The 8 Best Cookbooks Of 2024

If there was a cookbook author I wished lived in my pocket, it would be Julia Turshen. My copy of her previous cookbook, Simply Julia, is easily my most well-worn, sauce-shellacked volume on my shelf and the same is soon to be true of her newest collection. In a time of viral, static recipes, Turshen offers a nearly infinite number of recipe ideas in chart form, as well as room to learn your own taste and to play. It's a true choose-your-own adventure of a cookbook with delicious results, like cacio e pepe twice-baked potatoes, red curry corn soup, and cherry and chocolate cobbler. It's almost as good as having Julia in my back pocket, TBH.

A former restaurant editor at Food & Wine, Khushbu Shah has long championed diverse cuisines, which has led to her long-awaited chronicle of her own food journey via recipes across the Indian-American diaspora. Going "far beyond butter chicken," Shah's Amrikan is a dream of a cookbook, with experimental dishes that just might become your standard go-tos, like masala chai basque cheese cake and saag paneer lasagna, alongside essays in her singular voice. It's one of those cookbooks you'll want to cozy up with and read like the good book it is, chai in hand.

With Ina and Martha as my cooking patron saints, upping my dinner party game has been of utmost importance in 2024. If that sounds like you, you're going to want to get your paws on a copy of Katherin Lewin's Big Night. Structured by themes like "your best friend's birthday party" and "hot dogs and peak summer produce party," this book will have you feeling well-equipped for any level of gathering. It's the ideal tome for new and veteran hosts alike, with plenty of low-effort (to flashy) recipes I've made even when it's just a party of one—Lewin's recipe for "crunchy, roasted glitter" is my favorite addition to basically every dish I made in 2024.

In an alternate reality, I get to go to pastry school, but in my current reality I'm picking up Sift by Nicola Lamb, a very special book that'll have you feeling like a master baker by the final page. And you know what? Put me on cheese and pickle scone duty and I'll be more than equipped, that is just how remarkable Lamb's Sift is. Breaking down the hows, whys, and whens of mixing flour, sugar, eggs, and butter, Sift demystifies the science of baking while also giving home bakers enough room to play. And playing is absolutely what you'll want to do, once you peep her recipes for horchata tres leches and french toast cinnamon buns.

Chocolate-flavored anything has long bored me as a home baker. Where's the guava in the cheesecake, the miso in the cookies, the tamarind in the jelly filling?! Well, now that Bodega Bakes is on my shelf, I no longer need to wonder. Paola Velez's cookbook is a day-sweetener in more ways than one, with recipes that are inspired by the color and vibrancy of a Bronx bodega, such as the whole flan family, tortas, Caribbean corn pudding, and sticky buns. Next on my baking to-make list? Velez's recipes for rum-amisù, sweet plantain gelato, and miso dulce de leche mousse pie.

Renee Erickson's dreamy Getaway came to me at amidst a very wanderlust-y part of the travel-void pandemic, and yet I felt so well-traveled after cooking through it. So it comes as no surprise that her newest cookbook Sunlight & Breadcrumbs has arrived just when I needed a bit more creativity in my kitchen. If weeknight meals feel like a means to an end, Sunlight & Breadcrumbs will inject some serious vitamin D into your routine by way of simple, yet memorable recipes that liven up ingredients you already have on hand. Think melted anchovy toast, roasted plum sorbet, or even just some olive-oil roasted breadcrumbs.

In a sea of books where molecular gastronomy bros can make cooking feel like a boys' club, Flavorama by Arielle Johnson makes a case for just how open-access the food world can really be. Called the "food nerd's favorite food nerd," Johnson has written a book that is ultimately about confidence-building in the kitchen: how to build flavor from the ground up, whether it be by increasing umami with fermentation, concocting salad dressing algorithms, or largely just extracting as much flavor as possible to become a more intuitive cook.

For me (an art school graduate), it's the most page-turning food science cookbook around with science "experiments" that are a must-try, including my favorite panela-coconut iced coffee, garlic misozuke, and zucchini carpaccio with MSG.

As a first-generation American, Kristina Cho traverses different corners of both China and America to devise a style of cooking that brings us to her eponymous book, Chinese Enough. Not quite American, not quite traditional Cantonese, Chinese Enough winds through kitchens of the Midwest, her grandmother's Chinese garden, and Cho's own kitchen in San Francisco to bring us foods that are entirely new—like creamy tomato udon or spam and mac soup—along with banquet-level feasts. It's both Chinese enough and delicious enough, no matter which recipe you make from this warm, clever cookbook.