Nisha Vora

Nisha Vora
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)

Nisha Vora is an American Vegan/Plant-based cookbook author and blogger.

Early life and education

Vora's parents emigrated from Mumbai, India^[1] to New Jersey in 1982.^[2]^[3] Her father, who is a physician, moved the family to Barstow, California, when he heard that there was a need for doctors there,^[2] and Vora grew up in Barstow.^[1]^[4]

At the age of 14, Vora began to teach herself how to cook by watching chefs such as the Ina Garten and Alton Brown on the Food Network,^[2] spending time in the cookbook section of bookstores,^[4] and learning from her mother, who created Indian vegetarian cuisine.^[1]^[2]

Vora's family had given her three career paths to choose from (medicine, engineering, law), so she chose law.^[4] She continued to cook for her friends in college and law school,^[2] and received her degree in political science from the University of California, Berkeley in 2009^[2] and her JD from Harvard Law School in 2012.^[5]

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.^[2]^[4] 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.^[4] 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."^[2]

In 2017, Vora worked for a food startup while maintaining her social media presence.^[4] 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).^[2]^[4] 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.”^[2]

In 2024, Gotham named her cooking channel, Rainbow Plant Life one of the "8 Vegetarian and Vegan Youtube Channels That Make Plant-Based Cooking Easy."^[6]

The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook

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,^[7] Food & Wine called it one of "The 18 Best Vegan Cookbooks for Every Type of Meal" in 2023,^[8] Parade listed it as one of the "Best Vegan Cookbooks to Add to Your Collection Right Now" in 2019,^[9] and Good Housekeeping named it as one of the "14 Best Healthy Cookbooks, According to Cooking and Nutrition Experts" in 2023.^[10] VegNews listed The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook as one of the "Top 100 Vegan Cookbooks of All Time" in 2024.^[11]

Big Vegan Flavor

Her second cookbook, Big Vegan Flavor: Techniques and 150 Recipes to Master Vegan Cooking (2024) was #3 on the The New York Times Best Seller list for the week of September 22, 2024.^[12] The Washington Post Food and Dining Editor Joe Yonan notes that: "What Vora does so beautifully in Big Vegan Flavor is break down plant-based cooking into its crucial elements, writing about how to achieve various textures." He also underscores Vora's thesis that "this is a distinct cuisine with its own principles and strategies."^[13] Kristin Montemarano, in Food & Wine, also gave Big Vegan Flavor a positive review stating that there "are no words to describe how excited I am for this cookbook! It's filled with all of Nisha Vora's incredible knowledge of vegan cooking, from the building blocks of your pantry to the essential flavor-building steps you should always be taking. It's partially a book for knowledge and partially a recipe book filled with truly flavorful dishes like her close-to-the-heart Dal Tadka to epic skillet lasagnas (yum!), all made vegan. But, as the book states, nothing, and I mean nothing ever lacks in flavor.”^[14]

Books

Big Vegan Flavor: Techniques and 150 Recipes to Master Vegan Cooking. Avery, 2024. ISBN 978-0593328934.
The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook: Wholesome, Indulgent Plant-Based Recipes. Avery, 2019. ISBN 978-0525540953.