The All-Time Best Cookbooks for Home Cooks

I own a lot of cookbooks. I’ve even judged them in national award competitions. These are the ones I actually cook from: the 21 best, most essential cookbooks for home cooks, from technique-building foundations to reliable weeknight dinners to the dessert books worth every bake.

Choosing the Best Cookbooks of All Time for Home Cooks

Even if you find recipes and cooking inspiration online (who doesn’t?), something about turning the pages of a cookbook feels comforting and personal, even transportive. The best ones not only give you flavorful, reliable recipes, they also make you a better cook. As a trained pastry chef and longtime food writer, I have a lot of cookbooks — over 200 and counting.

But which cookbooks should you own?

Cookbooks are an investment. They become a part of our kitchen. But if I had to narrow it down to “21 All-Time Best Cookbooks to Have on a Desert Island, Assuming This Island Has a Fully-Equipped Kitchen and a Grocery Store,” I would invest in the following must-have cookbooks for home cooks. I own and have cooked from each one over and over again, and feel confident in recommending them to anyone.

These cookbooks — plus a couple of bonus suggestions — cover everything from trusted weeknight basics to elegant, seasonal desserts.

You’ll also like: 7 Things You Didn’t Know About Julia Child and our annual Gift Guide: The Best Gifts for Home Cooks

How These Cookbooks Were Chosen

Not every cookbook that looks pretty on a shelf is worth cooking from, as I know well as a home cook, trained pastry chef, and judge for the IACP Cookbook Awards. I’ve also spent time talking cookbooks with the people who know them best — including Clementine Thomas, owner of Washington D.C.’s beloved cookbook shop Bold Fork Books. The books here met the same standard I apply when judging: recipes that are clear and work as written, teach, and offer a trusted point of view that makes you a better, more inspired cook. I also bring a personal vetting process: Every book on this list is one I own, trust, cook from repeatedly, and feel confident recommending to other cooks.

This list is divided into sections for easy navigation. The cookbooks are listed in no particular order:

• Foundational Cookbooks: Basic Cookbooks Every Kitchen Needs: fundamental, building-block cookbooks
• The Best Cookbooks for Weeknight Cooking: reliable cookbooks to return to again and again
• The Best American Classics, and a Few International Cookbooks: American roots, Italian, Asian, and other essential cookbooks
• The Best Dessert and Baking Cookbooks: from artisan bread to sweet desserts

Looking for cooking and kitchen gift ideas beyond cookbooks (but also, cookbooks)? Check out our annual gift guide for home cooks and food lovers for the best cookbook and kitchen picks at every price point.

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Foundational Cookbooks: Basic Cookbooks Every Kitchen Needs

Each of these cookbooks reach wide and deep; these are the solid, must-have cookbooks that cover everything. That’s why many of them are classic gifts for wedding showers and housewarmings.

Joy of Cooking: Fully Revised and Updated (2019)

Have you even furnished your kitchen if you don’t have this doorstopper in it? The Joy of Cooking finally got the big update it deserved in 2019. All the classics are still there (roast chicken, butter cookies, biscuits, pea soup), but with 600 new recipes and thousands of revisions to make it even more useful for today’s home cooks, who — like generations before them — can now stain, tab, and dog-ear the pages forever.

Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child

This is a timeless cookbook. More than that, this cookbook by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck actually teaches you how to cook, with straightforward teachers as your guide as you cook French dishes that still feel special decades after its first publication: quiche, omelets, crêpes, soups, cassoulet, classic sauces, and that famed boeuf Bourguignon.

New Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison

Deborah Madison is widely considered one of the best vegetarian cooks in the country, and for good reason. She is the real deal, with an encyclopedic knowledge of vegetables and seasonal produce — common and uncommon — and how to prepare all of it. Her palate is exceptional, but her cooking never strays into impractical or “hippie food” territory. Vegetarian or no, everyone would do well to own this book. Try the spinach soufflé and migas to start.

New Complete Technique by Jacques Pépin

Hypothetical situation: A recipe says something like, “dice one onion,” “line the cake pans,” or “skim the fat from the liquid.” Perhaps home butchery or mastering the five mother sauces is your thing. But how, exactly? This book teaches you how to cook like a pro, broken down into easy-to-follow photographed steps. Many professional chefs cite Jacques Pépin’s La Technique as required reading. Chef Tom Colicchio said, “In his books, he focuses on teaching techniques as opposed to recipes so that cooks not only understand the hows, but also — more important — the whys.” La Technique is French and American culinary school in cookbook form. 

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat

The Best Cookbooks for Weeknight Cooking

Need a straightforward, home-cooked meal that tastes really good but doesn’t require hours or elaborate techniques to make? Oh, and make it special, too. These cookbooks are designed with love, experience, and real-world cooking in mind. These best cookbooks have a special talent for delivering meals everyone loves, with zero complication.

The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook by Ina Garten

The original, the best. Ina Garten has published (count ’em) 13 cookbooks since her original Barefoot Contessa cookbook was published in 1999. But the original still feels just as necessary today, and is on all sorts of all-time best cookbook lists. Ina emphasizes sophisticated, quality recipes that are not pretentious or difficult to make. The original cookbook covers lots of bases, and many greatest hits from her time as a shop owner. As Ina would say, the entire cookbook is “fabulous!”

Milk Street: Tuesday Nights by Christopher Kimball

The title says it all. It’s Tuesday: What to cook that is inspiring and tasty, but neither too elaborate nor simplistic? The answer: anything in this book. Smartly categorized into sections like “Fast, Faster, Fastest,” “Supper Salads,” “Pizza Night,” and “Roast and Simmer,” Christopher Kimball and the Milk Street crew offer trustworthy recipes that emphasize layers of flavor. I’ve worn this cookbook out. It’s all good.

Once Upon a Chef by Jenn Segal

If your cool sister was a professionally-trained chef turned food writer for home cooks, you could do no better than the warm and talented Jenn Segal. In addition to the great personality she brings to her cookbook (from her blog of the same name), she has curated a fine collection of tested, family-friendly yet sophisticated recipes that taste pretty much perfect.

Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden

How do I love this cookbook? Let me count the ways. Joshua McFadden has worked at some of the country’s top restaurants, and has translated that expertise into an award-winning collection of thoughtful, seasonally-focused vegetable recipes designed to keep cooks of all skill levels well fed, year round. The compound butters and savory winter vegetable pie are favorites, but this entire cookbook (organized by season) is a hit.

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A Sense of Place: The Best American Classics, and a Few International Cookbooks

These cookbooks help define American cooking, and are essential guides for cooking a variety of international flavors.

The Zuni Cafe Cookbook by Judy Rodgers

Bay Area tech bros come and go. San Francisco’s beloved Zuni Café is forever. From the iconic restaurant of the same name, The Zuni Café Cookbook is one of my all-time favorite cookbooks. Judy Rodgers’s Caesar salad is the best in the country. The roast chicken recipe is imperative. The California restaurant and its cookbook have been around for decades, but still feels as fresh and relevant as ever.

The Taste of Country Cooking by Edna Lewis

A cookbook that reads as both memoir and love letter, the phenomenal Edna Lewis’s book of Virginia country cooking transports me every time. Lewis grew up in a small community founded by freed former slaves. In this book, she weaves memories and stories throughout her homestyle recipes (baked Virginia ham, crisp biscuits, skillet asparagus, hominy), organized by season and by menu. (For further reading, explore Unpeeled’s guide to Black culinary history, cookbooks, and resources.)

Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking by Toni Tipton-Martin

This award-winning cookbook holds over 200 years of African-American recipes that comfort and satisfy, with recipes like sweet potato biscuits with ham, skillet cornbread, pecan pie, gumbo, spoonbread, and lots more. Everything is delicious, presented with stunning photos and thoughtful background that provides both history, context, and technique. I am inspired every time I open this best cookbook’s pages. Tipton-Martin’s green chile skillet cornbread alone — recipe here — is worth the price of the book.

Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan

The famous butter tomato sauce recipe is just the start. Over the decades, beloved Marcella Hazan (originally a biology teacher) taught generations of American cooks how to make authentic Italian food in honest terms, using authentic, good-quality ingredients. Her legacy lives on, now better than ever thanks to this anniversary edition of this essential cookbook. (And be sure to get the recipe for Marcella Hazan’s Pasta With Pancetta and Peas — a family favorite.)

The Silver Spoon

And speaking of Italian cookbooks, this comprehensive but easy-to-follow cookbook is Italy’s answer to the Joy of Cooking. It’s been Italy’s best-selling cookbook for over 50 years. This essential cookbook covers everything in every category, including pastas galore (this gorgonzola pasta recipe is a favorite), sauces, meats, tons of vegetables, desserts, and so much more. Get this.

Japanese Home Cooking: Simple Meals, Authentic Flavors by Sonoko Sakai

I was fortunate to live in Tokyo, Japan for a while during law school. My experience of Japanese food, up to that time, was pretty much limited to sushi and ramen. How wonderful, then, to discover Japanese home cooking, with is breadth of simple, but oh how wonderful, vegetables, fish, soups, eggs, beans, and more. Sakai’s book takes you inside her Japanese kitchen. Your refreshed cooking repertoire will be all the better for it. She also has a fascinating backstory: from Japan to California to film to cooking.

Ottolenghi: Simple by Yotam Ottolenghi

Any of Yotam Ottolenghi’s cookbooks are worth owning. But this one really captured my heart and stomach with its smart recipes that let cooks achieve sophisticated, wildly flavorful dishes quickly and simply. Ottolenghi’s Middle Eastern-inspired collection of recipes cover breakfast (his egg bakes are next level), lunch, dinner, dessert, beverages, and come with whole menu plans.

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The Best Dessert and Baking Cookbooks

The last course is many people’s best course. Baked goods and desserts make everyone happy, but a good recipe and baking know-how is essential. As a professional baker with years of bakery and home-baking experience, I recommend these favorite books for bakers of all skill levels.

Happiness Is Baking by Maida Heatter

Maida Heatter’s cookbooks read like a big hug from a sassy aunt who bakes. The recipes in this pick for best all-time cookbook are everything you want to bake. Maida, who died at 102(!), wrote cookbooks filled with reliable, carefully-written dessert recipes and dishy headnotes. Any of her cookbooks are a good investment, though some are out of print. But this one takes the cake (sorry) for being a greatest hits collection of cakes, pies, cookies, bars, and more.

Sift by Nicola Lamb

Just paging through this beautiful and essential cookbook for bakers of all skill levels feels like dessert. But making these absolutely lovely recipes is the true treat. With precision and methodical direction, professional British pastry chef Nicola Lamb has worked with the best, and now shares her recipes for classics, brand-new creations, and familiar desserts with a unique twist — in a cookbook so good it won not one but two IACP cookbook awards in the same year.

My Bread by Jim Lahey

This is the bread-baking book that launched a thousand home artisan bread bakers. One of the country’s leading experts in good bread, baker Jim Lahey lets readers make with ease their own crusty loaves and other professional-quality Italian-centric goodness like pizza, panini, quick breads, and more. I’ve been recommending this book to people for years.

Cookbook FAQs

What cookbooks do you love or recommend as “must haves”? Share in the comments below.

Why You Can Trust This Cookbook List: This best cookbooks of all time list was personally curated by Lisa Ruland, a Culinary Institute of America graduate (baking & pastry valedictorian), Level 2 WSET-Certified Wine Professional (With Honors), and professional pastry chef and food writer/recipe developer who has worked for some of NYC’s top bakeries, and written for national food publications, including Bon Appétit, Saveur, Taste, Eater, Food52, and more. Lisa is a winner of the prestigious IACP Award for Unpeeled Journal, and is a former judge of the IACP cookbooks competition. I am committed to providing accurate, trustworthy culinary guidance based on years of hands-on experience in professional and home kitchens. Learn more about Lisa’s background and expertise.