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Nisha Vora

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Nisha Vora
OccupationVegan/Plant-based cookbook author
Alma materUniversity of California, Berkeley
Harvard Law School
SubjectVegan/Plant-based cookbooks
Notable worksBig 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. Her second cookbook, Big Vegan Flavor: Techniques and 150 Recipes to Master Vegan Cooking (2024) was nominated for the 2025 James Beard Award.[1]

Early life and education

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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 the 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

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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, Rainbow Plant Life one of the "8 Vegetarian and Vegan Youtube Channels That Make Plant-Based Cooking Easy."[7]

The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook (2019)

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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)

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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.

References

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  1. ^ a b "2025 James Beard Media Awards Presented by Capital One". James Beard Foundation Award. 2025-06-14. Retrieved 2025-06-14.
  2. ^ a b c Sen, Mayukh (September 20, 2023). "How kala namak, black salt, went from Indian staple to vegan star". The Washington Post. Retrieved January 1, 2024.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Zulkey, Clair (September 2024). "From Law Books to Cookbooks:Nisha Vora's vegan journey". Harvard Magazine.
  4. ^ Vora, Nisha. "About Nisha". rainbowplantlife.com. Retrieved January 1, 2024.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g Neelakandan, Laya (July 14, 2022). "Why this former lawyer went vegan, quit her job and started a food blog". Today. Retrieved January 1, 2024.
  6. ^ Tenorio, Rich (August 8, 2019). "Planting herself in the right career". Harvard Gazette. Retrieved January 1, 2024.
  7. ^ Tanna, Mansi (May 14, 2024). "8 Vegetarian and Vegan Youtube Channels That Make Plant-Based Cooking Easy". Gotham. Retrieved September 27, 2024.
  8. ^ Demarest, Abigail (September 3, 2019). "The Best Vegan Cookbooks". Forbes. Retrieved January 1, 2024.
  9. ^ Makhijani, Pooja (November 2, 2023). "The 18 Best Vegan Cookbooks for Every Type of Meal". Food & Wine. Retrieved January 1, 2024.
  10. ^ Pajer, Nicole (December 26, 2019). "The Best Vegan Cookbooks to Add to Your Collection Right Now". Parade. Retrieved January 1, 2024.
  11. ^ Campbell, Courtney (October 17, 2023). "14 Best Healthy Cookbooks, According to Cooking and Nutrition Experts". Good Housekeeping. Retrieved January 1, 2024.
  12. ^ Pointing, Charlotte (January 16, 2024). "The Top 100 Vegan Cookbooks of All Time". VegNews. Retrieved January 16, 2024.
  13. ^ "NYT Bestseller List: Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous". The New York Times Best Seller list. September 22, 2024. Retrieved September 27, 2024.
  14. ^ Rothbarth, Adam (September 28, 2024). "We Tested Hundreds of Kitchen Products in September, and We're Utterly In Love With These 13". Food & Wine. Retrieved September 28, 2024.
  15. ^ Yonan, Joe (September 14, 2024). "For flavorful, crispy and versatile tofu: Just grate it". The Washington Post. Retrieved September 16, 2024.
  16. ^ Wartzman, Emma (December 5, 2024). "The Best Vegan Cookbooks of 2024". New York. Retrieved December 12, 2024.
  17. ^ Prints, Ksenia (2024-12-25). "15 Best Vegetarian Cookbooks Of 2024". Chowhound. Retrieved 2024-12-25.
  18. ^ "Our 2024 Food and Farming Holiday Book Gift Guide". Civil Eats. December 3, 2024. Retrieved December 12, 2024.
  19. ^ "The year's best vegan cookbooks". Press Herald. 2024-12-05. Retrieved 2024-12-12.
  20. ^ Pointing, Charlotte (November 26, 2024). "The Best Vegan Cookbooks of 2024". VegNews. Retrieved November 28, 2024.
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