The Best Cookbooks of Fall 2024

Bayou: Feasting Through Seasons of a Cajun Life

Seasons shape the order of this book, the second from James Beard Award–winner Melissa Martin, but not the way you think. “The seasons in Louisiana are not necessarily summer, fall, winter, and spring,” she writes, explaining that they are more granular: times of feast and fasting, an interplay of culture and availability. Raised in a Cajun family in southern Louisiana, where the coast is a lace of silt and water, Martin focuses on local ingredients: seafood but also pecans, sugarcane, and even sassafras, from which filé powder can be ground. There are recipes for homemade boudin, king cake, and gumbos (multiple), but also for a fried potato sandwich and satsuma sorbet. Tradition and innovation, like Carnival and Lent, sit comfortably (and deliciously) side by side.

— Molly McArdle

The Bean Book: 100 Recipes for Cooking with All Kinds of Beans

I remember the first time I saw a bag of Rancho Gordo beans — stippled and vibrant behind a logo of an open-mouthed woman — on Jamelle Bouie’s Instagram close to 10 years ago. Fancy BEANS? I thought. That you get in the MAIL? Absurd. Unbelievable. Unnecessary. It wasn’t long afterwards that it seemed like I was seeing Rancho Gordo everywhere. Steve Sando, the company’s founder and public face, got a 7,000-word treatment in The New Yorker; I got my first quarterly box of beans via post. Yes, I am now a Bean Club member. I even dedicate a section of my cookbook shelf to Bean Club circulars (complete, as beanheads know, with recipes tailored to each shipment’s heirloom varieties).

While this isn’t Sando’s first book, it’s his most ambitious: an authoritative guide to beans, all of them. Much like Rancho Gordo’s own selection of bean varieties, the recipes here trend Mexican. This is not for lack of other classic recipes from around the globe: Senate bean soup, red beans and rice, chana masala, baked beans, pasta e ceci, black bean burgers, cassoulet, chickpea tagine, chili con and sin carne. When Sando first got started, he writes, “poor old beans” were famous for their “non-culinary powers” (a very elegant fart joke). “People were kind but also felt sorry for me because I was so passionate about such a ‘loser’ ingredient.” Two decades on, this book represents a victory lap for beans, losers no more. Long live beans!

— MM

Bobby Flay: Chapter One: Iconic Recipes and Inspirations from a Groundbreaking Chef

If your primary impression of Bobby Flay is that he’s a TV chef with a penchant for competition cooking and grilling, he’d be OK with that. His relationship with the Food Network spans the majority of his professional career and has afforded him a place in the pantheon of first-name celebrity chefs, and his love of live fire and burgers is legit. But this lushly photographed book may be a complete revelation for those who have never had the pleasure of experiencing the groundbreaking, high-touch, and thoroughly finessed Southwest and Mediterranean cuisine at his restaurants in New York City and Las Vegas over the past 30-plus years. Chapter One is a labor of passion and excavation into the mind of a chef who knew from early on that he never wanted to be anything but that, as well as the drive and focus that has led to so much more. It’s also a promise to watch this space because a fire that burns this brightly is bound to spark so much more in his kitchen — and yours.

— Kat Kinsman, Executive Features Editor

Bodega Bakes: Recipes for Sweets and Treats Inspired by My Corner Store

Look, Paola Velez is a food world rock star. (We’ve been saying so since even before 2021, when we named her a F&W Best New Chef.) The Bronx native, now based in D.C., put in time with Jacques Torres and Milkbar (Christina Tosi writes the foreword) before opening her pandemic-era Doña Dona pop-up and cofounding Bakers Against Racism, which raised nearly $2 million for social justice organizations across the country. Her first cookbook is an ode to the New York City bodegas that nurtured her palate. For Velez, these are magic places, culinary and human crossroads where you can meet a friendly cat and pick up a single overpriced roll of toilet paper while also finding killer flan, a sleeve of Maria cookies, and a five-cent Warhead. Velez translates this sense of wonder into her own intensely flavored — and often brightly colored — cookies, bars, pies, cakes, rolls, flans, and frozen treats; roll up for Guava & Cheese Cookies, Dulce de Leche Babka, and Hibiscus-Pineapple Sorbet.

— MM

Breaking Bao: 88 Bakes and Snacks from Asia and Beyond

In Chinese culture, 88 is a lucky number, signifying good luck and wealth. And what could be more fortunate than a debut cookbook from Clarice Lam? The former pastry chef at Kimika, the Japanese-Italian restaurant in New York named a James Beard semi-finalist for Best New Restaurant in 2022, Lam’s default setting as a baker is hybridity. Pulling together techniques from European baking traditions and flavors from East and Southeast Asia, she offers up recipes like Pork Floss and Scallion Focaccia and Thai Tea Gelati. And she didn’t forget the bao, of which there are nine versions. These steamed buns are filled with dan dan; sweet corn custard; Chinese bacon, egg, and chives; sweet black sesame paste; and more creative fillings. Lucky us, indeed.

— MM

Chinese Enough: Homestyle Recipes for Noodles, Dumplings, Stir-Fries, and More

Midwest-raised, Bay Area–based, first-generation Chinese American Kristina Cho brings her multi-hyphenate identity to the forefront in her second cookbook. It’s a defining statement of her style of cooking: “distinctly Chinese, with generous Midwestern hospitality and practicality, and a sunny Californian approach to ingredients.” The author of one of the first substantive English-language cookbooks to cover Chinese baking (Mooncakes and Milk Bread) now turns to savory dishes like tomato egg (also the subject of Cho’s most viral TikTok video), Bahn Mi Pasta Salad, her family’s recipe for dumpling, and a smashed potato dish she calls “Tingly Taters.” This book could also be called Plenty Delicious.

— MM

The Chinese Way: Classic Techniques, Fresh Flavors

To call Betty Liu multitalented is a little of an understatement. A surgeon-in-training and a former wedding photographer (she shot all the gorgeous food photos in The Chinese Way), she’s also an inspired home cook with a particular talent for communicating big ideas about meal planning, recipe riffing, and applying traditional techniques to nontraditional recipes, first displayed in her 2021 book My Shanghai. “What makes the food that I cook ‘Chinese’ is technique,” she writes. “These differences between the original recipe and its subsequent iterations are not about inaccuracy. They reveal the fluidity of food.”

— MM

Crumbs: Cookies and Sweets from Around the World

Once upon a time, I thought of the making and eating of cookies as a seasonal activity, limited to the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. That was before I picked up Crumbs: Cookies and Sweets from Around the World, by cookbook author, food writer, and recipe developer Ben Mims. Containing 300 recipes from 100 countries, Crumbs is a true encyclopedia of cookies – one that makes you want to put on your apron and cook. It’s deeply researched but never dry or academic, and full of next-level tips for the home baker and fascinating tidbits about the history and evolution of cookies. But my favorite aspect of this book is how it shows the astonishing diversity of cookies around the world, and how beloved they are in their home countries. From Afghani cardamom biscuits to Italy’s anise-flavored zuccherini, cookies are woven into the texture of everyday life, sweetening the lives of billions. I’ll never think of them in the same way again, and I can’t wait to make my next batch. 

— Karen Shimizu, Executive Editor

Justine Cooks: Recipes (Mostly Plants) for Finding Your Way in the Kitchen

You may have first heard about Justine Doiron a couple of years ago, when her decorative butter boards hit every part of your social media feed. But Doiron has become a go-to source for her plant-forward and pescatarian recipes. Her book includes plenty of creative bowls, mains, and sides that rely on punchy, bright flavors, like kimchi-crusted eggs, lime-roasted cabbage with turmeric white bean mash, and whitefish peperonata. Recipes like her shatter top cauliflower orzo, in which the soft, creamy pasta is topped with a crispy Parmesan frico, show off her love of crunchy contrasting flavor. This is a great book for meals that are impressive and accessible.

— Chandra Ram, Associate Editorial Director of Food

Kalaya’s Southern Thai Kitchen

Nok Suntaranon pulls no punches about the amount of spices in her recipes. “When you hesitate, when you have doubt, when you say, ‘But, Nok, that’s so much black pepper! But, Nok, do you really want me to use that much cilantro?’ I will smile at you and say, ‘Yes, that is exactly how it should be.’”

Chef and owner of one of Food & Wine’s 2020 Best New Restaurants, Suntaranon named the business after her mother, Kalaya, who sold homemade curry paste at a local market in their southeastern Thai hometown of Trang. There’s no pad thai here — a statement in itself — but you will find recipes for Khai Pa Lo Hed (Five-Spice Egg and Mushrooms with Tofu), Sakoo Sai Moo (Pork-Stuffed Tapioca Pearls), and Lhon Pu (Coconut Crab Gravy with Fresh Vegetables), among many others. This book, Suntaranon’s first, bursts with as much voice as her dishes have spice. In both cases, it’s exactly how it should be.

— MM

The League of Kitchens Cookbook: Brilliant Tips, Secret Methods & Favorite Family Recipes from Around the World

Founded in 2014 by Lisa Kyung Gross, the League of Kitchens is an immigrant-led and home-based cooking school where experienced, knowledgeable, and charismatic home cooks teach their family recipes. For the first time in the school’s history, recipes from 14 of the League of Kitchen’s exceptional home-cook instructors — who came to the U.S. from Mexico, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Ukraine, Greece, Afghanistan, India, Argentina, Japan, Uzbekistan, Lebanon, India, and Nepal — are collected in book form. 

There’s no denying the breadth of dishes offered here: frijoles negros (Mexican black beans) sit next to sauce pâte d’arachide (a Burkinabé peanut butter stew with chicken and vegetables), tahu telor (an Indonesian omelet with tofu, scallions, and bean sprouts), psito psari (Greek oven-baked fish with lemon-oregano dressing), and an Afghan corn-flour cake made with rose water and cardamom. These recipes are lovingly detailed; amounts are listed in the body text as well as in the ingredient list. Notes throughout add context or extra tips from the instructor: how to tell whether the oil is hot enough, and what substitutions are acceptable.

The vibe is never more real than when you read the umpteenth in-text note about how the instructor washes her raw chicken under running water, and the same note goes on to say that the USDA strongly recommends that you don’t do this. Of course every grandma washes her chicken, of course none of us are going to tell her to do otherwise, and — of course — there’s no one better to teach you how to make the very best batch of sauce pâte d’arachide or frijoles negros.

— MM

Mastering The Art Of Plant-Based Cooking: Vegan Recipes, Tips, and Techniques

Plant-based eating is old news. Foregrounding the long history and widespread practice of eating a diet without animals, Joe Yonan’s fourth cookbook is expansive and encyclopedic, at 500 pages and filled with more than 300 recipes. “My goal here,” the James Beard Award-winning Washington Post editor writes, “is to provide you with as vibrant a spectrum of plant-based possibilities as I could imagine.” Contributors add recipes and some short essays to the mix. In what is perhaps the first vegan cookbook to have this wide a remit, you’ll find nearly everything here: building blocks like stocks and butters and milks; basics like pesto and pancakes and tempeh and tofu scrambles; and dishes meant for center stage like eggplant rollatini and whole roasted beets with mole and hariyali jackfruit biryani.

— MM

My Egypt: Cooking From My Roots

Michael Mina, head of the Mina Group restaurant empire, turns to the food of his Egyptian-American home in this book, written with Kate Leahy. The stories and recipes are remarkably personal, full of family photos and dishes Mina grew up eating, as well as a culinary exploration of the place where he was born but did not grow up.

“It’s only in the past decade that I’ve explored Egypt as a chef,” Mina writes, noting that he has not cooked this food in his restaurants. The cookbook brings together “what had once felt like separate parts of myself — technique-driven California cooking and Egyptian heritage.”

The result is a rich collection of food and drink supported by what Mina calls a “Middle’terranea” pantry: ingredients like freshly ground black pepper, coriander seeds, cumin, ground red pepper, and turmeric, as well as preserved lemons, rose water, labneh, fava beans, fried onions, freekeh, fruit, and carob molasses. Many of the 92 recipes in the book are drawn from Orla, Mina’s new Mediterranean restaurant in Las Vegas. He also researched his family archive, including his mom’s “always light, almost delicate” ta’ameya, Egyptian falafel made with fava beans, which he describes as “the standard against which I judge every falafel.”

— MM

Our South: Black Food Through My Lens

In Ashleigh Shanti’s first cookbook, the chef and owner of the lauded Asheville restaurant Good Hot Fish traces the contours of her south: tidewater Virginia, the Appalachian mountains and rivers of Virginia and North Carolina, and the sea islands of Georgia and South Carolina, as well as the midlands hammocked between these peaks and shores. This book debuts in the wake of Hurricane Helene, which has wrought incredible destruction on the places Shanti writes about and especially where she now makes her home. (Shanti and fellow Asheville chef Silver Iocovozzi opened a free outdoor pop-up called Sweet Relief Kitchen in the immediate aftermath of the storm.)

It nevertheless remains a celebration of these threatened places and their keenly attuned food traditions: backcountry chow chow and britches (or dried green beans), Lowcountry stewed peanut chicken with shrimp rice, midlands peach shortcake, lowlands (or tidewater) Brunswick stew, hot boiled peanuts, deep-fried hard-shell crabs, and a local American Chinese noodle dish called yock, which Shanti attempts to reproduce. (“There simply is no other way to make yock,” she writes. “Ketchup and spaghetti are the way, the truth, and the light.”) It’s also a reclamation of foods and traditions (yock included) that Shanti only came to investigate — and properly value — later in life. What’s most important, she declares, is that “I’ll share my own story: that of a chef who is no longer pretending to be anyone but herself.”

— MM

Pan y Dulce: The Latin American Baking Book

On the first page of his introduction, Bryan Ford — whose first cookbook New World Sourdough redefined artisan bread — mentions Juan Garrido, thought to be the first person to plant wheat in the Americas. Garrido, an African who converted to Catholicism and helped Cortés lay siege to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán before settling down as a farmer, neatly symbolizes the complexity of Ford’s task: a Latin American baking bible. “Many of the most interesting and delicious baked goods in the world today come from Latin America,” he writes. Ford supplies recipes for 150 of them, from alfajores to pan de muerte and nine different kinds of empanadas. “But many of their stories are not straightforward,” he says, noting their roots in Indigenous traditions, European colonialism, and chattel slavery, and that these roots are not limited to Latin America. This cultural and historical context-setting infuses and enriches the book, from Ford’s encyclopedic choice of recipes to his reflections on the ingredients themselves: among them maíz (American), sorghum (African), and wheat (European).

— MM

Salty, Cheesy, Herby, Crispy Snackable Bakes: 100 Easy-Peasy, Savory Recipes for 24/7 Deliciousness

Acclaimed cookbook author and TikTok star Jessie Sheehan offers 100 savory, “easy-peasy” recipes in a follow-up to her celebrated 2022 cookbook, Snackable Bakes. Single-bowl recipes, quick preparation times, and easy-to-find ingredients are Sheehan’s signatures, and she brings these tenets to recipes that sit comfortably in the middle of a “comfort food” and “social media-friendly” Venn diagram. Embrace the pepperoni “pizza” galettes, grilled cheese sandwich tarts, and “BLT” scones made with bacon, lemon, and sun-dried tomato. Sheehan’s personality, both fun and reliable, shines through this book: one chapter is titled “Breads You Need…But Don’t Knead (Hee Hee Hee).”

— MM

Second Generation: Hungarian and Jewish Classics Reimagined

After years in the kitchen trenches of high-end New York City restaurants, Jeremy Salamon stumbled upon a copy of the 1972 cookbook George Lang’s Cuisine of Hungary. Himself a second-generation Hungarian American, Salamon writes: “I had never seen a cookbook on Hungarian food.” He pored over it, noting, “It was both new and familiar.” A decade-long exploration sent him to Hungary, where he lived for a time, and prompted him to mine his own family recipes. Salamon’s search culminated in the opening of Agi’s Counter, his first restaurant, and now, his first cookbook.

Favorites from Agi’s Counter can be found here: deviled eggs (from the book’s “Noshing” section) as well as cheesecake (originally developed by the restaurant’s first pastry chef, Renee Hudson). Hybrid dishes (schmaltz mayo; a pimento cheese–inspired twist on the Hungarian cheese dip; körözött) sit alongside Hungarian classics (chicken paprikash; meggyleves, a sour cherry soup) and Jewish-American ones (whitefish salad, chocolate egg cream). This book is also full of memories, particularly of Salamon’s grandmothers Agi and Arlene, who met when they both moved their businesses from New York to the same Miami strip mall. (Matchmaking ensued, then shared grandchildren.) Charming and personal, this book is both millennial-coded — one recipe is titled “Nokedli in Chicken Broth with So Much Dill” — and thoroughly Hungarian — the book has separate chapters each for “Desserts” and “Cakes and Tortes.”

— MM

Sunlight & Breadcrumbs: Making Food with Creativity & Curiosity

In her fourth cookbook, Seattle chef and prolific restaurateur Renee Erickson writes that she found herself, after many years in the restaurant business, looking at spreadsheets all day. “This book is the result of coming to grips with that gap between my perception as a creative spirit and the reality of my working life,” she writes.

An ode to finding creative joy in cooking, this book reads in part as a long-gestating response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Time at home and outside led the former fine arts student to pick up a regular painting practice again and to think more deeply about the practice of eating outdoors. An open and almost spare book, there’s lots of space for the ecipes to breathe, which include plenty of anchovies, green sauces, mayonnaise, and homemade breadcrumbs. Erickson provided all the book’s photographs and illustrations.

In a note preceding her recipe for Dungeness crab cakes, Erickson makes an admission: “I’ll take a moment here to say I understand this is an expensive recipe.” But her solution is in keeping with the ethos of the book, which encourages a see-what-happens and cook-with-what-you’ve-got attitude: Go crabbing for them yourself.

— MM

Very Good Bread: The Science of Dough and the Art of Making Bread at Home

As a baker, James Beard Award–nominated Melissa Weller has always gravitated towards the savory side: Bread, she says, is her passion. But it’s only with this, her second book (following the sweets-heavy A Good Bake) that she goes all in on baguettes and bagels, tortillas and pizzas, hoagie rolls and loaves of honey whole wheat. The former baker and pastry chef for restaurants like Per Se and Roberta’s offers recipes not just for the breads but also what can go on them: togarashi-cured sable (for bagels), coronation chicken salad (for a pain au lait Pullman), pulled pork and salsa ranchera (for tortillas). Science is folded throughout like butter in a laminated dough, appropriate for a chemical engineer turned baker.

— MM

When Southern Women Cook: History, Lore, and 300 Recipes with Contributions from 70 Women Writers

Toni Tipton-Martin has centered her impressive career writing about food and drink from Black cooks and drink experts, with her award-winning books Jubilee, The Jemima Code, and Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs & Juice. Her latest, edited by barbecue expert Morgan Bolling, shares the voices of women cooks from around the South, and the diverse culinary traditions they bring to each plate or bowl of food. Whether it’s Von Diaz’s words on the Caribbean influence on Southern stews, Kayla Stewart’s essay on benne wafers, or bartender Tiffanie Barriere’s reflections on the Juneteenth tradition of red drink, the stories and recipes in this volume illustrate the diversity of influences and people who create food and drink in the South.

— CR

Why I Cook

We know Tom Colicchio so well for his work as head judge on Top Chef that too often, people forget his incredible talent as a cook. Colicchio, the eight-time James Beard award-winning head of the Crafted Hospitality restaurant group, has shaped some of New York’s best restaurants, including Gramercy Tavern and Craft. In this book, an elegant hybrid cookbook and memoir written with Joshua David Stein, he shares that he has been cooking since he was 13 years old. He takes us along on his kitchen path, from days gardening and fishing with his grandfather to working in New York as a young cook to his first days as a chef. The recipes are for home cooking, not restaurant meals, and include weeknight-friendly pastas, salads, roast fish, grilled steak, with expert chef tips and touches.

— CR

You Gotta Eat: Real-Life Strategies for Feeding Yourself When Cooking Feels Impossible

Full disclosure: Margaret Eby is one of my favorite people in the world. But one of the biggest reasons she holds that place in my heart is because she saw the need for a book like this and filled it with empathy, humor, and useful counsel for feeding yourself when you’re low, anxious, exhausted, burnt out, or otherwise not at your best. She’s a trained chef and makes no bones about the fact that this advice is coming from personal experience, so she takes great care in the nuance. That means meals that don’t involve much labor beyond opening a can or bag, recipes for times when you’re too depressed to really even chew much but still need to get nutrition into your body, or low-stress strategies to bring pleasure and finesse to simple dishes. Eby takes into account the effort it takes to locate measuring spoons and wash dishes, and tailors advice accordingly and — crucially — without even a teaspoon of judgment. “Once you’ve got those tools in place,” she writes, “maybe even a little bit of joy can creep back in.”

— KK

Zahav Home: Cooking for Friends & Family

As the title promises, Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook return to the flavors of their most successful Philadelphia restaurant (in a portfolio that includes the acclaimed Laser Wolf and the chain Federal Donuts) in their followup to 2015’s Zahav. Like Renee Erickson’s Sunlight & Breadcrumbs, this is another book born of pandemic isolation and reset. After their restaurants closed in early 2020, partners Solomonov and Cook “did the only thing that made us feel close to normal: We cooked.” The recipes that result are weeknight-tested and family approved, leaning hard on punchy and flavorful pantry items like jarred harissa and amba, date syrup and za’atar, Bulgarian cheese and pickles. Whether it’s a busy Tuesday night or a long lazy Sunday, dig into dishes like carrot and raisin salad with red cabbage, mushroom freekeh soup, spatchcock chicken three ways, cauliflower chraime, leg of lamb with harissa, masabacha (the chunky cousin to hummus’s creamy peanut butter), cod in grape leaves, and pistachio sticky buns.

— MM

Zoë Bakes Cookies: Everything You Need to Know to Make Your Favorite Cookies and Bars

It’s little surprise that the latest book by the prolific and popular Zoë François is already a bestseller. This tribute to cookies is François’s second solo cookbook, after Zoë Bakes Cakes, and her tenth cookbook overall. (She cowrote the other eight cookbooks — from The Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day book series — with Jeff Hertzberg. Collectively, they’ve sold over a million copies.) François groups her recipe by themes, locations, and occasions that are also rooted in her own biography: healthy cookies connect back to her Vermont commune childhood (with two kinds of granola and three kinds of oatmeal cookies), while categories of both Christmas and Jewish cookies pay homage to two different grandmothers. Sections dedicated to ingredients as well as a “Cookie Academy” are rich with detail and extraordinarily helpful. Best perhaps is her Chocolate Cookie Lab, where cookies photographed along a spectrum show how more or less of a single ingredient impacts the overall bake.

— MM