Must haves

Not all cookbook writers are great recipe writers, and not all recipe writers can write great books. These are the truly multi-talented who can do both.

These are the books I leave out all year round. When I need a base recipe or to learn and reference a technique, I reach for these.

Dessert Person by Claire Saffitz

This is the most used cookbook in my kitchen. You likely know Claire for her YouTube videos – but she’s a recipe writer at heart and you can see it in her book. Claire’s recipes are clear, precise, consistent, and easy to execute. If you have one baking book, it’s this.

Where Cooking Begins by Carla Lalli Music

This is the cookbook I buy for people who want to start cooking. It’s incredibly accessible, approachable, and technique based. Carla does a great job articulating how to modify recipes based on what you have. If you have one savoury book, it’s this. It’s a modern Joy of Cooking (my first ever cookbook!). I also love Carla’s second book, That Sounds So Good, but in terms of skill building I recommend Where Cooking Begins.

Mi Cocina by Rick Martinez 🌈

This book could fit into the Essays Masquerading as Cookbooks section below, as Rick walks you through his year living in and traveling in Mexico. However the recipes are all knock-outs, consistent, repeatable, and delicious. My favourites include arroz rojo, mole colaradito, and more.

Nigel Slater 🌱🌈

When I grow up I want to write like Nigel Slater. He creates beautiful recipes with poetic descriptions based on seasonal and pantry ingredients. I use his books as reference guides and inspiration when I don’t know what to do with an ingredient. Open to the index, look up by vegetable, and get great ideas.

Specifically, love Tender which is about growing and eating vegetables. Greenfeast Fall & Winter, and Spring & Summer are amazing reference books for side dishes and mains with very unique spice combinations. I also love The Christmas Chronicles, which is described in further detail below.

Cool Beans by Joe Yonan 🌱🌈

I love beans. They’re delicious. They’re high protein and high fibre. Bean plants improve soil quality by fixing nitrogen (like a natural fertilizer) and help soil retain water. But there are so many kinds of beans and it can be hard to know where to start.

The name is a great dad joke, but Cool Beans is a beautiful, accessible book with exciting recipes that everyone will like. Joe Yonan is the Food and Dining editor for the Washington Post, so they’re very well written and well tested recipes.

The Food Lab & The Wok by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt

This is a monster of a textbook for people who want to learn more about the science of why recipes work and don’t work. It’s a great reference book and skills-building book for people who already cook and want to improve their skills.

Another great book by Kenji is The Wok. I’ve made a wide variety of recipes from The Wok, which has been super fun, but The Wok’s structure doesn’t work for me, despite the recipes being very delicious.

Other reliable recipe writers to build out your library

Market Cooking by David Tanis 🌱🌈

Cook This Book by Molly Baz

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat

The Cook You Want To Be by Andy Baraghani 🌈

Season by Nik Sharma 🌱🌈

Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden 🌱

Every Grain of Rice by Fuschia Dunlop

Jerusalem by Yotam Ottelenghi 🌈 and Sami Tamimi 🌈

Salad Freak by Jess Damuck 🌱

Les Legumes by Pascale Beale 🌱

Classics

Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child

The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters

Essential of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan

Vij’s Indian Cuisine by Vikram Vij and Meeru Dhalwala 🌱 🇨🇦

Fun little books

These books are short, small, and fun – with pretty good recipes.

A Super Upsetting Cookbook About Sandwiches by Tyler Kord

This is the funniest cookbook I’ve ever read. In writing the book, Tyler got into arguments with his editor in their Google Doc comments and published them in the book. Aside from being hiliarous, the recipes are great. Specifically, the recipe for soft scrambled eggs changed my life and the broccoli falafel is 10/10.

French Country Cooking by Elizabeth David

I found this at The Eby St. Bodega. I’ll buy any book Anna sells there since she has excellent taste. I was not disappointed. Written in 1951 for British cooks to learn French cooking, this is a hilariously judgemental take on food. The salt is not just in the recipes, and I am here for it.

Bread and baking

Flour, Water, Salt, and Yeast by Ken Forkish

If you are just getting started with making bread at home, this is the book. Forkish guides you through easy no-knead bread to complex sourdough breads.

Modern Sourdough by Michelle Eshkeri

Once you’re comfortable with making artist-style sourdough at home, you begin to wonder what else you can make. Modern Sourdough includes recipes for every kind of baked good – like bagels, croissants, danish, cookies, and more. The recipes are all delicious, I’ve made nearly all of them. I will say this book leans more towards advanced baking due to the way the recipes are written. It takes time to figure out what happens on each day of a recipe.

The Tartine Books

I have all of the Tartine books. I think they have different value depending on your perspective.

• Tartine Bread is a great bread textbook that revolutionized bread making at home when it was released. However, techniques and recipes for home baking have changed since publishing and Flour, Water, Salt, and Yeast is a better guide. If you’re getting started with bread, skip it. If you want to enjoy this book as a beautiful piece of history in the American bread revolution, it is a lovely read.

• Tartine, A Classic Revisited is primarily complex pastries and desserts from their bakery. The recipes are lovely. I particularly love the morning buns.

• Tartine Book No. 3 is super interesting in exploring complex, whole grain breads with a variety of mix-in and fermentation techniques. If you want to learn advanced bread techniques, this book is great.

• Bread Book isn’t for me – I think it might be for people who haven’t read Tartine Bread or Tartine Book No. 3, but I found it repetitive and hard to use. For the future of grains, I much prefer The Flour Lab.

Other interesting books that may not be for everyone

Bravetart by Stella Parks focuses on recreating iconic American desserts at home, which can be fun. I’ve found the recipes mostly consistent but I don’t reach for this book that often. Sometimes they are very expensive, like making Hostess cupcakes was $50. Fun? Yes. Worth it? Meh.

Bread Revolution by Peter Reinhart is about the future of alternative grains, sprouted flour, and strange fermentation. If you’re a weird bread person it’s pretty fun.

Other great baking books

Pizza

The Elements of Pizza by Ken Forkish

This is the ultimate handbook to making pizza at home. Forkish provides a wider variety of variations on pizza dough, such as the “I woke up late and want pizza for dinner” dough. It’s a great book to learn how to manage dough and dough recipes, primarily with variations on a Neapolitan-ish style dough.

Pizza Czar by Anthony Falco

I consider this book more inspiration than handbook. The recipes are great, but it’s more a journey of pizza through the world than a step-by-step guide on how to make the best pizza. Falco covers a wide variety of pizzas, like Detroit-style, grandma pie, butter crust, Neapolitan-ish, New York, etc. If you’re looking for variety and inspiration, this is the one.

Pasta

Flour + Water by Thomas McNaughton

I found this book after hosting a work event at the Flour+Water restaurant in San Francisco. I was so in love with the meal. I ended up buying a copy of the book for everyone who came to dinner that night, and have since cooked my way through it from front to back. McNaughton has very precise, repeatable guides for making pasta at home. My 18-egg yolk pasta video is based on his recipe. Moreso than making pasta itself, the recipes are broken into seasonal pasta recipes which are all beautiful and delicious.

Lasagna by Anna Hezel

This is a beautiful little cookbook filled with amazing ideas for lasagna and casseroles. The carbonara lasagna changed my life.

Essays masquerading as cookbooks

Black Food: Stories, Art, and Recipes from Across the African Diaspora curated by Bryant Terry

Black Food is such a deeply beautiful set of essays, stories, and recipes about, well, Black food. My favourite essays:

• Nectarines

• Picnic Lunch

Korean American by Eric Kim 🌈

Don’t get me wrong – Eric Kim is an excellent recipe writer. But his most of these recipes, and his best recipes, are all in NYT Cooking. The reason to get this book is to enjoy the beauty of his relationship with his mother, his explicit queerness, and him learning to embrace his unique point of view. It’s a beautiful book.

The Christmas Chronicles by Nigel Slater 🌈

I don’t know why, but I associate Christmas with Britain – probably because of Love, Actually. The Christmas Chronicles is a beautiful way to explore the season as Slater provides daily essays about his annual traditions in the lead-up and recovery from the Christmas season. There are beautiful recipes for each day, many of which are British Christmas foods I’d have never discovered, like the very delicious Malt Loaf.

Other great essay-recipe hybrids I love

Indian-ish by Priya Krishna 🌱

In Bibi’s Kitchen by Hawa Hasan

Books about food without recipes

Gulp by Mary Roach

If you loved that episode of The Magic School Bus where they go into the digestive system, Mary Roach has created a book just for you. This is a humorous science book with the best footnotes. It’s an easy, accessible read. I love all of her books.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

These are great books about understanding your role in the food system, and the food system’s role in your health and wellbeing.

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky

This is a history book about world conflict in the fight to control and access salt. It’s amazing how much we take access to salt for granted – and how quickly civilization would fall apart with it.

On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee

If you’ve ever wondered how gelatine works, why milk changes as it heats up, or the varying temperatures proteins set, have I got a book for you. This is a science textbook and reads like one, but if you’re interested in understanding the details of how food changes through cooking, you’ll enjoy reading this.

Online

These are my favourite online subscriptions for recipes.

NYT Cooking

NYT Cooking is consistently the best place for reliable recipes that treats their writers with respect.

America’s Test Kitchen

ATK does a great job of testing and explaining how recipes work, but not necessarily the most inspiring place for new ideas.

ChefSteps

ChefSteps writing – mostly their email newsletter – can be a little bro-y and sometimes veers into explicitly inappropriate. I’m not sure why, since they’re owned by Breville. It’s inexplicable. However, their recipes push the boundaries of food, are really well written, and well tested, so I continue to subscribe. I just wish they’d stop trying to so hard to be edgelords. It’s gross.

Molly Baz’s The Club

Molly is an excellent recipe writer and creative cook. Her subscription, The Club, is great. You should subscribe.

Podcasts

Home Cooking

If you listen to one podcast from this list, this is the one. Samin and Hrishikesh have the funniest, best friendship. I love this podcast with my whole heart. I want them to make more episodes. I’m so glad Hrishi finally got banana bread.

My heart is full when I listen to this show.

Spilled Milk

Another podcast that’s basically an inside view to a friendship.

The Sporkful

It’s like a weird, humorous journalistic take on food.

Other great food podcasts