The Best Cookbooks for Ambitious Home Cooks
This post is not about decorating your coffee table. And it’s not about collecting physical versions of recipes you could otherwise find online.
Instead, this post is to equip an ambitious home cook. The kind of person that wants to get their hands dirty, challenge themselves, and learn — all while making amazing food. I’ve researched and read tons of cookbooks, and I’m here to share the ones that have made the biggest impact on my cooking. And let’s be real… these cookbooks look great on my coffee table, too.
When I attended a book signing for the Noma Guide to Fermentation, renowned chef Rene Redzepi criticized the restaurant’s previous two cookbooks. They were gorgeous best-sellers, but the recipes were so complex, and with such rare ingredients, that they were nearly impossible to use at home. He said something like, “We’ve sold thousands, and no one who owns one has ever tried a recipe.”
I wanted to shout out. I’ve tried the recipes! I’ve tested at least a dozen! But doing so would have missed the point. He was right.
There’s a fine line between an ambitious cookbook that confuses and exhausts the reader and one that helps the reader grow. I’ve tested many cookbooks — from the lousy ones that could be replaced by Google searches to the equally useless, esoteric tomes. At this point, I’ve gathered a list of the cookbooks that are perfect gifts for home cooks that love to expand their knowledge while actually testing recipes.
In this post, I’ll walk you through my favorites and why they rank so high. Hopefully this makes buying gifts for the home chef in your life a bit easier next birthday or Christmas.
BEST COOKBOOKS FOR UNDERSTANDING FLAVOR
Relae: A Book of Ideas
This cookbook details the first few years of Relae, a Michelin star restaurant in Copenhagen by Christian Puglisi. Christian Puglisi combines his knowledge from working at El Bulli and Noma with his Italian background and rare creativity to produce one-of-a-kind dishes. Relae closed voluntarily after 10 years (during COVID), but the restaurant’s impact is as important now as ever.
Why I love it: This book is organized into three sections to help you understand the creative process behind Relae’s otherworldly dishes.
Ideas: Puglisi’s thoughts on ingredients, parts of the world, cooking theories and techniques.
Dishes: The history behind each dish (what they were going for, what they tested, etc). Each dish links to the ideas in the previous section.
Recipes: The recipes for each dish in the previous section.
I’ve learned countless techniques from this book — including how to be inspired by my failures.
The Art of Flavor
Daniel Patterson (chef of 2 Michelin Star Coi in San Francisco) teams with an expert perfumer to identify patterns in how we understand flavor and scent. The book contains recipes designed to illustrate how flavor combinations work, but the book’s frameworks and principles for flavor and recipe development are what really shine.
Why I love it: No other book has given me a vocabulary of flavor like this one. After reading this, I instantly felt like a better, more thoughtful cook. I felt like I could taste better, create better, and even talk about food better. This book should be required reading for those trying to make their own recipes.
BEST Cookbooks for improving your skills
The Zuni Cafe Cookbook
Zuni Cafe is an iconic restaurant in San Francisco that’s existed since the 70s. But in 1987, the late Judy Rodgers joined the restaurant and refocused its menu toward rustic French and Italian dishes that emphasize seasonality and minimalist perfection. Chef Rodgers tested recipes frequently, but she was more than willing to stop testing when a dish was perfect. This cookbook contains all those perfect dishes.
Why I love it: This is the type of cookbook you can curl up and read before bed. Rodgers details how she tastes and adjusts her recipes often, and her approach can easily be adapted at home. It’s seems simple, but my salads have dramatically improved since I started following her advice. Now, I brush up on her cookbook before tackling any new food category in case she has little tips to help me along. The recipes are also perfect for hosting guests for a casual evening.
The French Laundry Cookbook
When this cookbook — a comprehensive guide to what was the most inspiration restaurant in America for nearly 20 years — was released, the chef community freaked. Everyone needed to know Chef Thomas Keller’s secrets. And everyone was blown away. The French Laundry cookbook contains theories, techniques, and recipes that are just as timely now as they were when The French Laundry was awarded their third Michelin star.
Why I love it: This book has it all — from complex but do-able recipes to the techniques that make them work. This book helped my cooking achieve a level of finesse and precision that has greatly improved my cooking overall.
The Whole Fish Cookbook
This book, written by chef Josh Niland of the Saint Peter restaurant in Australia, details Niland’s pioneering approach to ‘nose to tail’ fish cookery. The Whole Fish Cook won the James Beard Award for best cookbook in 2020, so we’re just starting to see the countless chefs begin to emulate Nilan’s philosophy with fish.
Why I love it: If you haven’t read this book, you do not realize how bad you are at cooking fish. It’s that simple. The book is segmented by the different fish cooking techniques and equips you with all you need to know to perform them at home with different types of fish. It also sprinkles in equally illuminating techniques for non-fish side dishes as well.
BEST COOKBOOKS FOR HOSTING DINNER PArties
The NoMad Cookbook
The Nomad was Daniel Humm’s Michelin star restaurant in the NoMad neighborhood of New York City. The restaurant was pure class. Imagine every dish making the diner feel like a grateful VIP (without an over-reliance on expensive ingredients). When Chef Humm transitioned full-time to Eleven Madison Park (rated best restaurant in the world by World’s 50 Best), he brought many of these recipes with him — including the famous NoMad roast chicken.
Why I love it: Chef Humm is without question one of the best chefs in the world, but the recipes in the Eleven Madison Park cookbooks are not feasible for home chefs. This cookbook contains dishes that are equally as impressive, delicious, and luxurious but with more approachable (but still tough!) recipes. Basically a zealous dinner host’s dream.
NIGHT+MARKET
Not every dinner party needs to be gourmet. But if you follow the example of Night+Market in Los Angeles, every dinner party probably needs great wine. Night+Market, a family-owned Thai restaurant in LA that was revamped by the family’s hip son, has redefined what it means to have fun with inventive Thai food (and natural wine) a restaurant.
Why I love it: This book perfectly balances respecting traditional Thai food with an eye for adventurous eating. The dishes are best served family-style, and in my experience they are always a hit. Just be sure to buy a wok, too.
BEST COOKBOOKS FOR NERDS
The Noma Guide to Fermentation
Noma has influenced the fine-dining scene more than any restaurant in the last 20 years. So when Noma released their Noma Guide To Fermentation, it felt like a vault of secrets had been opened. With the book, Noma revealed that the magic behind their incredible dishes lies not in their use of rare ingredients or high tech gadgets but in their use of an age-old food preservation technique: fermentation.
Why I love it: The Noma Guide to Fermentation is without question the most inspirational and habit-changing cookbook I’ve ever used, and it’s fundamentally evolved how I create my own dishes. I’ve written extensively on my love for this book, but I didn’t mention how thorough the science is too. When it comes to providing detailed explanations behind fermentation techniques and the microorganisms that make them happen, these guys leave no stone unturned, which empowers the reader to try their own recipes, too.
Already have it? My other two fermentation book recommendations are Koji Alchemy and The Art of Fermentation.
Science and Cooking
Based on the popular Harvard University and edX course, Science and Cooking combines theory with recipes from infamous chefs to both educate and inspire. The book contains scientific explanations of accompanying recipes that only a true culinary nerd would be brave enough to try.
Why I love it: This book covers both physics and chemistry of flavor in a way that makes you finally understand some of the seemingly wacky recipes you’ve followed to date. Moreover, the book can help you challenge recipes you already know with better insights for a better way.
Best Cookbooks to Inspire
Fäviken: 4015 Days
Fäviken was an 18 seat restaurant in middle-of-nowhere, Sweden. The restaurant is permanently closed, but the research and recipes that head chef Magnus Nilsson executed will live on forever as true feats of culinary greatness. The restaurant used all local ingredients in its 30 course tasting menu, which is unsurprisingly difficult in remote Sweden’s snowy winters. You might have seen Fäviken on Chef’s Table or Mind of a Chef.
Why I love it: Magnus Nilsson is an incredible writer. Perhaps as rare an author as he is a chef. In addition to recipes, he details with whimsical precision not only his culinary philosophy but also his take on hospitality in general. I finished reading this book in a day but open it up again when I want to be inspired on how to create a holistic and consistent dining experience. If they can do it in Jarpen, Sweden, then I can do it too!
