The 10 Best Cookbooks for Guys Who Just Learned to Cook
2024-12-01 · 5 min read
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat is the cookbook that actually teaches you how to cook rather than just giving you recipes to follow. Nosrat breaks cooking down into four fundamental elements and explains how mastering each one gives you the confidence to improvise. The illustrations by Wendy MacNaughton are beautiful, and the tone is warm and encouraging without being condescending.
The Food Lab by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the science-first approach. Every recipe comes with an explanation of why it works, backed by the kind of obsessive testing that only a former MIT student would undertake. His smash burger technique, the best roast potatoes you will ever make, and his reverse-seared steak are all in here. It is a textbook disguised as a cookbook.
Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden organizes recipes by season and vegetable, which teaches you to cook with what is actually good at the market rather than fighting nature for out-of-season tomatoes in January. It is not a vegetarian cookbook, but it is vegetable-forward in a way that will permanently improve how you think about building a plate.
Every Night Is Pizza Night by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt brings the Food Lab approach to the food most people make at home. The dough recipe is straightforward, and the book covers everything from classic Neapolitan to pan pizza to Detroit style. Making pizza at home goes from intimidating to routine after cooking through the first few recipes.
Ottolenghi Simple by Yotam Ottolenghi takes the Israeli-British chef's signature Middle Eastern flavors and makes them achievable on a weeknight. Each recipe is tagged with its simplicity method: 10 ingredients or fewer, 30 minutes or less, one pot, or pantry staples. The flavors are still complex, but the effort required drops dramatically.
Other essentials include Julia Turshen's Small Victories for building confidence, Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking for understanding Italian food, and Fuschia Dunlop's The Food of Sichuan for anyone who wants to master Chinese cooking. A well-chosen cookbook collection is the fastest path from feeding yourself to actually cooking.
