The Best Home Cooking Cookbooks That Everyone Should Own

Our List of the Best Home Cooking Cookbooks on the Market

With all the excellent cookbooks published this year, we decided that it is time to update our list of Best Home Cooking Cookbooks.

A cookbook with beautiful photos, thoughtful narratives, and foolproof recipes can feed the imagination, transport your giftee to another city or country, and inspire them to get creative in the kitchen. There are cookbooks out there to suit every type of cook, whether novice or expert and feed all interests — from TV show cookbooks to comprehensive tomes on the science of cooking.

We all turn to the internet to source recipes. But something about turning the pages of a cookbook feels particularly comforting and personal, even transportive. But which cookbooks should you own? There are many incredible home cooking cookbooks on the market, so many that you need help choosing what books you should own. To help you make the right choice, here is a list of our favorite home cooking cookbooks.

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An Unapologetic Cookbook

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Joshua Weissman is a 25-year-old YouTube chef with almost five million subscribers on his youtube channel.

In An Unapologetic Cookbook, Joshua brings us his confident approach and opinionated outlook. Weissman’s plan to “stop putting the past on a pedestal” needs no apology and is well supported in this work, which encourages you to develop your sense of cooking intuition while maintaining a grasp of the basics.

Joshua Weissman: An Unapologetic Cookbook is about creating the building blocks necessary to make the most incredible meals of your life. The food in this book is an invitation that speaks for itself. Extraordinary cooking does, and should, take time.

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‍‍Cook This Book

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In Cook This Book, Molly Baz breaks the essentials of cooking down to clear and uncomplicated recipes that deliver big flavor with little effort and a side of education. More than a collection of recipes, Cook This Book teaches you the invaluable superpower of improvisation through visually compelling lessons on such topics as the importance of salt and how to balance flavor, giving you all the tools necessary to make food taste great every time.

If you seek out, celebrate, and obsess over good food but lack the skills and confidence necessary to make it at home, you’ve just won a ticket to a life filled with supreme deliciousness. Cook This Book is a new kind of foundational cookbook from Molly, who’s here to teach you absolutely everything she knows and equip you with the tools to become a better, more efficient cook.

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Cooking

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In his first book, Jeremy Lee welcomes you into the kitchen to rejoice in simple home cooking. Whether for a table set for one, or for the descending hordes, here you'll find over 150 recipes, bursting with ideas for good things to eat.

From a lifetime of cooking with some of the UK's greatest chefs – as well as lessons from his mother – Cooking is a book about good food honed from good ingredients, whether it is a particularly good bundle of asparagus or a great box of artichokes. The ingredients invariably spark the idea of what to cook next.

Cooking is brimming with stories, wit, infectious joy for food, and indispensable advice. It is brilliantly illustrated by John Broadley and photographed by Elena Heatherwick. It will surely be one of the most distinctive cookbooks published for years.

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Dessert Person

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Named one of the best cookbooks of 2020 by The New York Times, Dessert Person brings Claire Saffitz's signature spin on sweet and savory recipes. In her first book, Claire shares with us delicious recipes like Babkallah (a babka-Challah mashup), Apple and Concord Grape Crumble Pie, Strawberry-Cornmeal Layer Cake, that will convert even the most "I don't like sweets" person.

In this book, Claire outlines the problems and solutions for each recipe - like what to do if your pie dough for Sour Cherry Pie cracks - as well as practical do’s and don’ts, skill level, prep and bake time, step-by-step photography, and foundational know-how. With her trademark warmth and superpower ability to explain anything baking related, Claire is ready to make everyone a dessert person.

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Modernist Cuisine at Home

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Modernist Cuisine at Home opens up a new world of culinary possibilities and innovation for passionate and curious home cooks. Following the success of Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, this second book from Nathan Myhrvold and The Cooking Lab gathers all the essential information that any cook needs to build a modern kitchen and master modern techniques.

In this award-winning, vibrantly illustrated 456-page volume you’ll learn how to stock a modern kitchen, master Modernist techniques, and make hundreds of stunning new recipes, including pressure-cooked caramelized carrot soup, silky smooth mac and cheese, and sous vide–braised short ribs. Modernist Cuisine at Home will redefine some classic home dishes, at the same time that teaches you the science behind your favorite dishes.

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Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat

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Samin Nosrat is the writer, teacher, and chef behind  Salt Fat Acid Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking. A book that was named one of the best of 2017. A New York Times Bestseller and Winner of the 2018 James Beard Award for Best General Cookbook. A visionary new master class in cooking that distills decades of professional experience into just four simple elements.

Salt Fat Acid Heat is an ambitious new approach to cooking by a major new culinary voice. The idea behind this book is quite simple! Salt enhances flavor, fat delivers flavor and generates texture, acid balances flavor, and heat determines the texture of food.

With a charming narrative, illustrated walkthroughs, and a lighthearted approach to kitchen science, Samin demystifies the four elements of good cooking for everyone. In this book, you will find more than 100 essential recipes and dozens of variations. From balanced vinaigrettes to tender braised meats or even flaky pastry doughs, this book got you covered.

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The Art of Simple Food

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The Art of Simple Food is an indispensable resource for home cooks from the woman who changed the way Americans think about food. Perhaps more responsible than anyone for the revolution in the way we eat, cook, and think about food, Alice Waters has “single-handedly chang[ed] the American palate” according to the New York Times. Her simple but inventive dishes focus on a passion for flavor and a reverence for locally produced, seasonal foods.

With an essential repertoire of timeless, approachable recipes chosen to enhance and showcase great ingredients, The Art of Simple Food is an indispensable book for home cooks. Here you will find Alice's philosophy on everything from stocking your kitchen to mastering fundamentals and preparing delicious, seasonal-inspired meals all year long. Always true to her philosophy that a perfect meal is one that's balanced in texture, color, and flavor, she helps us embrace the seasons' bounty and make the best choices when selecting ingredients.

Fill your market basket with pristine produce, healthful grains, and responsibly raised meat, poultry, and seafood, then embark on a voyage of culinary rediscovery that reminds us that the most gratifying dish is often the least complex.

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The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

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Ever wondered how to pan-fry a steak with a charred crust and an interior that's perfectly medium-rare from edge to edge when you cut into it? How to make homemade mac 'n' cheese that is as satisfyingly gooey and velvety-smooth as the blue box stuff, but far tastier? How to roast a succulent, moist turkey (forget about brining!) - and use a foolproof method that works every time?

As Serious Eats's culinary nerd-in-residence, J. Kenji López-Alt has pondered all these questions and more. In The Food Lab, Kenji focuses on the science behind beloved American dishes, delving into the interactions between heat, energy, and molecules that create great food. Kenji shows that often, conventional methods don’t work that well, and home cooks can achieve far better results using new - but simple - techniques.

In hundreds of easy-to-make recipes with over 1,000 full-color images, you will find out how to make foolproof Hollandaise sauce in just two minutes, how to transform one simple tomato sauce into a half dozen dishes, how to make the crispiest, creamiest potato casserole ever conceived, and much more.

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The Joy of Cooking

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In the nearly ninety years since Irma S. Rombauer self-published the first three thousand copies of Joy of Cooking in 1931, it has become the kitchen bible, with more than 20 million copies in print. This new edition of Joy has been thoroughly revised and expanded by Irma’s great-grandson John Becker and his wife, Megan Scott.

John and Megan developed more than six hundred new recipes for this edition, tested and tweaked thousands of classic recipes, and updated every section of every chapter to reflect the latest ingredients and techniques available to today’s home cooks. Their strategy for revising this edition was the same one Irma and Marion employed: Vet, research, and improve Joy’s coverage of legacy recipes while introducing new dishes, modern cooking techniques, and comprehensive information on ingredients now available at farmers’ markets and grocery stores.

This new edition of Joy is the perfect combination of classic recipes, new dishes, and indispensable reference information for today’s home cooks. Whether it is the only cookbook on your shelf or one of many, Joy is and has been the essential and trusted guide for home cooks for almost a century. This new edition continues that legacy.

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The Cook You Want to Be

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In Andy Baraghani's first book, The Cook You Want To Be, he will guide you through different flavors, techniques, and, yes, plenty of recipes to help you build the confidence you need to make highly delicious, achievable food in your own kitchen. And as he promises, "along the way, you'll become a more instinctual and thoughtful cook"

In his book, Andy shows you how you can hone your cooking styles by teaching you the techniques and unexpected flavor combinations that maximize flavor in minimal time.

In essays throughout the book, Andy shares convictions (why everyone must make his beloved Persian egg dish, kuku sabzi) and lessons to live by (the importance of salting fish before cooking it). The Cook You Want to Be is a trove of go-to recipes and delicious, simple home cooking.