Our reviews
80 cooking & food books we've reviewed, each with who it's for, who should skip it and every source we used.
80 reviews
Lysa TerKeurst
Best for: Women in the evangelical Christian tradition who have cycled through conventional diet advice and are looking for spiritual and motivational grounding — rather than another meal plan — to address their relationship with food.
Mandy Fu
Best for: Home cooks whose baseline for Chinese food is the takeout menu and who want to cook past it — visual learners especially, since every one of the 168 recipes carries step-by-step photos plus a linked demo video.
America's Test Kitchen
Best for: Beginners intimidated by seafood — and pescatarians or fish-lovers wanting to branch out — who want one authoritative, test-kitchen-vetted volume covering buying, technique, and 198 recipes from weeknight dinners to stews and sandwiches.
Anthony Bourdain
Best for: Food-industry insiders, serious home cooks, and general nonfiction readers curious about the unglamorous, unfiltered reality behind professional restaurant kitchens — especially those drawn to candid memoir that encompasses addiction, industry culture, and personal failure alongside culinary craft.
Hank Turner
Best for: First-time Blackstone gas griddle owners who want a single, self-contained volume that walks them through equipment setup, seasoning, and maintenance before leading them through a broad range of recipes from breakfast through dessert.
America's Test Kitchen
Best for: Home cooks — especially first-time Mediterranean cooks or gift recipients building a culinary library — who want a single, comprehensive, health-annotated reference covering Greece, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, and beyond, all using everyday supermarket ingredients.
Vicky Bennison
Best for: Home cooks who want authentically regional Italian pasta recipes rooted in real domestic tradition, and who value the human and cultural stories behind each dish as much as the instructions themselves — particularly fans of the Pasta Grannies YouTube channel seeking a permanent, navigable version of that world.
America's Test Kitchen
Best for: Home cooks who want a single, authoritative reference for navigating the meat counter with confidence — covering 72 cuts across beef, pork, lamb, and veal, from budget-friendly alternatives to impressive centerpiece roasts.
Robert H. Lustig
Best for: Readers who want to understand the structural and biological mechanisms driving the chronic disease epidemic — not just what to eat, but how the food environment was shaped, who benefits, and what the science shows beneath layers of industry-influenced messaging.
Andrew Dornenburg, Karen Page
Best for: Experienced home cooks, culinary students, and working professionals who already have solid technique and want a systematized, chef-endorsed map of flavor relationships to spark more intuitive, improvisational cooking.
Mark Bittman
Best for: First-time cooks equipping a kitchen from scratch who learn best through visual guidance and want to build genuine culinary judgment — not just follow recipes — from the very first dish they attempt.
Emily Meggett
Best for: Readers passionate about American culinary heritage, Southern food history, or the African roots of American cooking who want both a practical recipe collection and a richly documented cultural record of the Gullah Geechee community of Edisto Island.
Paula Deen, Melissa Clark
Best for: Home cooks who want a comprehensive, authoritative reference for traditional Southern cooking — covering everything from weeknight suppers to celebratory spreads — and are happy to embrace the cuisine's full-fat, unapologetically indulgent heritage.
Elin Hilderbrand
Best for: Fans of women's fiction and beach reads who enjoy ensemble casts, sun-drenched Nantucket atmosphere, and stories that balance genuine emotional stakes — grief, friendship, and the distortions of social media — with warmth and social comedy.
Claire Saffitz
Best for: Home bakers who want to genuinely understand the craft — not just follow steps — and are ready to invest time in ambitious, technique-forward recipes with a reassuring, explanatory guide alongside them.
Gordon Ramsay
Best for: Home cooks who already have a solid kitchen foundation and want to cook at a genuinely high culinary register — particularly fans of Ramsay's professional sensibility — without committing to lengthy prep sessions.
Julia Child, Simone Beck
Best for: The committed home cook who has already worked through Volume 1 and wants to advance their French technique into more demanding territory — breads, charcuterie, braises, and elaborate pastries.
Joshua Weissman
Best for: Enthusiastic home cooks — whether first-time entertainers or more experienced kitchen hobbyists — who want to understand the *why* behind recipes, enjoy cooking as a genuine project, and are actively frustrated by the minimal-effort, quick-fix cookbook trend.
Marcella Hazan
Best for: Committed home cooks who want a rigorous, technique-forward education in authentic, regional Italian cooking — not a quick-reference collection, but a comprehensive 736-page guide designed to explain the reasoning behind every step.
Tieghan Gerard
Best for: Home cooks who feel intimidated by complex recipes and want to make Gerard's signature comfort-food dishes — one-pot meals, slow cooker and Instant Pot preparations, and make-ahead dinners — without sacrificing visual appeal or flavour.
Shalane Flanagan, Elyse Kopecky
Best for: Time-pressed runners and endurance athletes who want whole-food, nutrient-dense meals they can realistically prepare on weeknight training schedules without sacrificing the performance nutrition that fuelled an elite marathon champion.
Matty Matheson
Best for: Home cooks with some existing kitchen confidence who want a single, occasion-spanning anchor cookbook — especially those who connect with Matheson's personality and his ethos of cooking as an act of generosity for family and friends.
M.D. FACLM Michael Greger, Gene Stone
Best for: Health-motivated readers who want a rigorous, peer-reviewed, disease-by-disease case for whole-food, plant-based eating — and are ready to commit to nearly nineteen hours of densely evidenced argument rather than a quick prescriptive plan.
Joanna Gaines
Best for: Home cooks and Magnolia fans who want a large, reliable collection of comfort-food and American home-cooking recipes — spanning breakfast through dinner — built around the philosophy of gathering family and guests around the table.
