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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Marcella Hazan, Victor Hazan
Best for: Cooks who already own Hazan's recipe books and want to deepen their sourcing knowledge — or any serious home cook who believes a great dish begins at the market, not at the stove.
Toni Chapman
Best for: Home cooks who want a warm, personality-driven cookbook spanning Puerto Rican family traditions, Southern comfort food, and modern classics — and who prioritise flavourful, achievable results over advanced technique.
Heather Brown
Best for: Home cooks — especially existing fans of Brown's TikTok — who want a curated, lasting collection of comfort-food recipes built around intuitive, pressure-free cooking rather than precise technique.
Tieghan Gerard
Best for: Home cooks who want reliable, flavour-forward everyday meals built on minimally processed ingredients — particularly the millions of existing Half Baked Harvest blog followers looking for fresh, all-new material that bridges weeknight ease and weekend-worthy results.
Edna Lewis
Best for: Readers drawn to the intersection of food writing and cultural history, particularly those interested in seasonal and regional American cooking, Southern culinary tradition, and cookbooks that carry genuine literary and memoir-like depth.
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.
America's Test Kitchen
Best for: Two-person households — newlyweds, empty nesters, or first-time solo cooks — who want a single, authoritative, all-in-one reference built specifically for small-scale cooking rather than a patchwork of scaled-down recipes.
