About Vegetive
Vegetive is a free atlas of vegetarian recipes from around the world. From India to Ethiopia, Mexico to Lebanon, every cuisine has meat-free dishes people have cooked for generations. We collect them under their original names, with what you need to know to get them right at home.
There is no account and no subscription, and no recipe sits behind a paywall.
- 371 vegetarian recipes published
- 63 countries of origin
- 238 fully plant-based (vegan) recipes
- 355 recipes with calculated nutrition figures
How a recipe is written
Each recipe gives the local name of the dish, its country of origin, quantities in grams or everyday kitchen measures, preparation and cooking times, and numbered steps. The spellings people actually type when they search for a dish (koshari, kushari) appear on the page, once.
Below the steps, a short FAQ deals with the difficulties of that particular dish: the most common mistake and its cause, a substitution that genuinely works, a point of technique.
We prefer old vegetarian traditions to meat imitations: no “plant steak”, but dishes that exist and have long been cooked without meat.
Where the photos come from
371 recipes have a photo. They are freely licensed photographs chosen on Wikimedia Commons; the author, licence and source are credited under each image. A photo is kept only if it shows the right dish, with no meat or fish. When no reliable picture exists, the recipe stays without a photo rather than showing a wrong one. The few illustrations that are not photographs are labelled as such on the recipe.
How the nutrition figures are worked out
Calories, protein, fat, carbohydrates and fibre per serving are calculated from the public USDA FoodData Central database, ingredient by ingredient, using the quantities in the recipe.
Figures are shown only when at least 85% of the recipe's weight could be matched in that database. Otherwise the recipe shows no numbers rather than a shaky estimate. They are guidelines, not medical or dietary advice.
Four languages, each written for its readers
The site exists in French, English, Spanish and Arabic. Titles and descriptions follow the words people really use in each language to look for a dish, rather than a word-for-word translation.
Updates and corrections
Recipes are reviewed and expanded regularly: new questions, replaced photos, clearer quantities. The date of the last change is listed in the sitemap.
The site is funded by advertising. What that means for your data is explained on the privacy page.
Where to start
A mistake in a recipe, or a vegetarian dish from your country that is missing? Write to us: hello@vegetive.com