Our reviews
57 cooking & food books we've reviewed, each with who it's for, who should skip it and every source we used.
57 reviews match
Philippe de Vosjoli, Robert Mailloux, Susan Donoghue, Roger Klingenberg, Jerry Cole
Best for: Bearded dragon owners — first-time or experienced — who want a thorough, expert-grounded reference covering enclosure setup, nutrition, breeding, and disease management rather than a brief introductory pamphlet.
Melissa Clark
Best for: Home cooks who own a pressure cooker, multicooker, or Instant Pot and want bold, globally influenced weeknight recipes — from Coconut Curry Chicken to wild-mushroom risotto — without sacrificing the quality they'd expect from a longer, more labor-intensive cook.
Nick DiGiovanni
Best for: Newer home cooks, fans of DiGiovanni's digital content who want his recipes in collected form, and anyone seeking a warm, personality-driven gateway cookbook that builds confidence without condescension.
Molly Baz
Best for: Food-obsessed beginners who crave good eating but lack kitchen confidence — anyone who wants structured, technique-first teaching alongside genuinely exciting recipes, with built-in video support for moments when text alone isn't enough.
Stanley Tucci
Best for: Readers drawn to Italian-American home cooking with a strong narrative dimension — especially those who love Stanley Tucci's film Big Night and want recipes rooted in genuine family memory rather than celebrity polish.
Ina Garten
Best for: Home cooks who already enjoy Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa style and want to stretch their skills toward more ambitious, dinner-party-worthy dishes — without abandoning the warm, approachable sensibility they love.
Jorge Gaviria
Best for: Serious home cooks, culinary professionals, and food-culture enthusiasts who want an authoritative, encyclopedic guide to masa — from its Mesoamerican origins and the science of nixtamalization through 50 recipes spanning tortillas to Tamal Gnocchi.
Yotam Ottolenghi, Ixta Belfrage, Tara Wigley
Best for: Curious, committed home cooks — vegetarian or not — who want to genuinely understand why vegetables taste the way they do and are ready to engage with a structured framework (process, pairing, produce) rather than simply follow a recipe list.
Betty Crocker
Best for: Home cooks with a taste for mid-century American culinary heritage — especially devoted Betty Crocker fans or gift-givers seeking a cookbook that balances nostalgic archival depth with genuinely practical, from-scratch recipes.
Suzy Karadsheh
Best for: Home cooks — particularly those in American kitchens with little prior experience of Levantine or North African pantry staples — who want a practical, weeknight-friendly introduction to the full breadth of Mediterranean cooking, grounded in genuine cultural biography rather than generic diet advice.
J. Kenji López-Alt
Best for: Curious home cooks who want to understand the mechanics of why cooking techniques work — not just follow recipes — and are willing to invest time in a dense, encyclopedic reference built around everyday American dishes.
Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, Simone Beck
Best for: Cooks who want to understand French technique from first principles — and anyone interested in the history of American food culture who wants both a practical reference and a primary document of a culinary turning point.
Betty Crocker
Best for: Home cooks — from complete beginners to confident everyday cooks — who want a single, comprehensive, up-to-date reference volume covering the full range of American home cooking, including modern appliances and contemporary dietary needs.
Tieghan Gerard
Best for: Home cooks who want everyday meals and entertaining dishes that feel a creative step above the ordinary — especially those who enjoy roaming across global comfort-food influences rather than staying within a single cuisine.
America's Test Kitchen
Best for: Home cooks at any level who want to build genuine, lasting culinary competence through a structured, curriculum-driven approach rather than simply collecting recipes to reproduce.
Gene Stone
Best for: Readers who saw the Forks Over Knives documentary and want a credentialed, consolidated printed resource that combines the film's whole-food, plant-based argument with 96 practical recipes for every meal of the day.
Lisa Steele
Best for: Home cooks — especially backyard chicken keepers managing a surplus — who want creative, meal-spanning ways to use eggs across breakfast, pasta, cocktails, and everything in between, guided by a fifth-generation keeper's practical expertise.
Karen Mordechai
Best for: Home cooks who already love — or want to build — a ritual of gathering, and who need a practical, occasion-based framework of seasonal, crowd-pleasing menus that makes hosting feel unhurried rather than technically demanding.
Joanna Gaines, Marah Stets
Best for: Fans of Joanna Gaines and Fixer Upper who want an accessible, story-driven American comfort-food cookbook that doubles as a warm lifestyle read covering every meal of the day.
Love Food
Best for: Home cooks and backyard grillers — especially those building or refreshing their outdoor cooking skills — who want a single, accessible volume that pairs recipe content with practical equipment guidance rather than a technically demanding or specialist treatment.
Matthew Bounds
Best for: Home cooks — especially beginners or busy weeknight cooks — who want a compact, no-fuss collection of slow cooker, sheet pan, and one-pot family dinners built around pantry staples and a swap-friendly approach.
Ree Drummond
Best for: Devoted Pioneer Woman fans and family-focused home cooks who want Drummond's most-relied-upon recipes — spanning weeknight dinners to holiday traditions — consolidated, refined, and presented in a single authoritative reference.
Snoop Dogg
Best for: Snoop Dogg fans, soul food enthusiasts, and anyone who wants a cookbook that doubles as a coffee-table keepsake — equally strong as a gift for someone who loves Snoop as for someone drawn to approachable, personality-driven comfort cooking.
Dr. Stuart Farrimond
Best for: Home cooks who want to understand the science behind what they do in the kitchen — not just follow instructions, but grasp the why behind techniques, from pan-frying fish to making a soufflé.
