35 Best Healthy Cooking Books for Beginners & Families to Learn Techniques
Discover the best healthy cookbooks to learn cooking techniques, perfect for beginners and families looking to improve their culinary skills.
Learning to cook is an exciting journey for students and adults alike. Cooking techniques can transform simple ingredients into delicious meals.
Many people want to learn cooking, but finding the right guide can be challenging. Cookbooks offer great resources for beginners, teaching everything from kitchen basics to advanced culinary skills.
Whether you're interested in Italian, French, or Japanese cuisine, some books can help you master cooking fundamentals.
These guides teach essential cooking methods like knife techniques, basic baking skills, and sautéing methods.
Some recommend starting with simple recipes and gradually building confidence in the kitchen.
With practice and the right instruction, anyone can become a skilled home cook and enjoy creating amazing dishes.
Healthy Family Cooking: Essential Techniques for Beginners
Finding the best cookbooks for beginners and families can be exciting. Many people want to start cooking healthy meals at home.
Whether you're learning basic cooking or exploring healthy eating, the best cookbooks teach you how to make great meals on a budget.
Discover top-rated books with easy recipes for clean eating, quick dinners, and whole-food diets.
Popular examples include Mediterranean diet guides, vegetarian and vegan dishes, and family-friendly meals.
Learn to prepare nutritious recipes like soup, pasta, casseroles, salads, and more.
Explore favorites from cookbook authors like Alice Waters, Yotam Ottolenghi, Ina Garten, and Bryant Terry.
Try low-sugar, calorie-deficit, and plant-based meals for better health. Cook hearty dishes like beef lasagna or tuna noodle casserole.
With helpful tips, meal prep ideas, and ingredient lists, these cookbooks make cooking simple for busy families.
Cooking can be a great way to enjoy time with family while learning new skills in the kitchen!
Start with healthy chocolate oatmeal, whole grains, or 30-minute meals. From miso soup to pizza, these books make every meal delicious!
1. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat
On October 12, Netflix launched its first documentary about cooking, Salt Fat Acid Heat. Its content direction comes from the book of the same name and is hosted by Samin Nosrat, the author of the book.
Published in April 2017, "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat" was a New York Times bestseller that year and was rated as "a professional guide on how to use accurate techniques to cook good ingredients."
"Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat" also won the James Beard Award for Best Cookbook, an important award in the culinary world, and one of the awards is often used as a reference for choosing cookbooks.
Author Samin Nosrat is a writer and chef. She lives in Berkeley, USA, and has been a professional chef since 2000.
In "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat", she simplified her cooking experience over the years, and explained how to cook food in the four simple cooking elements of "salt, fat, acid, and heat".
Her basic point is that these four basic culinary elements can make or break a dish. Learning to use them not only makes you a good cook, it actually makes you a super good cook.
The same goes for the documentary "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat". It's only four episodes in all, and it's both a cooking documentary and a travel documentary.
Host Samin Nosrat travels to the common man's kitchen in Italy, the islands of southern Japan, hot Mexico, and the Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, where she works.
Here she reveals her culinary principles, showing how to incorporate these elements into cooking.
Matching Samin Nosrat's culinary principles, the hosting and shooting style of the documentary "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat" is relatively unpretentious.
Specifically, Samin Nosrat has a lot of real reactions when hosting. Chopping onions was so spicy that you wrinkled your face, eating spaghetti and making noises, and the rice balls that you squeezed may not be in the perfect shape that is usually seen in the camera...
"Washington Post" described that this documentary looks like Samin Nosrat's life is moving because it's imperfect.
However, this style is not loved by everyone. After the documentary "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat" was broadcast, some viewers also thought that the host's style was not pleasing, and the presentation of the video might not be as good as that of the book. In the documentary, the producer's discussion of various elements was a little bit to the point.
2. The Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer
The Joy of Cooking: 2019 Edition Fully Revised and Updated by Irma S. Rombauer
The Joy of Cooking grows with the times and has a full roster of American and foreign dishes such as strudel, zabaglione, rijsttafel, and couscous, among many others.
All the classic terms found on menus, such as Provençale, bonne femme, meuniére, and Florentine are not merely defined but fully explained so that readers can easily concoct the dish in their own homes.
In this classic edition, readers learn:
- Exactly what simmering, blanching, roasting, and braising does
- In what amounts herbs, spices, and seasonings should be added to recipes
- How to present food correctly
- How to prepare ingredients with classic tools and techniques
- How to safely preserve the results of your canning and freezing
With more than 4,500 recipes and 1,000 easy-to-follow illustrations, The Joy of Cooking is a must for every American kitchen.
This book is known as one of the oldest popular classic cookbooks in modern America. It has a history of nearly eighty years since the first edition in the 1930s and incorporates the cooking wisdom of many famous American chefs from World War II to the present.
A good cookbook not only has a very interesting recipe for the menu, but the most important thing is to tell a story. Stories, whether in the fields of news, novels, design, or drama, are the most fascinating elements. A good recipe book also tells stories. It should tell us about people’s lives and tell us the diet of certain people in a certain period of history.
It is necessary to reveal the opinions of different social classes and tell us that different social classes have different tastes in food, and it is best to show people's wisdom and prejudice. Interesting eating is a whole process, from the quirks of intellectuals to hedonism for pleasure, from culture to science, and finally good writing.
3. The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science by J. Kenji López-Alt
Probably the best recipe book I've ever read. Even if you don't read a large paragraph of chemical, physical, and thermodynamic principles, you can make delicious food by following the recipe.
But after taking the time to study, you can hopefully get rid of the shackles of recipes and develop your own. There is a big chapter dedicated to fast-cooking food (the first time I saw it in such a high-end book), most of which are done in 10-30 minutes, so there is no reason not to cook by yourself!
There are two regrets about this book for me. One is that the whole book focuses on American Food, but Kenji says on his website ( http://www.kenjilopezalt.com/ ) that the second book will "incorporate techniques and ingredients from around the world", so I'm looking forward to it!
The second is that there is nothing related to baking. Kenji said in the foreword that he prefers savory food and is not a baker.
The book teaches how incorporating simple techniques and ingredients from around the world can make your home cooking both more delicious and more efficient. These days in the kitchen we have access to this vast toolset of techniques and tools, so why don't we use them?
This book aims to answer that question in the most delicious way possible. If the first book was about American food and how to cook these big project dishes, the second book is more about how I cook at home EVERY DAY. Not just when I’m entertaining.”
4. Small Victories by Julia Turshen
This cookbook of more than 400 simple cooking recipes and variations from Julia Turshen, writer, go-to recipe developer, and co-author for best-selling cookbooks such as Gwyneth Paltrow's It's All Good, and Dana Cowin's Mastering My Mistakes in the Kitchen, and author of her cookbooks Now & Again and Feed the Resistance.
The process of truly great home cooking ideas is demystified via more than a hundred lessons called out as "small victories" in the funny, encouraging headnotes; these are lessons learned by Julia through a lifetime of cooking thousands of meals.
This beautifully curated, deeply personal collection emphasizes bold-flavored, honest food for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert. More than 160 mouth-watering photographs from acclaimed photographers Gentl + Hyers provide beautiful instruction and inspiration, and a gingham spine elevates this entertaining and essential kitchen resource into a covetable gift cookbook for home cooks.
- Features high-quality photos of recipes to follow while cooking
- Recipes crafted by the author to be both easy to make and follow
Readers of Feed The Resistance, Damn Delicious, and Sneaky Chef will enjoy the simplicity and deliciousness of all recipes featured in this book.
This collection of recipes makes for an ideal:
- Home Cooking Book
- Healthy Recipes Cookbook
- Technique Cookbook
- Cookbook for Family Recipes
5. The New Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison
The tenth-anniversary edition of this landmark cookbook, with more than 325,000 copies in print, includes a new introduction from Deborah Madison, America’s leading authority on vegetarian cooking.
What Julia Child is to French cooking, Deborah Madison is to vegetarian cooking—a demystifier and definitive guide to the subject. After her many years as a teacher and writer, she realized that there was no comprehensive primer for vegetarian cooking, no single book that taught vegetarians basic cooking techniques, how to combine ingredients, and how to present vegetarian dishes with style.
Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone teaches readers how to build flavor into vegetable dishes, how to develop vegetable stocks, and how to choose, care for, and cook the many vegetables available to cooks today.
Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone is in every way Deborah Madison’s magnum opus, featuring 1,400 recipes suitable for committed vegetarians, vegans (in most cases), and everyone else who loves good food.
For nonvegetarians, the recipes can be served alongside meat, fish, or fowl and incorporated into a truly contemporary style of eating that emphasizes vegetables and fruits for health and well-being.
Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone is the most comprehensive vegetarian cookbook ever published. The recipes, which range from appetizers to desserts, are colorful and imaginative as well as familiar and comforting.
Madison introduces readers to innovative main course salads; warm and cold soups; vegetable braises and cobblers; golden-crusted gratins; Italian favorites like pasta, polenta, pizza, and risotto; savory tarts and galettes; grilled sandwiches and quesadillas; and creative dishes using grains and heirloom beans.
At the heart of the book is the A-to-Z vegetable chapter, which describes the unique personalities of readily available vegetables, the sauces and seasonings that best complement them, and the simplest ways to prepare them.
“Becoming a Cook” teaches cooking basics, from holding a knife to planning a menu, and “Foundations of Flavor” discusses how to use sauces, herbs, spices, oils, and vinegar to add flavor and character to meatless dishes.
In each chapter, the recipes range from those suitable for everyday dining to dishes for special occasions. And through it all, Madison presents a philosophy of cooking that is both practical and inspiring.
Despite its focus on meatless cooking, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone is not just for vegetarians—it's for everyone interested in learning how to cook vegetables creatively, healthfully, and passionately.
The recipes are remarkably straightforward, using easy-to-find ingredients in inspiring combinations. Some are simple, others more complex, but all are written with an eye toward the seasonality of produce.
Madison's joyful and free-spirited approach to cooking will send you into the kitchen with confidence and enthusiasm. Whether you are a kitchen novice or an experienced cook, this wonderful cookbook has something for everyone.
6. How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman
Here's the breakthrough one-stop cooking reference for today's generation of cooks! Nationally known cooking authority Mark Bittman shows you how to prepare great food for all occasions using simple techniques, fresh ingredients, and basic kitchen equipment.
Just as important, How to Cook Everything takes a relaxed, straightforward approach to cooking, so you can enjoy yourself in the kitchen and still achieve outstanding results.
7. Baking Illustrated by the Editors of Cook’s Illustrated
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The practical kitchen companion for the home baker with 350 recipes you can trust. Drawing from more than 10 years of baking experience and exhaustive equipment and ingredient testing Baking Illustrated is packed with over 500 pages of sweet and savory recipes including bread, pizza, cookies, cakes, pies, and tarts. There are home classics, contemporary favorites, and European baked goods.
8. Simple Cake by Odette Williams
Everyone has a favorite style of cake, whether it's citrusy and fresh or chocolatey and indulgent. All of these recipes and more are within your reach in Simple Cake, a love letter from Brooklyn apron and bakeware designer Odette Williams to her favorite treat.
With easy recipes and inventive decorating ideas, Williams gives you recipes for 10 base cakes, 15 toppings, and endless decorating ideas to yield a treat—such as Milk & Honey Cake, Coconut Cake, Summer Berry Pavlova, and Chocolatey Chocolate Cake—for any occasion.
Williams also addresses the fundamentals for getting cakes just right, with foolproof recipes that can be cranked out whenever the urge strikes. Gorgeous photography, along with Williams's warm and heartfelt writing, elevates this book into something truly special.
9. Vietnamese Food Any Day by Andrea Nguyen
Drawing on decades of experience, as well as the cooking hacks her mom adopted after fleeing from Vietnam to America, award-winning author Andrea Nguyen shows you how to use easy-to-find ingredients to create true Vietnamese flavors at home—fast.
With Nguyen as your guide, there’s no need to take a trip to a specialty grocer for favorites such as banh mi, rice paper rolls, and pho, as well as recipes for Honey-Glazed Pork Riblets, Chile Garlic Chicken Wings, Vibrant Turmeric Coconut Rice, and No-Churn Vietnamese Coffee Ice Cream.
Nguyen’s tips and tricks for creating Vietnamese food from ingredients at national supermarkets are indispensable, liberating home cooks and making everyday cooking easier.
10. Barefoot Contessa Family Style: Easy Ideas and Recipes That Make Everyone Feel Like Family by Ina Garten
Ina Garten, who shared her gift for casual entertaining in the bestselling Barefoot Contessa Cookbook and Barefoot Contessa Parties!, is back with her most enticing recipes yet—a collection of her favorite dishes for everyday cooking.
In Barefoot Contessa Family Style, Ina explains that sharing our lives and tables with those we love is too essential to be saved just for special occasions—and it’s easy to do if you know how to cook irresistible meals with a minimum of fuss.
For Ina, the best way to make guests feel at home is to serve them food that’s as unpretentious as it is delicious. So in her new book, she’s collected the recipes that please her friends and family most—dishes like East Hampton Clam Chowder, Parmesan Roasted Asparagus, and Linguine with Shrimp Scampi.
It’s the kind of fresh, accessible food that’s meant to be passed around the table in big bowls or platters and enjoyed with warm conversation and laughter.
In Ina’s hands, tried-and-true dishes are even more delicious than you remember them: Her arugula salad is bright with the flavors of lemon and Parmesan, the Oven-Fried Chicken is crispy without excess fat, and her Deep-Dish Apple Pie has the perfect balance of fruit and spice.
Barefoot Contessa Family Style also includes enticing recipes that are memorable and distinctive, like Lobster Cobb Salad, Tequila Lime Chicken, and Saffron Risotto with Butternut Squash.
With vivid photographs of Ina cooking and serving food in her beautiful Hamptons home, as well as menu suggestions, practical wisdom on what to do when disaster strikes in the kitchen, and tips on creating an inviting ambiance with music, Barefoot Contessa Family Style is the must-have guide to the joy of everyday entertaining.
11. Homestyle Cooking From Scratch
Homemade recipes are budget-friendly and I know what I am feeding my family. Prepared foods are loaded with sodium and many ingredients that I do not want to feed my family.
Many recipes I have used for years but it is nice to have them all in one handy reference book. This is an excellent cookbook and reference source for beginning cooks, new brides, and for anyone who loves cooking from scratch. I love cooking for my family and friends.
The information and recipes in this book are from decades of cooking experience. Everyone knows my freezer and pantry are always full. Family and friends know they are always welcome at my table. Single-family members and friends tend to drop by for a quick meal or dessert.
Having a full pantry and freezer makes it easy to make quick meals and share memories with them. If you are looking for gourmet recipes or fancy ingredients, this is not the book for you.
This is homemade and homestyle cooking at its best. Stocking a freezer or pantry can be overwhelming in the beginning. It is also expensive to buy everything needed at one time.
Stock your freezer and pantry a few items at a time. When I first started stocking my pantry, I spent an extra $5 each week on items for the pantry. Start slowly and steadily increasing your pantry items.
If you are making rice, make double the amount and freeze the extra. If you are browning ground beef, cook a double batch and freeze the extra meat. Start slowly and steadily increasing your freezer meals based on your freezer space, time, and money.
12. The Third Plate by Dan Barber
I never considered myself a foodie. Still, after finishing the book, I am convinced that foodies or not could save the planet and make a better earth, only if through mindful and conscientious eating.
The remarkable side of the book is not only about the damage done to our agriculture and aquaculture by industrialized farming (monoculture) and fishing (overfishing) but also about the vision of our future's food.
To make our agriculture/aquaculture sustainable, we, as the farmer/fisherman/breeder, chef, and consumer, should change our conventional thinking and practice of conquering and taming nature to work in concert with nature.
Only by admitting and complying with nature, we can restore the lost variety, flavor, nutrition, and beloved culture. The author is a great storyteller.
The book is readable, knowledgeable, mind-refreshing, funny, moving, and touching. Can you picture the following scenes:
- How about the feeling of "cooking naked in the kitchen"?
- How can you imagine the world-known ocean conservationist, who is fighting all his life to protect bluefin tuna, served a plate of tuna?
- How a seed breeder bring his mom back to her memory by restoring the lost rice variety?
- How foie gras not from force-feeding?
- How a seed breeder bring his mom back to her memory by restoring the lost rice variety?
- How foie gras not from force-feeding?
Lastly, I can assure you that when put the book down, you surely enjoyed and learned quite a bit.
13. On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee
When it comes to cooking, I usually learn and imitate other people's practices. Although I can summarize some general rules, I am more detailed about why I do it and how to cook better.
I don't know much about it. This thick book provides answers to many questions and provides a detailed introduction to the history, production, various cooking techniques, and corresponding molecular changes of each type of ingredient.
The author is very knowledgeable and has a certain understanding of the food of various countries. Some chapters start out poetically, like the egg chapter. It is very worth having, and it is also suitable as a reference book and the like.
14. Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation by Michael Pollan
This book records the author's systematic learning of traditional cooking from a first-person perspective.
According to the four elements of fire, water, wind, and earth in nature, it is divided into four parts, and four traditional cooking methods of barbecue, stew, bake, and fermentation are written respectively.
Basically, each part is divided into the first half and the second half, two parts, with a clear rhythm.
The first half is still in the style of food culture books, writing about cooking itself, there are many interesting food culture explorations, and occasionally some philosophies are interspersed, and the poetic sentences that make people after a long time come one after another. In the
In the second half, the writing style is transformed into a social documentary category, criticizing the human food culture and health that the modern food processing industry is gradually destroying, which is thought-provoking and thought-provoking.
After reading it, I have a more fundamental understanding of cooking. Slow work not only produces fine work but also delicious food.
Don't abandon the best cooking methods created by our ancestors and honed through thousands of years of repeated experiments because of laziness.
Although modern food technology processing speeds up the process of food from ingredients to mouth, it can bring superfluous effects.
Although I was eager to try it when I was reading the book, I was defeated by reality after reading it.
15. The Flavor Bible by Karen Page and Andrew Domenburg
Great cooking goes beyond following a recipe--it's knowing how to season ingredients to coax the greatest possible flavor from them. Drawing on dozens of leading chefs' combined experience in top restaurants across the country, Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg present the definitive guide to creating "deliciousness" in any dish.
Thousands of ingredient entries, organized alphabetically and cross-referenced, provide a treasure trove of spectacular flavor combinations. Readers will learn to work more intuitively and effectively with ingredients; experiment with temperature and texture; excite the nose and palate with herbs, spices, and other seasonings; and balance the sensual, emotional, and spiritual elements of an extraordinary meal.
Seasoned with tips, anecdotes, and signature dishes from America's most imaginative chefs, THE FLAVOR BIBLE is an essential reference for every kitchen.
16. 30-Minute Cookbook for Beginners by Colleen Kennedy
Your next home-cooked meal is just 30 minutes away―no experience necessary
Cooking can seem daunting, time-consuming, and labor-intensive, but it doesn’t have to be. All you need are the basic tools, a few strategies for getting organized, and some easy recipes to start you off.
If you’ve been looking for cookbooks for beginners, this one offers all that and more―and each recipe only takes 30 minutes.
This trusty (and delicious) entry into cookbooks will help you master all the essential cooking techniques, from panfrying to broiling.
It also includes practical tips on how to grocery shop efficiently, practice food safety, and save time with hacks that get every recipe on the table in 30 minutes or less.
17. The I Don't Know How To Cook Book by Mary-Lane Kamberg
Learn how to cook hundreds of your favorite meals with these easy, delicious recipes anyone can make!
Do you crave homemade French Toast, Eggplant Parmigiana, and Pecan Pie, but don't know the difference between broiling and baking?
This book offers a crash course in cooking basics as well as lessons on creating everything from classic entrées to decadent desserts.
Complete with step-by-step instructions, a glossary of cooking terms, and 60 brand-new recipes, you’ll learn all there is to know about the kitchen as you make flavorful recipes like:
- Baked Nutty Banana Pancakes
- Spinach, Bacon, and Egg Salad
- Stuffed Green Bell Peppers
- Shepherd’s Pie
- Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
So forget macaroni and cheese from a box, frozen dinners, and takeout—The “I Don't Know How to Cook” Book, 3rd Edition shows you how to craft great-tasting, homemade meals in no time!
18. Good and Cheap by Leanne Brown
Created for people who have to watch every dollar—but particularly those living on the U.S. food stamp allotment of $4.00 a day—Good and Cheap is a cookbook filled with delicious, healthful recipes backed by ideas that will make everyone who uses it a better cook.
From Spicy Pulled Pork to Barley Risotto with Peas, and from Chorizo and White Bean Ragù to Vegetable Jambalaya, the more than 100 recipes maximize every ingredient and teach economical cooking methods.
There are recipes for breakfasts, soups and salads, lunches, snacks, big batch meals—and even desserts, like crispy, gooey Caramelized Bananas. Plus there are tips on shopping smartly and the minimal equipment needed to cook successfully.
19. Sweet Potato Soul by Jenne Claiborne
100 vegan recipes that riff on Southern cooking in surprising and delicious ways, beautifully illustrated with full-color photography.
Jenné Claiborne grew up in Atlanta eating classic Soul Food—fluffy biscuits, smoky sausage, Nana's sweet potato pie—but thought she'd have to give all that up when she went vegan. As a chef, she instead spent years tweaking and experimenting to infuse plant-based, life-giving, glow-worthy foods with the flavor and depth that feeds the soul.
In Sweet Potato Soul, Jenné revives the long tradition of using fresh, local ingredients creatively in dishes like Coconut Collard Salad and Fried Cauliflower Chicken. She improvises new flavors in Peach Date BBQ Jackfruit Sliders and Sweet Potato-Tahini Cookies.
She celebrates the plant-based roots of the cuisine in Bootylicious Gumbo and savory-sweet Georgia Watermelon and peach Salad. And she updates classics with Jalapeño Hush Puppies, and her favorite, Sweet Potato Cinnamon Rolls.
Along the way, Jenné explores the narratives surrounding iconic and beloved soul food recipes, as well as their innate nutritional benefits—you've heard that dandelion, mustard, turnip greens, okra, and black-eyed peas are nutrition superstars, but here's how to make them super tasty, too.
From decadent pound cakes and ginger-kissed fruit cobblers to smokey collard greens, amazing crabcakes, and the most comforting sweet potato pie you'll ever taste, these better-than-the-original takes on crave-worthy dishes are good for your health, heart, and soul.
20. The Plant-Based Diet for Beginners by Gabriel Miller
Transition to a plant-based diet the easy way with recipes and essential info for beginners
Choosing a plant-based lifestyle is one of the best decisions you can make for your health, your wallet, and the environment. Whether your doctor encouraged you to give up animal products or you’re simply exploring a new lifestyle,
The Plant-Based Diet for Beginners is filled with tasty recipes that make it easy for you to adopt a whole-food, plant-based (WFPB) diet free from meat, dairy, and eggs.
Discover a wide range of dishes made with simple, everyday ingredients. You’ll find nutritional information for each recipe, a guide to eating a plant-based diet at restaurants and on nights when you don’t want to cook, and much more.
21. Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi
Yotam Ottolenghi is one of the most exciting new talents in the cooking world, with four fabulous, eponymous London restaurants and a weekly newspaper column that's read by foodies all over the world.
Plenty is a must-have collection of 120 vegetarian recipes featuring exciting flavors and fresh combinations that will delight readers and eaters looking for a sparkling new take on vegetables.
Yotam's food inspiration comes from his Mediterranean background and his unapologetic love of ingredients. Not a vegetarian himself, his approach to vegetable dishes is wholly original and innovative, based on freshness and seasonality, and drawn from the diverse food cultures represented in London.
A vibrant photo accompanies every recipe in this visually stunning book. Essential for meat-eaters and vegetarians alike!
22. Martha Stewart's Vegetables by Editors of Martha Stewart Living
An essential resource for every cook
In this beautiful book, Martha Stewart—one of America’s best-known cooks, gardeners, and all-around vegetable lovers—provides home cooks with an indispensable resource for selecting, storing, preparing, and cooking from the garden and the market.
The 150 recipes, many of which are vegetarian, highlight the flavors and textures of everyday favorites and uncommon varieties alike.
The recipes include:
- Roasted Carrots and Red Quinoa with Miso Dressing
- Swiss Chard Lasagna
- Endive and Fennel Salad with Pomegranate Seeds
- Asparagus and Watercress Pizza
- Smoky Brussels Sprouts Gratin
- Spiced Parsnip Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting
Martha Stewart’s Vegetables make eating your greens (and reds and yellows and oranges) more delicious than ever.
23. The Sprouted Kitchen Bowl and Spoon by Sara Forte
In this follow-up to her successful first book, The Sprouted Kitchen, blogger and author Sara Forte turns her attention to bowl food, which combines vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins in one vessel to make a simple, complete, and nutritious meal.
The bowl is a perfect vessel in which to create simple, delicious, and healthy meals. When gathered together in a single dish, lean proteins, greens, vegetables, and whole grains nestle against each other in a unique marriage of flavor and texture.
This is how Sara Forte, beloved food blogger, and author of the James Beard Award-nominated book The Sprouted Kitchen, cooks every day—creating sumptuous recipes colorful enough to serve guests, simple enough to eat with a spoon while sitting on the couch, and in amounts plentiful enough to have easy leftovers for lunch the next day.
In this visually stunning collection that reflects a new and healthier approach to quick and easy cooking, Sara offers delicious, produce-forward recipes for every meal, such as Golden Quinoa and Butternut Breakfast Bowl; Spring Noodles with Artichokes, Pecorino, and Charred Lemons; Turkey Meatballs in Tomato Sauce; and Cocoa Nib Pavlovas with Mixed Berries.
24. A Modern Way to Cook by Anna Jones
From the author of the brilliant A Modern Way to Eat, who was dubbed "the new Nigella Lawson" by The Times, comes this beautiful collection of 150+ delicious and inspiring weeknight vegetarian recipes.
Eating healthy isn't always easy when you’re coming home late at night and tired. In this genius new collection of vegetarian recipes, author Anna Jones tackles this common problem, making nourishing vegetable-centered food realistic on any day of the week.
The chapters are broken down by time, with recipes that can be prepared in under 15, 20, 30, and 40 minutes, so no matter how busy you are, you can get dinner on the table, whether it be smoky pepper and white bean quesadilla, butternut squash and sweet leek hash, or chickpea pasta with simple tomato sauce.
With evocative and encouraging writing, A Modern Way to Cook is a truly practical and inspiring recipe collection for anyone wanting to make meals with tons of flavor and little fuss.
25. The Forest Feast by Erin Gleeson
Minimalism is a way of life. This approach requires that every day should be restrained. Minimalism is an attitude toward life. This attitude makes this life unrestrained, and living this life well is called life. Minimalism is forever on the way.
"Forest Feast", the most basic point of view, is a cookbook, which contains 100 simple dishes for small gatherings. It reminds me of Thoreau's "Walden Lake".
In the warm atmosphere and the breath of mountains, You can even hear the sound of frogs and birds, and you can see the ripples of the lake and the mist in the forest. In the process of reading through it, I gradually discovered that behind the simplicity of "Forest Feast" is energy, inspiration, and enjoyment.
The author Irene left New York with her husband after several career ups and downs and lived in a forest hut in California. Here, she began to pursue the journey of the soul.
The gorgeous cover, the paper with rich texture, and the food pictures with a sense of design and three-dimensional effect are the most intuitive feelings of this book, and the real uniqueness is the way it interprets the recipes.
26. Food for Life by Laila Ali
Four-time undefeated boxing world champion, cooking personality, and passionate health advocate, Laila Ali’s Food For Life features over 100 sassy recipes that will help you “swap it out.”
In Laila’s kitchen, nutrition is King, but the flavor is Queen! In her debut cookbook, Laila shows you how to make knockout meals in ways that work with your busy and demanding life, so you can eat healthy, delicious food without feeling hungry!
Food for Life shares more than 100 of Laila's favorite recipes. Whether you’re new to cooking, busy feeding a family, or ready to eat healthier, Food for Life will be your guidebook!
27. Jamie Oliver's Comfort Food by Jamie Oliver
Jamie Oliver's new cookbook brings together a hundred of the best comfort food recipes from around the world, inspired by everything from childhood memories to the changing of the seasons, and taking into account the guilty pleasures and sweet indulgences that everyone enjoys.
Jamie Oliver's Comfort Food is all about the food you want to eat, made exactly how you like it. With this in mind, the book features the ultimate versions of all-time favorites while introducing cherished dishes from around the world.
Filled with hints, tips, and ideas, Jamie Oliver's Comfort Food is all about celebrating the beauty and pleasure of good food and embracing the rituals of cooking.
28. The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by Deb Perelman
Winner of the IACP First BookAward *Named one of Cooking Light magazine's Top 100 Cookbooks of the Last 25 Years
The long-awaited cookbook by Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen—home cook, photographer, and celebrated food blogger.
Deb Perelman loves to cook. She isn't a chef or a restaurant owner—she's never even waitressed. Cooking in her tiny Manhattan kitchen was, at least at first, for special occasions—and, too often, an unnecessarily daunting venture. Debary found herself overwhelmed by the number of recipes available to her.
Have you ever searched for the perfect birthday cake on Google? You'll get more than three million results. Where do you start? What if you pick a downright bad recipe?
So Deb founded her award-winning blog, Smitten Kitchen, on the premise that cooking should be a pleasure and that the results of your labor can—and should—be delicious... Every time.
Deb is a firm believer that there are no bad cooks, just bad recipes. She has dedicated herself to creating and finding the best of the best and adapting the recipes for the everyday cook.
And now, with the same warmth, candor, and can-do spirit her blog is known for, Deb presents her first cookbook: more than 100 recipes—almost entirely new, plus a few favorites from the site—all gorgeously illustrated with hundreds of her beautiful color photographs.
The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook is all about approachable, uncompromised home cooking. Here you'll find better uses for your favorite vegetables: asparagus blanketing a pizza; ratatouille dressing up a sandwich; and cauliflower masquerading as pesto.
These are recipes you'll bookmark and use so often they become your own, recipes you'll slip to a friend who wants to impress her new in-laws, and recipes with simple ingredients that yield amazing results in a minimum amount of time.
Deb tells you her favorite summer cocktail; how to lose your fear of cooking for a crowd; and the essential items you need for your own kitchen.
From salads and slaws that make perfect side dishes (or a full meal) to savory tarts and galettes; from Mushroom Bourguignon to Chocolate Hazelnut Crepe Cake, Deb knows just the thing for a Tuesday night or your most special occasion.
29. The Mom 100 Cookbook by Katie Workman
Introducing the lifesaving cookbook for every mother with kids at home—the book that solves the 20 most common cooking dilemmas. What’s your predicament: breakfast on a harried school morning?
The Mom 100’s got it—Personalized Pizzas are not only fast but are nutritious, and hey, it doesn’t get any better than pizza for breakfast. Are kids making noise about the same old lunch?
The Mom 100’s got it—three different Turkey Wraps, plus a Wrap Blueprint deliver enough variety to last for years.
Katie Workman, founding editor-in-chief of Cookstr.com and mother of two school-age kids, offers recipes, tips, techniques, attitude, and wisdom for staying happy in the kitchen while proudly keeping it homemade—because homemade not only tastes best but is also better (and most economical) for you.
The Mom 100 is 20 dilemmas every mom faces, with 5 solutions for each: including terrific recipes for the vegetable-averse, the salad-rejector, the fish-o-phone, or the overnight vegetarian convert.
“Fork-in-the-Road” variations make it easy to adjust a recipe to appeal to different eaters (i.e., the kids who want bland and the adults who don’t). “What the Kids Can Do” sidebars suggest ways for kids to help make each dish.
30. Joy the Baker Cookbook by Joy Wilson
Joy the Baker Cookbook includes everything from “Man Bait” Apple Crisp to Single Lady Pancakes to Peanut Butter Birthday Cake.
Joy's philosophy is that everyone loves dessert; most people are just looking for an excuse to eat cake for breakfast.
“When I first heard the name ‘Joy the Baker,’ I immediately felt happy and warm. I couldn't help it. And in the years I've gotten to know Joy the Person—and her beautiful, warm, comforting style of food—I can say without hesitation that she absolutely lives up to her name.” —Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman
“Joy bakes with her complete heart and soul writes from the gut, and makes us feel that we too can make magic in the kitchen.” —Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan, cookbook author and creator of TheKitchn
“The best thing would be to have Joy the Baker actually bake all these things with you in your kitchen. The next best thing is reading her book, written with the exact same charming, hilarious in-person style that makes you feel like she's right there with you, sharing the recipes that come from her heart and soul.” —Sarah Gim, TasteSpotting
“Joy is who made me want to bake. Stumbling on her blog was one of the luckiest and most inspirational things that have happened to me. She's an insanely talented writer and an even better baker.” —Emma Stone, actress
31. Everyday Italian by Giada De Laurentiis
In her hit, Food Network shows Everyday Italian, Giada De Laurentiis shows you how to cook delicious, beautiful food in a flash.
And here, in her long-awaited first book, she does the same—helps you put a fabulous dinner on the table tonight, for friends or just for the kids, with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of flavor. She makes it all look easy because it is.
Everyday Italian is true to its title: the fresh, simple recipes are incredibly quick and accessible, and also utterly mouth-watering—perfect for everyday cooking.
The book is focused on the real-life considerations of what you actually have in your refrigerator and pantry (no mail-order ingredients here) and what you’re in the mood for—whether a simply sauced pasta or a hearty family-friendly roast, these great recipes cover every contingency.
So, for example, you’ll find dishes that you can make solely from pantry ingredients, those that transform lowly leftovers into exquisite entrées (including brilliant ideas for leftover pasta), and those that satisfy your yearning to have something sweet baking in the oven.
There are 7 ways to make the red sauce more interesting,
- 6 different preparations of the classic cutlet,
- 5 perfect pestos,
- 4 creative uses for prosciutto,
- 3 variations on basic polenta,
- 2 great steaks, and
- 1 sublime chocolate tiramisù
—plus 100 other recipes that turn everyday ingredients into speedy but special dinners.
32. Dinner by Melissa Clark
Dinner has the range and authority—and Melissa Clark’s trademark warmth—of an instant classic. With more than 200 all-new recipes, Dinner is about options: inherently simple recipes that you can make any night of the week.
Each recipe in this book is meant to be dinner—one fantastic dish that is so satisfying and flavor-forward it can stand alone—maybe with a little salad or some bread on the side.
This is what Melissa Clark means by changing the game. Organized by main ingredients—chicken, meat, fish and seafood, eggs, pasta and noodles, tofu, vegetable dinners, grains, pizza, soups, and salads that mean it—Dinner covers an astonishing breadth of ideas about just what dinner can be.
There is something for every mood, season, and amount of time you have: sheet pan chicken laced with spicy harissa, burgers amped with chorizo, and curried lentils with poached eggs, to name just a few dishes in this indispensable collection.
Here, too, are easy flourishes that make dinner exceptional: stir charred lemon into pasta, and toss creamy Caesar-like dressing on a grain bowl.
Melissa Clark’s mission is to help anyone, whether a novice or an experienced home cook, figure out what to have for dinner without ever settling on fallbacks.
33. Super Natural Every Day by Heidi Swanson
![Super Natural Every Day: Well-Loved Recipes from My Natural Foods Kitchen [A Cookbook]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0HanNmgoY8DpQ9Soi34gT_8vEP6R1aX5FUtO0uY7sa5CGGoTpyxc-Q4cJRsxkzVGbysGtpnRjUrXRthA-HHvi_o0fq91jnmvE099eR5I139D2CR0yj4AZLyX4qgWuwdwugxPTPHLqN4g/s499/Super+Natural+Every+Day.webp "Super Natural Every Day: Well-Loved Recipes from My Natural Foods Kitchen [A Cookbook]")
The eagerly anticipated follow-up to Heidi Swanson's James Beard-nominated Super Natural Cooking features 100 vegetarian recipes for nutritious, gratifying, weekday-friendly dishes from the popular blogger behind 101 Cookbooks.
In Super Natural Cooking, Heidi taught us how to navigate a healthier, less-processed world of cooking by restocking our pantries and getting acquainted with organic, nutrient-rich whole foods.
Now, in Super Natural Every Day, Heidi presents a sumptuous collection of seductively flavored dishes that are simple enough to prepare for breakfast on the fly, a hearty brown bag lunch, or a weeknight dinner with friends.
Nearly 100 vegetarian recipes, including Pomegranate-Glazed Eggplant, Black Sesame Otsu, Mostly Not Potato Salad, Chickpea Saffron Stew, Salted Buttermilk Cake, and a new version of the ever-popular Pan-Fried Beans and Greens, are presented in Heidi's signature nonpreachy style.
Gorgeously photographed, this stylish cookbook reveals the beauty of uncomplicated food prepared well and reflects a realistic yet gourmet approach to a healthy and sophisticated urban lifestyle.
34. Keepers by Kathy Brennan
Keepers: Two Home Cooks Share Their Tried-and-True Weeknight Recipes and the Secrets to Happiness in the Kitchen: A Cookbook
Whether they're parents, married without kids, or single, most people want to do better at mealtime—they want to put good, nutritious food on the table, they're looking for a more diverse repertoire of dishes to prepare, and they'd like to enjoy the process more.
The problem is that they don't believe they have the time or ability to do it night after night. But it can be done, and Keepers will show them how.
Drawing from two decades of trial-and-error in their own kitchens, as well as working alongside savvy chefs and talented home cooks, Campion and Brennan offer 120 appealing, satisfying recipes ideal for weeknight meals.
There's an array of master recipes for classic dishes with options for substitutions, updated old favorites, one-pot meals, "international" dishes, super-fast ones, and others that reheat well or can be cooked in individual portions.
Along with timeless recipes, Keepers is filled with invaluable tips on meal planning and preparation, all presented in an entertaining, encouraging, and empathetic style.
Keepers give cooks all of the tools they need to become more efficient, confident, and creative in the kitchen. It will help them survive the Monday-to-Friday dinner rush with their sanity and kitchens intact and also have some fun along the way.
35. One Pot by Editors of Martha Stewart Living
At the end of a busy day, you want to serve a delicious home-cooked dinner, a complete, all-in-one meal that can be prepared with little effort and a few pans to wash.
The editors of Martha Stewart Living present a brand-new collection of 120 recipes—organized by vessel—to help you do just that, all while adding savory new dishes to your weekly rotation.
One-Pot is an exciting new way to approach everyday cooking: Imagine perfect pasta dishes for which everything goes in the pot at once (yes, that’s pasta, tomato, garlic, basil, and water all cooked together), dinner-party-ready roasts with tender vegetables, and down-home casseroles, along with wholesome fish, chicken, and vegetarian dishes.
You’ll get incredible flavor payoff from dishes such as comforting Chicken and Dumplings, easy-baked risotto with Carrots and Squash, healthy Broiled Striped Bass with Tomatoes, hearty Pork Chops with Bacon and Cabbage, and the delectable Skillet Chocolate-Chip Cookie—each of which takes less than an hour from start to finish.
Here, too, are a dozen outstanding recipes for surprising and simple desserts that can be ready when you are.
Conclusion
Cooking is a skill anyone can learn with the right resources. Books on cooking offer great guidance, whether you're a beginner or looking to refine your culinary skills.
They teach you everything from basic techniques like knife handling and sautéing to more advanced methods such as grilling and baking.
If you're interested in exploring specific cuisines like Italian, French, or Japanese, there are great books that focus on those styles.
Some even include tips on plating, the science of flavor, and how to master the art of cooking.
Many chefs, including Gordon Ramsay, Julia Child, and Marcella Hazan, have written guides that teach you how to cook with professional expertise.
Whether you choose to focus on fundamentals or want to explore the history and traditions behind different cuisines, there’s a book that can help.
So, start with a book that interests you, practice the recipes, and with time, you'll master the techniques to create delicious dishes at home.
