Our reviews
54 cooking & food books we've reviewed, each with who it's for, who should skip it and every source we used.
54 reviews match
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.
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 — especially those feeding families or groups — who want a single volume covering breakfast through dessert with flavorful, comfort-focused recipes that come together in under forty-five minutes using everyday pantry staples.
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.
Urvashi Pitre
Best for: Small-space cooks — in city apartments, dorm rooms, or RVs — who already own an air fryer and want a globe-spanning, fresh-ingredient recipe collection that moves well beyond the usual frozen-and-breaded playbook.
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.
Sam Milner, Dom Milner
Best for: Committed air fryer users — from daily cooks to those just past the beginner stage — who want a durable, kitchen-mounted quick-reference chart for accurate times and temperatures across 275+ ingredients, without leafing through a full cookbook mid-cook.
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.
Caroline Chambers
Best for: Time-constrained home cooks — parents, working professionals, and beginners — who want satisfying, complete weeknight dinners without the planning overhead, and who navigate the kitchen more by mood, available protein, or available minutes than by culinary ambition.
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.
Chelsea Monroe-Cassel
Best for: Dedicated fans of A Song of Ice and Fire or Game of Thrones who want to cook their way through the fictional world's food culture, and collectors who value an officially sanctioned volume bearing George R. R. Martin's foreword and the Random House Worlds imprint.
Ina Garten
Best for: Home cooks who already have some kitchen confidence and want a mentor-like system for hosting — specifically those who've felt the anxiety of timing multiple dishes at once and want embedded troubleshooting and make-ahead strategies built into every recipe.
Anthony Bourdain, Laurie Woolever
Best for: Devoted Bourdain fans and home cooks who want an opinionated, personality-driven core repertoire built from forty-plus years of professional cooking and global travel — and who are comfortable with a voice that is frank, profane, and unapologetically partial.
