Seeing as I’m currently surrounded by a mountain of cookbooks, a half-eaten peanut butter cookie, my third cup of coffee [shudders], and a Christmas tree covered in dehydrated oranges, it’s hard to deny that food rules everything around me. Truly—and I know I am not alone here—most of my waking life is spent reading about food, cooking food, eating food, watching other people cook or eat food on the internet, and binging cooking shows (Hell’s Kitchen hive, rise up). Luckily for people like us, when it comes to food literature, we live in a time of abundance. If you’re at all ~*plugged in*~ to the culinary world, nary a day goes by you aren’t being absolutely annihilated with content about someone’s new cookbook or recipe, or their food newsletter, or a social media post about their newsletter, or an email about their newsletter (but not actually containing their newsletter, which is $8 a month). But the silver lining is that we’re probably also in a golden age of cookbooks, and that’s pretty dope.
The best cookbooks of 2023 run the gamut. Meryl Feinstein finally channeled her online project, Pasta Social Club, into book form with Pasta Every Day, one of the most creative and user-friendly pasta volumes we’ve seen in a long time. Chefs Jason Hammel and Monica Lee produced the epic books that fans of their restaurants—respectively Lula Cafe and the now-closed Beverly Soon Tofu—had been craving for years. Alison Roman went full-on dessert mode with her new one, Sweet Enough, while Isa Chandra Moskowitz helped us become the vegan comfort food wizards we were always meant to be with Fake Meat (think Buffalo tofu, seitan pepperoni mac & cheese, fully loaded nachos, and “turki” club sandwiches). Need a drink? You do—it’s almost the holidays and 2024 is an election year. Whip up a delicious Prohibition-era bev from Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs, and Juice by Toni Tipton-Martin, or, if you want to throw a dart at the map and be transported to a great cocktail bar there, Amanda Schuster’s Signature Cocktails has about 200 recipes for you. Sit back, set Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives to auto-play, pour yourself a Sazerac, and behold the best cookbooks of 2023.
‘Tenderheart’
Tenderheart is the rare cookbook that contains a truly moving story and a phenomenal set of recipes. This is the kind of book you just want to carry around with you because it makes you feel good. Hetty Lui McKinnon’s tapestry about connecting with her family through food already had me in the emotional zone I usually reserve for The Cure, Lost in Translation, and season five of Friday Night Lights, and that was before I got to dishes like the creamy—and I mean hella, super, extremely creamy—mushroom udon noodles and the roasted potato and lentil salad with black sesame aioli! I mean, that’s basically just a collection of my favorite words.
Hetty Lui McKinnon
Tenderheart
$40$31.15 at Amazon
‘The Cookie That Changed My Life’
I love any book or film that centers about someone getting extremely stoked about perfecting their craft, and reading about Nancy Silverton losing her mind over a peanut butter cookie during the pandemic and trying to recreate it was the cookbook equivalent of watching the second act of Oppenheimer. Of course I tested the peanut butter cookie, and it was one of the greatest things I made in 2023. One person I shared it with said it was the best cookie they’d ever had. Oh, and there are, like, 100 other baking recipes here.
Nancy Silverton
The Cookie That Changed My Life
$40$32.70 at Amazon
‘Fake Meat’
Calling all vegans, partners of vegans, skeptical dads, vegetable-hating children, pub grub-loving sports fans, and produce-leaning home cooks bored with stir-fry and pasta: This is the book you’ve been waiting for. Writer and restaurateur Isa Chandra Moskowitz has written a ton of great vegan cookbooks, but Fake Meat might be the banger that people have been waiting for. If you love comfort food, this book is your holy grail; within are the plant-based secrets of crushable Buffalo tofu and (actually great) ranch dressing, homemade seitan of all sorts, sandwiches, pastas, burgers, nachos, and every other dish you’d crave after a couple beers (or just from being alive).
Isa Chandra Moskowitz
Fake Meat
$35$18.62 at Amazon
‘Seed to Plate, Soil to Sky’
This year, Lois Ellen Frank quietly dropped one of the best Southwestern cookbooks in the game. Seed to Plate, Soil to Sky focuses on the “magic eight,” or the eight plants that Native Americans introduced to modern world cuisine, including corn, beans, squash, and chiles. It’s full of the aggressively flavorful (and occasionally stunningly spicy) dishes fans of Southwestern cuisine love—think mole, Three Sisters stew, red chile pinto beans, and an eye-openingly delicious green chile enchilada lasagna (seriously, it’s so good). A must-buy for all fans of spicy food and/or Indigenous cuisine.
Lois Ellen Frank
Seed to Plate, Soil to Sky
$30 at Amazon
‘The Lula Cafe Cookbook’
Lula Cafe has been one of Chicago’s most beloved restaurants for more than two decades; and in that time, alumni of chef Jason Hammel’s kitchen have gone on to create their own award-winning spots, from Austin’s Birdie’s (which was Food & Wine’s Best New Restaurant this year) to Chicago’s lauded neighborhood eatery Giant. Lula is the kind of restaurant that you can take your parents or best friend to for a memorable dinner, and then return for brunch with the person you hooked up with after dinner. This book really does capture the legendary restaurant’s arty, farm-to-table vibe—you’ll fall in love with this cookbook’s prose and delight in making its cinnamon- and feta-laced Pasta Yiayia and Hammel’s famous sweet & sour cabbage soup. Sure, the spicy peanut sauce recipe will immediately transport you to Lula’s veggie-filled Tineka sandwich and the chilled spicy peanut noodles, but Hammel flexes far beyond his restaurant’s menu here and shows why he’s one of the Midwest’s most important chefs.
Jason Hammel
The Lula Cafe Cookbook
$49.95$44.20 at Amazon
‘Simply West African’
The first time I had yassa chicken was an Extremely Important Moment for me. It was one of those dishes that was so insanely good that I didn’t even consider trying to make it at home, because its flavors just seemed too powerful and mysterious. Then, for whatever reason, I decided it was time to try when Pierre Thiam’s ultra friendly and approachable Simply West African came out, I can’t compare his recipe to my experience at that restaurant, because they’re such different things; his yassa recipe is absolutely delicious, though—citrusy, onion-y, super savory—and his mafé peanut sauce is unlike any peanut sauce you’ve had. This is a beautiful book that communicates an inclusive, community-oriented approach to dining.
Pierre Thiam
Simply West African
$28$24.99 at Amazon
‘Sweet Enough’
Four years after her second book, Alison Roman is truly still out here trying to help us realize our greatest entertaining desires. Rather than showing us more ways to vibe with each other over creamy dips, seasonal salads, hearty pastas, and “The Stew,” she’s moved on to the end of the night and offered up a remarkable dessert manual full of galettes, cakes, “frozen things,” and literally an entire chapter about pudding. In a video about baking from earlier this year, Roman explained, “I love giving people dessert. I feel like it is such a nice way to say, ‘I really care about you, and I really love you. And I didn’t have to do this, but I wanted to do this.’” Sweet Enough proves not only that Roman isn’t going anywhere, but that she will probably be throwing a dinner party when the sun explodes.
$35$17.31 at Amazon
‘Food of the Italian Islands’
Katie Parla’s Food of the Italian Islands is an incredibly rich and historical look at a part of Italy that, as it turns out, definitely deserves its own cookbook. Places like Sicily and Sardinia might not be what immediately come to mind when Americans think of “Italian food,” but it turns out they have their own ecosystem of interesting pestos (there are seven of ‘em in this book), not to mention killer street food scenes and a litany of cool seafood dishes, such as swordfish balls, sardine rolls, and stuffed calamari. (There’s also a recipe for horse, if you’re trying to get into that.) In any case, this book will make you put your Piedmont wine trip (wow!) on the back burner as you start researching flights to Sardinia, which Parla told me is definitely the place to start. Just don’t ask her to help you plan your White Lotus trip.
Katie Parla
Food of the Italian Islands
$35$31.50 at Amazon
‘Veg-table’
Nik Sharma’s Veg-table is an engaging, scientific journey into what makes a vegetable a vegetable. (If kids hate it and it’s probably good with hummus, it’s a veggie, right?) This book explores how vegetables grow, what they’re made of, and, most importantly, how to cook them. On that note, Sharma has a unique way of writing recipes, formatting them more like prose than with lists and numbers. From the shallot and spicy mushroom pasta to okonomiyaki-style brassica fritters, there’s no shortage of things to get excited about here. Warning: Reading this book might [whispers] make you smarter… but we won’t tell your friends.
$35$29.49 at Amazon
‘Pulp’
If Veg-table was 2023’s master class on veggies, Abra Berens’ Pulp is its counterpart in all things fruit. This isn’t just a cookbook showing you how to become a fruit sorcerer, though—it’s a love letter to the farming industry and the world of seasonal cooking. Sure, you’ll come away with real and serious knowledge about roasting and poaching and baking and preserving. But you’ll also hopefully gain a deeper sense of how you can be more sustainable in the kitchen (i.e. why you’re a huge [expletive deleted] if you let those uneaten blueberries, apricots, and plums go to waste rather than making delicious pickles, jams, and syrups with them.)
$35$22.99 at Amazon
‘Sohn-mat’
L.A. cult-fave restaurant Beverly Soon Tofu sadly closed in 2020, but fans of the Koreatown staple—famous for its custardy tofu jjigae (think spicy stew)—can rejoice by putting chef-founder Monica Lee’s secrets to use in their own homes. Within Sohn-mat are not only a large grip of soon tofu jjigae recipes, but enough banchan, kimchi, bibimbap, and barbecue that you might actually succeed in scratching the itch for her food. This book is so awesomely thorough that even home cooks new to Korean food can quickly make their own seasoned red pepper paste, blended garlic, and beef bone broth—or, create the mung batter pancake batter of their dreams, and from scratch.
$35 at Amazon
‘Portico’
Portico is a sweeping look at the very particular world of Roman Jewish cuisine, and it’s full of essential history and comforting dishes, from brisket frittata and tuna spaghetti to vegetarian pasta carbonara and maaaany artichoke dishes. As an artichoke-loving Jewish dude, I was especially excited about the section titled, “Artichokes: A Roman Jewish Love Affair.” Portico pushes past the parameters of both Italian and Jewish cuisine, into a beautiful world where eggplant Parmesan and shakshuka live together in harmony your stomach.
$37.50$30.99 at Amazon
‘Pasta Every Day’
Pasta books can be challenging. Some are super vague, offering a collection of shapes and techniques alongside a handful of sauces, giving readers little to connect it all. Meanwhile, other volumes take themselves soooo seriously, saying, “Ay, my dear home cook, the only possible thing to do with pappardelle is to make my four-hour boar ragu, which uses ingredients you’ll have to go foraging in the mountains to get.” Neither approach is especially inclusive for, uh, you know, the average home cook, i.e., someone who needs cookbooks to meet them at their own level of skill and taste. In this sense, Meryl Feinstein’s Pasta Every Day is a masterpiece, giving readers a deep knowledge of every aspect of pasta-making, from tools to hand-shaping, but also leaving a ton of space for creativity. It’s the rare book that says, “What’s your dream pasta dish? Let’s figure out how to get there.”
Meryl Feinstein
Pasta Every Day
$35$27.10 at Amazon
‘Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs, and Juice’
This gripping history of African American cocktail culture includes many iconic drinks you’ve almost certainly had, and even more that you definitely have not. The book references everything from Prohibition-era books by Black mixologists to modern volumes by Klancy Miller, Mashama Bailey, and T-Pain (who we interviewed about his wing spices earlier this year), and countless important works in between. There are treasures here for fans of all spirits, but rum and whiskey lovers will quickly wind up with a huge menu of things to try, from a pineapple-lemon highball to [grips table to brace myself because I secretly love sweet drinks] a chocolate bourbon dessert cocktail with orange bitters.
Toni Tipton-Martin
Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs, and Juice
$30$26.49 at Amazon
‘Signature Cocktails’
Amanda Schuster’s monumental Signature Cocktails is, on one level, an extremely straightforward cocktail book: After a simple two-page introduction and zero copy about bar tools and techniques (love it), Schuster immediately launches into entries for hundreds of cocktails, concisely explaining their place and time of origin, spirit base, ideal serving glass, and, of course, their recipes. But it’s also hard to encapsulate how vast and informative this book is—you’re basically getting an encyclopedic volume of cocktail history in about 400 pages. And it’s colorful and fun, to boot. Awesome.
Amanda Schuster
Signature Cocktails
$39.95 at Amazon
Actually, the more I think about it, boar ragu sounds pretty dank. Bye!
The Rec Room staff independently selected all of the stuff featured in this story. Want more reviews, recommendations, and red-hot deals?Sign up for our newsletter.
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