The Best Cookbooks of 2021: Our Top 10

The Best Cookbooks of 2021, According to our Editorial Staff

As cities around the world have sprung back to life, there's been a lot to keep tracking this year. And as much as we've frequented our favorite restaurants again, home cooking became an essential part of our weekly routine during the pandemic. Fortunately, 2021 has brought us great cookbooks to break the pattern so that we never have to make the same dish twice. Today we share with you our list of the Best Cookbooks 2021.

This selection is truly the best, from a dedicated recipe book all about Middle Eastern Sweats to the cookbook recipes that warm our hearts with delicious home meals to the best baking cookbooks.

Before we leave you with our list, we can only wish you a Happy New Year! See you all in 2022!

Colombiana by Mariana Velásquez

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In Colombiana, food stylist and tastemaker Mariana Velásquez draws on the rich culinary traditions of her native land and puts her own personal twists on dishes beloved by generations of Colombians. For Mariana, the best meals are never simply about the food on the table - they are an alchemy of atmosphere, drinks, and simple snacks and sweets that complete the experience and make it memorable.

Rich with culture and stories, as well as more than 100 recipes delicious recipes, Colombiana is a vibrant gastronomic excursion that melds the contemporary and the traditional, reminding us of the power of food to keep the ritual of the table alive.

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Cook This Book by Molly Baz

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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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Home Farm Cooking by Catherine & John Pawson

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‍Home Farm Cooking is a beautiful cookbook from Catherine Pawson and celebrated architectural designer John Pawson.

Home Farm is the Pawson family's base in the heart of the English countryside. Five years in the making, the beautiful house was built to unite friends and relatives in a rustic, simple setting. In this personal, inspiring recipe collection, John and Catherine share 100 favorite dishes they most like to cook at the farm for family and friends. The result evokes a sense of food prepared, shared, and enjoyed in a space designed to accommodate the seasons' different cooking and eating methods.

There are comforting country staples such as roast chicken and shoulder of lamb in this book, ideal for a cozy night at home or garden dinner party. There is also a range of more straightforward, yet no less delightful, recipes like roast carrots with creamy tahini dressing or burrata and grilled peaches, all of which are easy enough that they can be whipped up as a quick and satisfying lunch.

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Maman: The Cookbook Review by Elisa Marshall and Benjamin Sormonte

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‍‍Elisa Marshall and Benjamin Sormonte opened maman to fill a void in their hearts. They wanted to create a warm, cozy place for people to come together and savor a freshly baked madeleine or slice of savory quiche with the comfort and familiarity of being in their own living room. In Maman: The Cookbook you'll find a collection of 100 recipes of their bestselling dishes from their locations in New York City, Montreal, and Toronto - like Banana-Lavender Cornmeal Waffles with Vanilla Mascarpone, Cumin Chickpea Salad, and the Nutty Chocolate Chip Cookies made famous by none other than Oprah.

French café culture and urban-rustic design come together to create a cookbook as delicious as it is visually inspiring. Whether you’d like to make one of Elisa’s naked cakes for a special occasion or a roasted chicken sandwich with basil aïoli for lunch, maman welcomes you with open arms.

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Middle Eastern Sweets by Salma Hage

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Whether you start your day with something sweet, finish it with something sweet, or make sure sweets are within reach all day long, you’ll find serious inspiration in the pages of Middle Eastern Sweets Cookbook.

The Middle East’s wide range of cultures, ingredients, and influences informs the array of dishes she includes – spiced cookies, cream-filled pancakes, aromatic pastries, and delicious cakes – with recipes that are easy to follow and celebrate simple-to-source spices and taste combinations. With natural sweeteners such as dates and honey often used in place of refined sugar, and alternate protein sources including nuts and yogurt, and including recipes that are naturally gluten-free, vegan, nut-free, and dairy-free, this is the ideal book for both everyday family or festive meals.

In Middle Eastern Sweets, Salma Hage puts together an incredible collection of popular classic sweets. Baklava, Halva and Rice Pudding as well as refreshing Sorbets, decadent Ice Creams, Stuffed Pancakes, and Orange-Blossom Scented Cupcakes are some of the recipes you'll find in this book.

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monk: Light and Shadow on the Philosopher's Path by Yoshihiro Imai

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monk is the story of Yoshihiro Imai's 14-seat, seasonally inspired restaurant, set on the cherry blossom-lined Philosopher's Path in Kyoto. Through personal essays, reflections, recipes, and photography, Yoshihiro Imai describes stories of the farmers, makers, and exceptional ingredients – from foraged vegetables to herbs and flowers – that inspire his omakase-style menu, explains why cooking with fire is central to the restaurant, and traces the evolution of the unpretentious, innovative, and flavorful pizza for which he is now renowned globally.

Set on the Philosopher’s Path, a stone pedestrian trail lined with cherry blossom trees and ancient temples in Kyoto, monk serves inventive contemporary cuisine using local ingredients cooked in a wood-fired stone oven, which is at the center of Yoshihiro’s small open kitchen. At monk Yoshihiro brings a unique perspective to traditional Japanese dining - his approach perfectly balances the dual mentalities of respecting tradition, while seamlessly adapting to contemporary life.

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Pasta: The Spirit And Craft Of Italy's Greatest Food, With Recipes by Missy Robbins

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New York City chef Missy Robbins fell in love with Italian food and pasta twenty-five years ago. She has been cooking, researching, and studying her way across Italy ever since, which led her to open two of America’s most renowned pasta restaurants, Lilia and Misi. With illustrated step-by-step recipes for handmaking forty of the most versatile pasta shapes and one hundred recipes for Italian American, regional Italian, and Robbins’s own best pasta dishes, plus two dozen vegetable sides, Pasta: The Spirit And Craft Of Italy's Greatest Food, With Recipes, is the hard-working manual for home cooks who aspire to master the art of pasta cooking.

In her new book, the Connecticut native invites you into her world, where the staple is comforting and familiar, yet also complex. Bringing that sentiment to the page with Talia Baiocchi, editor-in-chief of Punch magazine, Missy explores various types of dough and instructs on creating 45 different shapes, such as Fettuccine, hand-shaped Orecchiette, or Bucatini pulled through a pasta maker.

Pasta: The Spirit and Craft of Italy's Greatest Food, with Recipe, is a stylish, transporting pasta master class from New York City’s premier pasta chef, with recipes for handmade pasta shapes and Italian American, regional Italian, and modern dishes.

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Take One Fish: The New School of Scale-to-Tail Cooking and Eating by Josh Niland

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Josh Niland's multi-award-winning and bestselling book, The Whole Fish Cookbook, revealed the blueprint for a new and unprecedented kind of fish cookery. In Take One Fish, Josh continues to open our eyes to the potential of fish in the kitchen, starting from the moment we take our fish home and unpack it.

With flair, color, and bucket loads of flavor, Take One Fish unpacks each of Josh's 15 fish to reveal their true culinary potential, from Swordfish Cotoletta to Pot au Feu, to Tuna Mapo Tofu to an ethereal Raw Flounder. Celebrate the drips, crunchy bits, burnt edges, and imperfections that are so central to Josh’s mission – to get more people having fun with fish ingenuity every day.

Forget everything you thought you knew about fish cookery with Take One Fish. There are no rules for cooking fish according to Josh, only an endless world of possibilities. With 60 mind-blowing recipes from just 15 global varieties of fish, this cookbook will take you on a gustatory journey – from elaborate to easy, small to large and – always – scale to tail.

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Wild Sweetness by Thalia Ho

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In Wild Sweetness, Thalia Ho captures the essence of the wild and re-imagines it on the plate. She guides us through a tale of six distinct seasons and the flavors inspired by them: of bright, herbaceous new life in spring, to the aromatic florals that follow, of bursting summer berries, over-ripe fruit, warmth, and spice in fall, then ending with winter and its smolder.

In more than 95 recipes, Thalia opens our eyes and taste buds to a celebration of what the wild has to offer - a world of sweet escapism, using flavor to heighten our experience of food. Enthralling, unique, and inspired recipes you’ll want to cook over and over again.

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Zoë Bakes Cakes by Zoë François

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The expert baker and bestselling author behind the Magnolia Network original series Zoë François explores her favorite dessert cakes! Featuring everything from Bundt cakes and loaves to a beautifully layered wedding confection, Zoë shows you how to celebrate any occasion, big or small, with delicious homemade cake.

Cake is the ultimate symbol of celebration, used to mark birthdays, weddings, or even just a Tuesday night. In Zoë Bakes Cakes, Zoë demystifies the craft of cakes through more than eighty-five simple and straightforward recipes.

This book spans all of Zoë's favorite cakes, from family recipes such as Anna’s Hazelnut–Brown Butter Cake to cakes from her years in professional kitchens, like Chocolate Devil’s Food Cake, and some new ones discovered during her cake-walk odysseys, like Hummingbird Cake.