Veganuary – a month-long challenge to eat only plant-based foods – has become a staple to kick off the new year. Whether it’s in support of the environment, health motivated, or you’re just looking to try new recipes, embracing a vegan diet is a great way to start 2026.
Instead of a radical overhaul of all your meat-filled favourites, one of the best ways to approach Veganuary is to change in small ways – or “veganise” – your existing recipes, food writer Richard Makin told The Guardian. Most people have eight to 10 dishes they make on rotation; try to “switch up the ingredients a bit”, replacing dairy milk with soya milk, or beef mince with Quorn mince. Taking incremental steps means “you tend not to feel quite so dislocated in your diet”.
If this is your first foray into vegan cooking, it’s important not to overcomplicate things, food author Anna Jones told Vogue. Don’t treat vegetables any differently than you would meat: “lots are much better when put on the grill”, and are able to soak up all the “char and smoke”. Consider using umami-rich ingredients like sundried tomatoes and miso for a “deep savouriness”, and adding a handful of fresh chopped herbs to further “enhance” the flavours of plant-based dishes.
One of 2025’s “most talked-about ingredients”, beans, are the perfect way to add fibre and flavour to your New Year cooking repertoire, said Hannah Twiggs in The Independent. In a “rare feat” for January eating, they are packed with anti-inflammatory benefits and have a “knack for making food taste better rather than worse”. A Veganuary favourite is Mediterranean butter beans with toasted focaccia, where the “richness of the sundried tomatoes” and the “saltiness of the olives” make for “next-level soul food”.
If you hit a wall with one ingredient, that’s perfectly fine, former head of Veganuary Toni Vernelli told The Independent. “There’s such a diversity out there” that you may need to shop around and try different varieties of plant-based milks or vegan sausages until you “find one that works for you”. Ultimately, it is important to be kind to yourself. If you find yourself reaching for a milk chocolate bar, that’s fine. You “didn’t fail”, “you were a human being”!
Little vegan treats can make things easier, said Joanne Shurvell in Forbes. For breakfast, you could try the “light, creamy and tangy” Nush protein vanilla fudge yoghurt range, containing “billions of live vegan cultures”. And for chocoholics, the “shockingly tasty” Pierre Marcolini vegan chocolate bars have “all the sweetness of a milk chocolate bar in a vegan version with oat milk”.
If you’re looking for more inspiration for vegan recipes, try these from The Week:
Celeriac soup with pumpkin seeds and chilli oil
Spaghetti with fresh tomato sauce
Broccoli and lentil salad with curried tahini and dates
Spring greens and chickpea curry
Here are some of our best recommendations for a plant-based start to the year
