5-Ingredient Whole-Food, Plant-Based Cookbook: Easy Recipes with No Salt, Oil, or Refined Sugar

This is supposed to be a 5-ingredient book. It isn't. Nearly every recipe has, for one of its "ingredients" a reference to another recipe in the book that is another 5 ingredients AND there are some that have more than 1 of these or have one that links to another. Thus most recipes are closer to 10 ingredients and some may have as many as 15... or more, perhaps--I certainly didn't go through and try to find the one with the most. At any rate, since the POINT of the book is 5 ingredients, I think it gets a huge fail on that.
The recipes themselves don't look bad and I do like the idea of have a few base mixes of seasonings or base sauces that you just keep a lot of around in order to later preparation faster/easier, but at the same time, I find this often limits the taste profile a bit.
Is this a bad book? No... but there are better

I can't say strongly enough how great this cookbook is. I was so excited about it that I bought two of them to have delivered on release day! This is a great gift for anyone getting started on whole food plant-based eating, or for anyone that needs great recipes that are quick and easy! I already made the 'Dill Pickle Roasted Chickpeas' for a snack and the 'Sweet Potato Bean Burger' for dinner and both were simple to make and delicious.

I am a chef and I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this cookbook! I hope the author comes out with more!

Most of the recipes require an ingredient for the "staples section" so it's not really an 5 ingredient cookbook..

Still most of the recipes are pretty yummy, just need more than 5 ingredients.

Issue 1: The recipes are not five ingredients. This was just false on its face. The recipes repeatedly reference other recipes in the book which also require five ingredients… obviously this result in 13 ingredient recipes as depicted in my images.

Problem #2: “No SOS” is not a vanity diet. It is something many of us adhere to as a medical prescription for stroke, diabetes, & heart conditions. This is not a game. So informing the reader that it’s not a big deal to add maple syrup, and then claim that they will be fine… is either casually disingenuous, or dangerously illiterate. You can take your pick.

The recipes ad plenty of salt and sugar.

There is literally a careful paragraph at the beginning of this book… explaining why they have chosen not to adhere to a policy of NO SOS. — No apology. Just a chill message informing us that we’re taking our health too seriously.

Seriously miffed at the dishonesty levied at their own well-meaning community.

F-

My goal this year is to eat healthier! I struggle to eat healthy every night so i thought this book would come in handy!

What I love:
- The recipes look really easy!! They all contain 5 ingredients and seem to be fairly simple. They are all plant based as well. The variety of recipes in the book is vast, which I really appreciate. Sometimes I struggle to find a lot of meals I’d like to prepare, but flipping through this,I found several! If anything, it’s great for inspiration.

What I wish it had:
- I just wish it had more photos. The meals sound so delicious but I love to see the finished product!

Other than that, I can’t wait to use this book!

This (out of 4 other WFPB cookbooks I also read) got me started cooking full time into our new WFPB life path that we wanted to do for better health after a dr recommended trying it, since she was having such great results herself! In the past month that I’ve had this book, I’ve tried a large % of her recipes & only had a couple that I won’t use again—VERY pleased that she made it so simple to get us right into this big food change :-) Hopefully her next one will have more photos of the recipes.

This book has two issues that many cookbooks have lately:
1. Virtually no pictures, so if you’re unfamiliar with a dish you may not have any idea what to expect

2. It claims to be 5 ingredient recipes but those 5 ingredients can include “staples” from the book that can add up to 5 more ingredients and up to 25 minutes of cook time and in the case of the cashew cream 12 hours of soaking time. So you’re not just whipping up a quick meal with 5 ingredients.

The Garlicky Spaghetti Squash Boats for example: the recipe has 10 minutes prep time listed, 40 minute cook time. But two of the ingredients are savory spice and cashew cream. The savory spice is another 5 minutes of prep and another 5 ingredients (all are spices so I guess we can let that slide except some recipes include spices as their ingredients so it feels like a cheat way around that 5 ingredient title). The cashew cream is only one ingredient but adds 12 hours of soaking time with 5 minutes of prep.

The recipes are decent but nothing that stands out as exceptionally new and exiting.

The best part of the book is actually the info in the front of the book that has tips for replacing oil, food to avoid, etc.

Overall: a decent book but most recipes are not truly 5 ingredients, nothing really new here, good tips.

Recently ordered this cookbook to help with my family's journey on being WFPB. The book is clean and clear with easy-to-understand recipes. Yes, some recipes include the addition of an ingredient that comprises additional items but these are items that can be made ahead of time and frozen for easy addition. We love the cheese sauce and keep is on hand so it is easy to add. We have followed recipes by Jen for years and many of them are staples in our house. I look forward to trying more of the recipes within the book. THe section on substitutions is very helpful as well.

Only interested in 3 recipes in book so was a waste of money for me.

I love this cookbook!
I've been trying to lose weight but had stalled out. One of the diets I tried called for too much protein and was causing problems for my kidneys, so my doctor told me to find another diet. One thing I learned is that meat-based proteins are worse than plant based protein. So I decided to try a plant-based diet and began to look for cookbooks that had attractive, flavorful diets. This is exactly what I was looking for!

This book is essentially a vegan cookbook that also cuts out added salt, oil, and refined sugar. I cut out added salt years ago because most foods have enough salt in them. Likewise many of the ingredients have an adequate amount of fat. The sweeteners used are unrefined, natural sweeteners like dates, molasses, and fruits as well as others.

These are individual recipes and I will need to put them together into my own meal plans. This is no problem for me. In the interest of full disclosure, I'm not planning to go full vegan but will have fish and occasionally small portions of other meats for two or three meals a week. I'll also use my own recipes and have other cookbooks I will draw from. This book is to give me more variety and new flavors.

It would be possible to eat exclusively from the recipes and still have flavorful, healthy meals. The chapters include a chapter on "Breakfast and Smoothies", another chapter on "Snacks", a chapter on "Salads and Handhelds", then "Soups and Stews" (I LOVE soups and stews!), a chapter on "Mains", and a chapter on "Desserts". Finally, there is a chapter on "Staples" that can be prepared and refrigerated for use in the other recipes.

Some of my favorite recipes are the Potato Hash, Spicy Guacamole, Sesame Fire Crackers, Smokey Carrot Dogs, Apple Potato Salad, Chilled Cucumber Soup, Potato Harvest Stew, Quick Black Bean Chili, Barbecue Beans, Mango Nice Cream, and Caramelized Bananas. In the Staples chapter, I really like the Cashew Cream, and the Cheezy Sauce.

With the recipes in this book, I can put together a flavorful 5 course meal of an appetizer, salad, soup, main course, and a dessert. With this book, I'm not going to miss meats at all!

Finally, this cookbook is enjoyable to just sit down and read. It's well-written, and well-presented. There is a short introduction to each recipe that is interesting and makes me want to try each recipe!

The one thing I did not like about this book is that there is no table of contents. Each chapter starts with a list of the recipes that are in that chapter though, so what I did was to put a bookmark at the start of each chapter. This works about as well as a table of contents. There's a good index in the back of the book that is very helpful.

Anyone interested in flavorful, vegan based dishes will do well, to give this book a try! I'm really enjoying it!