinese dishes can be extremely difficult to find depending on where you live. This book contains many delicious recipes for classically vegan/vegetarian dishes but also plant-based versions of dishes that usually contain animal products. my favourite is the Mapo Tofu! Some ingredients are difficult to find (I live in a small town in Canada) but most are not. The recipes are written in an easy to follow way and for the most part these are simple recipes! The photography is beautiful as well.

This is a book i have been waiting for for years! I love the recipes in this book! I can't wait to try so many of them! My only problem is that it will be hard/next to impossible to get a few of the key ingredients. i am especially thrilled by the sauces, tofu, and noodle recipes! Several of the recipes look so amazing that I must try them asap. The pictures are fabulous! Yummy times ahead!

This cookbook is chock full of gorgeous looking recipes that feature lots of vegetables, tofu, and a collection of Chinese sauces and pastes. The organization is clear and the photos are beautiful. If you don't enjoy tofu, this might not be the book for you, but if you do...this is a keeper!

Browsing thru the pages left me with such a Chinese food craving! I like that the author discusses must-have pantry items in the introduction, and that the recipes are all straight-forward and based on classics, including a chapter devoted tp take-out faves. Thanks so much to NetGalley for the ARC! So many of these recipes are going right into the Fall and Winter meal rotation...

I was SO excited when Maggie Zhu revealed this cookbook! I’ve been following her food blog off and on for years, and when she announced that she was releasing a plant-based Chinese food cookbook, I wept. Almost literally, because I’ve had 0 luck with plant-based Chinese food cookbooks in the past.

This cookbook is everything I wanted to “Vegetarian Chinese Soul Food” (which I bought last year, and which was imo kind of a flop) to be… Except better. Maggie Zhu’s photography is beautiful, as always, and I must’ve bookmarked upwards of thirty recipes to try: Sichuan chili garlic tofu! Chinese eggplant with garlic sauce! Cumin potato baked buns! Biang biang mian! Ahh, this literally might be vegan heaven.

I received a digital copy of this book from Netgalley for a review, but I’ll be buying a physical copy STAT. If you have any interest at all in plant-based Chinese food, this is the cookbook for you.