Our Story
Simple Legumes was created by Anastasiia and Dmytrii with a simple idea: to make plant-based cooking feel easier, more practical, and more enjoyable in everyday life.
Anastasiia is the person behind the recipes — developing dishes, testing combinations, refining flavours, and finding new ways to turn lentils, chickpeas, beans, peas, and other legumes into meals that are simple, satisfying, and worth making again.
Dmytrii works behind the camera — filming, producing the videos, building the visual side of the project, and helping turn ideas from the kitchen into something that can be shared with people around the world.
Simple Legumes began as a YouTube channel in 2025.
At first, the goal was simply to share recipes we genuinely enjoyed cooking ourselves: meals with more plant-based protein, familiar ingredients, and instructions that did not make everyday cooking feel complicated.
Over time, the project started to grow.
More recipes were created. More people found the channel. And the same kinds of questions began appearing again and again.
How can I eat more plant-based protein?
What can I make with lentils besides soup?
How can I use chickpeas, beans, and peas in more interesting ways?
And eventually, one request became especially common:
“Can you make a cookbook?”
That idea stayed with us.
What started as individual videos slowly became a much bigger project — selecting recipes, refining them, writing clear instructions, photographing and filming the food, designing the pages, preparing the book for print, and bringing everything together into one complete collection.
The result is the Simple Legumes cookbook — 100 high-protein, plant-based recipes created for real everyday cooking.
Why Legumes?
Legumes are some of the simplest ingredients in the kitchen, but they can do far more than people often expect.
Lentils can become comforting curries, hearty stews, patties, salads, and savoury bakes.
Chickpeas can be creamy, crispy, fresh, spicy, or comforting.
Beans can become filling mains, soups, spreads, bowls, and everyday meals.
Peas can work in everything from quick lunches to sauces, snacks, and colourful side dishes.
They are practical, versatile, widely available, and an easy way to bring more plant-based protein into everyday meals.
For us, that is what makes them so interesting.
Simple Legumes is built around the idea that nutritious cooking does not have to feel restrictive, repetitive, or complicated.
A few familiar ingredients can become something genuinely exciting when they are used well.
What You’ll Find Inside
The Simple Legumes cookbook contains 100 high-protein, plant-based recipes designed for everyday life.
The recipes are built around accessible ingredients and clear, practical instructions.
Inside, you will find dishes featuring lentils, chickpeas, beans, green peas, and other simple plant-based ingredients across a wide variety of meals.
The focus is not on complicated techniques or restaurant-style perfection.
It is on recipes that are easy to understand, enjoyable to cook, satisfying to eat, and realistic to make again.
Alongside the recipes, the cookbook also includes helpful cooking guidance and nutritional information designed to make plant-based cooking easier to navigate.
Who Simple Legumes Is For
Simple Legumes is for anyone who wants to cook more meals with plant-based protein.
You do not need to be vegan.
You do not need to follow a specific diet.
And you do not need advanced cooking skills.
You might already love lentils and chickpeas. You might be trying to reduce the amount of meat you eat. You might be looking for affordable meal ideas, more variety in your cooking, or simply a new way to use ingredients already sitting in your cupboard.
The recipes are designed to be approachable for different levels of experience, including beginners.
At its core, Simple Legumes is about real food for real everyday life.
From YouTube to Cookbook
The cookbook grew directly from the recipes and ideas shared through the Simple Legumes YouTube channel.
But creating the book meant doing much more than simply placing recipes onto pages.
Each part of the project was developed with care — from recipe selection and testing to photography, filming, writing, layout, print preparation, and the final physical editions.
We wanted the finished book to feel like something you would genuinely enjoy keeping in your kitchen and coming back to over time.
That is also why Simple Legumes is now available in several formats.
Paperback
A practical printed edition designed for everyday kitchen use.
Hardcover
A premium printed edition with additional reference and notes pages.
Digital PDF
A downloadable edition designed for convenient access on a phone, tablet, laptop, or computer.
All editions are built around the same core collection of 100 recipes, allowing you to choose the format that best fits the way you like to cook.
Made by Two People
Simple Legumes is a small independent project.
There is no large production team behind it.
Most of what you see — the recipes, cooking, filming, photography, videos, design, website, book production, and the many small decisions behind the scenes — is created and managed by the two of us.
That has made the project slower at times, but it has also allowed us to stay closely involved in every detail.
From the first recipe idea to the finished cookbook, Simple Legumes has been built step by step.
And that is something we want to preserve as the project grows.
What Simple Legumes Stands For
We believe good food can be simple.
We believe plant-based meals can be satisfying without trying to imitate something else.
We believe high-protein cooking does not need to depend on complicated ingredients.
And we believe everyday recipes are often the most valuable ones — the meals you actually want to cook on a normal Tuesday evening, not only once for a special occasion.
Simple Legumes is not about following a perfect diet.
It is about making it easier to cook more nourishing, varied, and enjoyable meals with ingredients that are already familiar to many people.
Thank You for Being Here
Simple Legumes started with a camera, a kitchen, and an idea.
Since then, every person who has watched a video, tried a recipe, left a comment, shared the channel, or asked for the cookbook has helped shape what the project has become.
If the cookbook helps you discover a new favourite meal, makes legumes easier to cook with, or simply gives you a few more recipes you look forward to making, then it has done exactly what we hoped it would do.
Thank you for being part of Simple Legumes.
Anastasiia & Dmytrii