The Best Cookbooks to Gift This Year

Whether they’re a serious bread-baker or just wading in, this new title from King Arthur Baking Company will have them covered. It’s a book I can see them referencing for years to come. There are more than 100 recipes and many techniques that are laid out clearly and in detail — like tips for shaping, how to figure out water temperature when making yeasted breads, what to do when your dough isn’t cooperating, and process tips if they’re already deep into sourdough.

Or consider this title from Melissa Weller (herfirst cookbookon dessert baking is stellar), which is also quite comprehensive. Plus, after they’ve mastered some basics, she has additional recipes for what to do with their creations — things like Everything-Bagel Tuna-Crunch Sandwiches and Tacos With Pulled Pork and Salsa Ranchera.

Clarice Lam was born in Toronto and grew up in Los Angeles, the daughter of parents from China. She lived in Europe and the U.K. for a decade, eventually becoming a professional pastry chef.Breaking Baogives a sense of her journey through sweets. Most are rooted in a particular Asian technique or flavor, but there are plenty of twists on the traditional (see Pork Floss and Scallion Focaccia).

Another regionally inspired dessert book is Hetal Vasavada’sDesi Bakes, which (as the title suggests) takes Indian ingredients and infuses them into western desserts. She also has a penchant for making her baked goods look stunning by decorating them with stamps, dyes, edible flowers, gold leaf, luster dust, and more in the style of Indian art, crafts, and textiles.

Drawing from her Dominican heritage and her life growing up in NYC — or, specifically, growing up around the bodegas of the Bronx — Paola Velez’s debut cookbook is chock-full of truly fun baked goods. There are familiar offerings, like classic snickerdoodles and extra-chewy chocolate-chip cookies, as well as signature creations like miso-and-dulce-de-leche-mousse pie.

This is the second cookbook from baking-show host and pastry chef Zoë François, a deep dive on cookies and bars divided by different eras in her life — healthy treats she ate when she lived on a Vermont commune, holiday cookies inspired by one grandmother and Jewish cookies inspired by another, midwestern goodies from the state fair that takes place where she lives now, and more.

Phaidon’s cookbooks are always especially well designed, which makes them extra giftworthy. This one is a comprehensive guide to (mostly) cookies by cook and writer Ben Mims with 300 recipes from around the world. Just a tiny sampling: Danish Pepper-and-Spice Cookies, Egyptian Stuffed Eid Cookies, Filipino Powdered-Milk Shortbreads, Sri Lankan Crunchy Sugar Cookies, and French Macarons.

I love the organization of Benjamina Ebuehi’s cookbook with sections like “Something Fruity,” “Something Chocolatey,” “Something Creamy,” “Something Nutty,” and “Something on the Side.” Although you can certainly make the recipes at home, as the title suggests, they’re particularly good for dinner parties, whether it’s because they feed a crowd, can be made in advance, or are easily transportable.

For the vegan in your life, consider Nisha Vora’s extensive guide to cooking without animal products. She lays out the fundamentals of making good food from plants, specifically how to get all you can out of an ingredient, layer flavors, and build textures in a dish. From there, she gives building blocks — sauces, grains, proteins, basic vegetables — they can always have in their back pocket to riff on. And finally, she offers a ton of recipes for full-on dishes.

If you like looking at food on Instagram, you’ve likely seen Justine Doiron’s videos. Her voice-over musings about food and cooking (and life) that accompany her cooking through plant-forward recipes got her a following, which in turn led her to write this book. Inside, you’ll find dishes that feel distinctly relaxed but not boring. Doiron has a way with sauces, beans, vegetables, and tofu, especially. (A small amount of fish makes an appearance.)

Reading through Jess Damuck’s second cookbook is like stepping into a ’70s California wonderland. The sun-drenched pages feature tonics and smoothies and eight recipes that include avocado. But it’s not prescriptive, and there are indulgences done her way, like Orange-Scented Tahini French Toast and Creamy Corn and Zucchini Pasta. You’ll find meat and fish throughout but minimally. Vegetables are the point.

Mark Diacono (whoseherb-forward cookbookis a favorite of mine) turns seasonal vegetables into dinnerworthy dishes. You can tell how much he believes in cooking what’s prime even from a quick skim of his introduction — and that translates to the recipes that follow. He gives seasonal swaps whenever possible so you can apply newly learned techniques to whatever produce looks best wherever you are, whatever the time of year.

Camille Becerra is an NYC chef-about-town, now head of Brooklyn’sAs You Are. In her debut cookbook, she stresses the importance of in-season and well-sourced ingredients (you’ll find no meat.) The first section is dedicated to modern takes on the mother sauces, broths and flavor pastes, dusts, finishing oils, and other essential building blocks. In the second half, there are recipes that utilize them. This is a cookbook that — while it may be outside the scope of interest for someone mostly focused on getting weeknight dinner on the table — will encourage curious cooks to expand their approach to making food.

The biggest brand in (very, very good) heirloom dried beans has a new cookbook. Rancho Gordo sells legumes with a cult following and has a Bean Club waiting list more than 20,000 names long. Now you can make recipes straight from the source, including dips, stews, soups, salads, and pastas.

Darra Goldstein, Cortney Burns, and Richard Martin are three big names in the food world and co-authors of thePreservedseries, in which each short-and-sweet book focuses on preserving a given category (like fruit, drinks, and condiments). Their latest is all about vegetables and includes 25 recipes for everything from pickles to DIY dried spices to flavor-packed purées. Given its smaller format, it would make a good stocking stuffer.

No matter how much you might love to spend time in the kitchen, not wanting to cook is a fate we all face from time to time. In her book,Margaret Eby(who, full disclosure, is a Strategist contributor) provides a comforting and extremely practical guide, based on her own experience, to feeding yourself when you’re stressed (or tired, anxious, busy, overwhelmed, or in a bad mood). She divides the book into sections based on how not into it you’re feeling, ranging from bare minimum to “when you have the wherewithal to fry, slice, chop, or mash — but not too much.”

Julia Turshen’s cookbooks always reflect the simple kind of cooking I like to do myself. Her latest is in line with that — but this time, it’s focused on how to riff. Not only does she share recipes but also charts to help you understand what at the core makes a good sandwich, a good braise, a good salad. She teaches the building blocks of types of dishes so that you don’t just follow instructions but you really learn how to become a better cook along the way.

Carolina Gelen is another Instagram favorite. This is her first book, filled with the types of recipes followers have come to know and love: uncomplicated and approachable comfort foods, made from ingredients that are easily accessible (and that you likely already have in your pantry and fridge). They draw on her Romanian upbringing and American classics alike, so you’ll find dishes like Brie Mac and Cheese With Crunchy Panko and Butter Noodles With Melting Onions and Cabbage right alongside each other.

After the birth of her first son, Caroline Chambers went from cooking as a way to unwind after a long day to seeing it as a chore. To turn things around, she began developing ultrasimple recipes. Since then, she has had two more sons, startedone of the most popular food newsletterson Substack, and published her first cookbook. The easy meals, like Sesame-Chile Fried-Egg Rice Bowls and Garlicky Grains and Asparagus With Sausage, are divided by time frames, a dream for busy people who like to cook but don’t want to spend all evening doing it.

Recipe developer Kitty Coles is a master of cooking smart. She tells you how to make the most of your fridge, laying out fundamental recipes for things like aïoli, roast chicken, and a pot of beans. Then she explains how to flavor and riff on those: Turn those beans into a hearty lunch salad with jarred tuna, a side dish with crispy artichoke hearts, a soupy bowl full of broccoli, or a tomato pasta. It’s beautifully photographed, well organized, and any cook who makes their way through it will turn out more skilled in the end.

This is a one-subject book on dip by Strategist contributorAlyse Whitney. Although the lens here is narrower than those above, the truly innovative recipes can, in fact, be made for dinner — there’s a whole section for that, including Chopped-Cheese(burger) Queso — as well as ones for snacking and dessert. The entire thing is delightfully fun and creative and more expansive than I ever thought dip could be. Nearly every recipe takes less than 45 minutes (and there’s a five-minute section, too).

This is an updated version of a book Joan Nathan published years ago, when her own children were young, filled with old favorites and some brand-new recipes. It covers nine Jewish holidays and includes step-by-step instructions for kids and their families to prepare feasts for each one. The recipes, like Chicken-Schnitzel Tenders and Apple-Honey Cupcakes, specify the ingredients, equipment, and steps suitable for children to do both by themselves or with adults.

Mark Bittman’s cookbook for kids (ages 8 to 12, give or take) is a thorough and accessible guide to learning how to cook. There are instructions for the most elementary dishes, like scrambled eggs and grilled cheese, but he also encourages understanding and playing with ingredients as well as practicing basic skills, made apparent in recipes like Granola, Any Way You Like It, and Any-Vegetable Soup.

This isn’t a bookexplicitlyfor kids — but it’s meant to be approachable for them just as much as the adults they might be baking alongside. And the treats, in signature Tosi fashion, are playful: Cinnamon Buns With Brown-Sugar Goo, Chocolate and Peanut-Butter Crunch Pie, and even homemade peppermint patties and gummy bears.

Koreaworldreaches deep into the traditions and modernization of Korean cuisine. It takes readers into bustling Seoul as well as Korean American kitchens around America. Chef Deuki Hong and journalist and editor Matt Rodbard talk to and gather recipes from everyone from Buddhist monks to restaurant chefs to home cooks. It feels almost encyclopedic in its representation of Korea and the Korean diaspora, filled with not just dishes but stories, conversations, and tons of fantastic photography.

Melissa M. Martin runs the James Beard Award–winning Mosquito Supper Club in south Louisiana. This is her second book, framed around a year of celebrations and seasons that highlight super-regional cuisine: Étouffée for the New Year, a Carnival Crawfish Boil, Cabbage Slaw and Fried Fish Collars in the spring, and on and on.

Ashleigh Shanti takes on the south through five sections: Backcountry, Lowcountry, Midlands, Lowlands, and Homeland. The collection of recipes showcases her own relationship with the microregions across this huge and diverse swath of land, touching everywhere from southern Appalachia to coastal South Carolina. She makes you want to dig into barbecued oysters on the half-shell and lard-fried chicken, all the while dispelling the monolithic notion of what southern food — and Black food — is.

The foundation and techniques of Chinese cooking were passed down to Betty Liu by her mom, and her grandparents before that, inevitably taking their own bent over the years in her home kitchen. She lays these out through techniques (like steaming and braising) and flavor building blocks (like sauces and pickles). Still, the recipes sometimes incorporate less traditional ingredients and take inspiration from other chefs from across the world, too.

Kristina Cho’s first title is another exploration of Chinese cooking in an American home. Her recipes — like Shrimpy Ketchup Fried Rice, Roasted Salmon with Sambal Vinaigrette, and Miso Pork Meatballs — are approachable, craveable, and thoroughly inspired by how her relationship with Chinese food has evolved as a first-generation immigrant. The bulk is weeknight-friendly recipes, but you’ll still find chapters on project cooking (like homemade dumplings) and more involved celebratory dishes.

Đặc biệtrefers to something special. In Nini Nguyen’s cookbook, she demonstrates this through Vietnamese recipes, both traditional and those with a distinct New Orleans influence (for the city she grew up in). The principle shows up in a varied way — sometimes she achieves it simply, like with the unexpected addition of ginger to a sauce; other times in an all-out feast, like a Viet-Cajun Seafood Boil.

Nok Suntaranon grew up in a tropical region of southern Thailand. Now she lives in Philadelphia, where she owns the James Beard Award–winning restaurant called Kalaya — also the name of her mother, who ignited her love of cooking and passed down many of the dishes you’ll find in this book’s pages. Suntaranon teaches the food of her childhood, the food she cooks in her restaurant — no overly sweet North American version of pad Thai noodles in sight.

Sonoko Sakai’s first book is one of my own go-to references for Japanese cooking. In her second, she takes on wafu foods, or Japanese interpretations of foreign dishes. There are ones already known and loved, like mentaiko spaghetti, and plenty of others that Sakai has developed herself, like Caesar Salad With Aonori Croutons and Bonito Flakes.

Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller’s mother came to the United States from Iran in 1979, bringing with her the cuisine of her homeland. She had always dreamed of writing a cookbook but unexpectedly died in 2018. This is Heller’s own collection of those recipes — Carrot and Saffron Halva, Persian Chicken Soup With Potatoes, her take on classic Shirazi salad, and so much more — all packaged in a beautiful (Phaidon, again) book.

Fadi Kattan owns the restaurants Akub in London and Kassa in Bethlehem, where he’s from and where his family has lived for generations. This stunning book is a tribute to the latter city and its cuisine — a collection of recipes, yes, but also profiles of the artisan food-makers who inform how he makes his food. It’s divided by season with dishes like Nabulsi cheese-stuffed grape leaves, slow-roasted lamb seasoned with fenugreek and cardamom, mafghoussa, and taboun bread.

Khushbu Shah, a food writer and the former restaurant editor ofFood & Wine,has put together a compilation of Indian American food in her debut cookbook. She explains that much of it emerged from adaptation over generations, whether because certain ingredients weren’t easily accessible in the States or because of the natural mingling with regional cuisines (like Indian Tex Mex). What has emerged is its own thing: Saag Paneer Lasagna, Keralan Fried-Chicken Sandwiches, and Pani Puri Mojitos. There are classics, too, always a staple on the table, like yogurt rice and butter chicken.

Each chapter inIslasexamines a technique: marinating; pickling and fermenting; braising and stewing; frying; grilling, roasting, and smoking; and steaming and in-ground cooking. These are the methods that tie the recipes together, all of which come from islands across the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans. It’s a truly expansive look at tropical cooking, from the celebratory to the simple, and traditions that have been passed down through generations.

The south of France extends from the southern Alps in the north to the French Mediterranean in the south with the Rhône river to the west and Italy along the eastern border. InLe Sud, Rebekah Peppler documents the cuisine of this region. As with her first book, the recipes are approachable for the home cook — things like ratatouille and market-day roast chicken and potatoes. Still, they manage to paint an aspirational picture of somewhere far away, where ideally you’d be hosting a fabulous dinner party.

In Yotam Ottolenghi’s latest, he doesn’t tackle a single regional cuisine but global comfort foods. He achieves this — an admittedly nebulous task — by tapping the book’s co-authors (Tara Wigley and Verena Lochmuller had a hand in recipe development alongside Helen Goh) to add their own takes, given the many places they’ve cumulatively spent time in over the years. What results is the most exciting take on comfort food I’ve seen in a long time: things like cheesy, crispy rice cakes with peas; a giant Dutch baby topped with roasted tomatoes; and orecchiette with caramelized onions, hazelnuts, and crispy sage. Whether familiar to you personally or not, they all nail comfort.

For nearly a decade, the Four Horsemen has been a staple in Williamsburg — a restaurant that hits so hard on the intersection of food, wine, and vibe that folks who don’t live nearby travel to eat there. This book tells the story of how the wine bar came to be, a collaboration between four unlikely partners — with recipes, of course. There are suggestions to keep the dishes top tier (parsley refers to flat leaf only; please try to use metric measurements), but these are developed for nonprofessionals. As with all great restaurant cookbooks, you should still go if you can, but now you have a way to bring a small taste — might I suggest the braised-leek toast with whipped ricotta, oregano oil, and Cantabrian anchovies — of a very special place into your own home.

Café Cecilia in London is a beloved neighborhood restaurant serving seasonal Irish and English cuisine. This sleekly shot book brings 100 of its recipes to home cooks, including signature dishes like Guinness bread, sage and anchovy fritti, and pork chop and colcannon. The appeal across the board is in the dishes’ confident simplicity — they aren’t overly cheffy but include techniques and flavor combinations that will teach you and make clear you’ve made something stand out.

This take on Vietnamese cooking comes straight from the restaurant Madame Vo, an East Village destination since it opened in 2017. It’s run by husband‑wife duo Jimmy Ly and Yen Vo, who co-authored the book. They chronicle their own story — how their families fled war and built a life in the United States, how they met and fell in love — alongside more than 80 recipes for dishes like Caramelized Pork Belly and Pineapples, Sườn Kho Pork Ribs, and their much-beloved spicy chicken wings with fish sauce.