The 80 Most Exciting New Spring Cookbooks for 2024

In the past, lists of spring’s new cookbooks were shorter. Publishers released their big hits in the fall, in advance of the holiday gifting season and just in time for people to spend more time cooking and baking. But this year’s spring lineup feels different, and whether that’s due to a strategic shift, supply chain or shipping delays, or simply too many exciting books to be crammed into a single season, this spring has a lot of exciting cookbooks to offer—so many, in fact, that we had to divide our cookbook preview up into multiple stories because the list was getting so long. Click over here for our list of baking and dessert books to check out, and head this way for noteworthy vegetarian and vegan books. Curious about new drinks books? That list is here. For all the other books we’re most looking forward to spending some quality time with this spring, scroll down.

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Dina Macki, who was born and raised in the Omani-Zanzibari community of coastal Portsmouth, England, traveled through Oman gathering recipes and stories and recording the many varied traditions and cuisines present in the region. She combined what she learned in her travels with favorite dishes from family and friends in this cookbook. There’s cinnamon-spiced salmon, tamarind, and eggplant curry topped with crispy fried onions; long-marinated, slow-cooked lamb; and sweets made with dates, cardamom, fennel seed, and sesame.

Every recipe in this cookbook comes with bonus tips, substitutions, and ways to avoid waste, plus Zaslavsky pauses frequently to go deep on why certain cooking techniques really make a difference. But the recipes don’t feel like cooking 101: You’ll find braised leeks with blue cheese crumbs, homemade crumpets, and zucchini pickles, and pasta sauced with the drippings and leftover meat from a roast chicken.

Trini doubles topped with chickpea curry. Butterflied sea bream spread with citrusy mojo. Roasted plantains with chile, lime, and peanut salsa. Every page of this book from chef and activist Lelani Lewis offers something that looks delicious, made all the richer with her research into the diverse culinary history of the Caribbean.

“To Desify,” Din explains, “is to elevate foods by infusing them with South Asian flavors and spices.” Din organizes her recipes here by meal. There are 5-minute (and prep-ahead) options for before dawn during Ramadan, like overnight oats and egg sandwiches slathered with red and green chutney; bites to break the fast, like cod or halloumi pakoras and chile paneer bao, and family-sized feasts like karahi chicken with fresh ginger and garlic, and slow-cooked lamb shanks showered with fried onions. There are quicker dinners here too, including a Butter Chicken Burger and garam masala and mustard seed spiced chow mein, plus lots of sweets.

If you dream of growing your own food in the countryside somewhere, this book from chef Julius Roberts will complete the fantasy. The dishes largely aren’t fussy restaurant fare, more elemental things to cook in every season. Roberts grates nutmeg over a cabbage, bacon, and potato soup and roasts a whole chicken in lots of heavy cream, mustard, and tarragon. In warmer weather he tops pan con tomate with grilled, freshly-caught sardines or mackerel and salsa verde.

Can you really make dinner in 15 minutes? Ali Rosen, author of Modern Freezer Meals and Bring It!, is out to prove you can, thanks to produce that doesn’t require a ton of prep, powerhouse pantry staples, and quick-cooking proteins. She punches up a canned-bean soup with a few teaspoons of Worcestershire sauce, cooks pasta in a mix of water and wine before stirring in frozen spinach and fresh goat cheese until creamy and silky, keeps ground turkey moist by adding tahini, and just might convince you that your broiler is the most valuable cooking implement in your kitchen.

In the early months of the pandemic, Emily Vikre, co-owner of Vikre Distillery and author of Camp Cocktails and The Family Camp Cookbook, set up a campfire every week, gathering friends outdoors for pro-level s’mores (try wrapping the chocolate and marshmallow in biscuit dough!) and fire-cooked bananas Foster. This book includes all her favorite campfire bites and drinks—some as simple as Nutella transformed into hot cocoa, or Medjool dates warmed in olive oil and sprinkled with salt, others as ambitious as challah-crusted “pot pies” made with a creamy chicken filling and cooked in a cast-iron sandwich maker. A fun gift for your favorite outdoorsy folks.

125 recipes from the celebrity chef, designed for time-strapped cooks. These stripped-down recipes prove how much you can do with just a few ingredients. Take shrimp, spaghetti, and harissa, squeeze on some lemon and scatter some parsley. Or make a quick romesco-ish purée of jarred roasted red peppers, toasted bread, and almonds with oil and vinegar, then use it as a bed for roasted cauliflower. Dinner is served.

Chef Imad Alarnab found safety in London after fleeing the violence of Assad’s Syria; in this book he shares his recipes for beloved Syrian dishes (plus a few new ones) and the story of his challenging journey out of Damascus. It’s a must-read, but you’ll be grateful for the food to fortify you along the way. Start with crispy strips of okra, fried and tossed in sumac, chile flakes, and cilantro oil, then piled on top of labneh. Stir roasted fennel wedges with tomatoes, dukkah, and goat cheese. Build the layers of makloubeh: baharat-spiced lamb shoulder, roasted eggplant, and rice, flipped and topped with pine nuts. Gather the people you love around the table to share.

“The preservation of a food culture does not require it to remain static,” writes Loyal. “The hybrid flavours I add to my family’s musical score are a taste of my second generation reality: ingredient ‘chords’ that knowingly cross-pollinate from motherland to adopted land, rooted to uprooted, traditional to remix and back.” He fills toasted sandwiches with rhubarb and nigella chutney, melty cheese, and shrimp cocktail-flavored potato chips; he marries aloo chaat with a wedge salad, topped with tamarind, date, and mint sauce, and a flurry of sev, pomegranate seeds, chopped onion, and crispy bacon bits.

“Food is never just about the present,” writes Wilkinson, who was Kentucky’s Poet Laureate from 2021 to 2023. “Every dish, every slice, every crumb and kernel also tethers us to the past.” Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts pulls on those strings, recalling the stories of Wilkinson’s foremothers with every recipe for foraged greens, chicken and dumplings, and corn pudding. “To disregard the Black mountain presence is to erase both the past and the present,” she points out. Every page of this essential book pushes back.

UK-based Anisa Karolia started making YouTube videos back in 2014. In this book, she offers all the cooking inspiration you need for Ramadan: energizing recipes for suhoor, small bites to break your fast, and classic, comforting dishes for iftar.

“Were we to trace the DNA of American cuisine,” writes chef Todd Richards, “we would find it inextricably linked to West Africa.” While recounting the journeys of his family through the Great Migration and into the present, Richards traces the influence of the African diaspora on food across the Americas: the link from jollof rice to jambalaya, from kola nuts harvested in Nigeria, Senegal and Gambia to cola-braised country ham, from roasted hen and fufu to chicken and dumplings. Recipes throughout pay homage—and they’re guaranteed to get you hungry.

Quinn invites you to look in your fridge and make dinner out of the dregs: odds and ends of cooked and uncooked vegetables, cold rice, cooked pasta, leftover meat. Each recipe in this book starts with those bits and bobs. A bit of shredded chicken goes into a lemony yogurt pasta; leftover ham finds a home in a mustardy cabbage and apple gratin. She shares a flexible formula for soups, pasta bakes, and savory pies that’ll make the most of whatever you’ve got.

You may have trouble choosing which dishes to make first from this book by Vancouver-based TikTok star Tiffy Chen. Savory egg crepes filled with ham? Taiwanese sesame and peanut mochi? Fluffy gua bao with braised pork belly? Chen’s grandmother’s recipe for rockfish with spicy fermented bean paste? Maybe all of the above.

March

This is not a classic Italian cookbook. But this collection of nontraditional pasta dishes will delight anyone who craves spaghetti (or fettuccine, or rigatoni)—and anyone who is looking for new twists on their dinner routine. Pashman offers Shakshuka and Shells, sprinkled with za’atar and drizzled with sriracha, and tortellini swimming in a kimchi parmesan broth. He punches up puttanesca with a splash of fish sauce and Calabrian chili paste, and demonstrates how to turn noodles into something like a pizza crust that’s ready for topping with artichokes and feta or charred broccoli and chili crisp. The collection of crispy breadcrumb toppings for your plate is worth the price of admission.

Lidey Heuck understands that you may not have the time (or the will) to grate cheese for fondue, but it’s quick and easy to pour some wine and kirsch on a wheel of cheese and warm it until it’s gooey. You might want to invite people over, but you need recipes that you can make ahead. This book includes a few celebration-worthy recipes—chicken roasted with sparkling wine and clusters of grapes! Vegetarian cassoulet!—but largely focuses on fuss-free meals with short ingredient lists, like salmon with honey and chili crisp and an assemble-in-advance English Muffin Breakfast Bake.

First, a heads up: this book is mayo-free. Instead, there’s a room temp tuna pasta with crispy roasted white beans and capers. There are spicy kimchi noodles with sesame and cheddar frico. There’s Green Goddess orecchiette with avocado, roasted pumpkin seeds, and corn nuts. There’s Brown Butter Gnocchi Chaat, which quite honestly sounds perfect.

Some chef books are full of fussy methods that only make sense for a fully staffed kitchen feeding a packed restaurant. But this book from San Antonio chef Steve McHugh shows how thinking like a chef can actually make your cooking life more easily flavorful. If you make any of the base ingredients here, they’ll translate into a handful of dishes, practically guaranteeing that you’ll run out before you get bored. Start with homemade mustard with brown sugar and sherry vinegar, and use it to transform your split pea soup or sheet-pan chicken. Chicken confit enriches a salad of bitter greens or fills a cheesy stuffed squash. Sauerkraut and maple syrup make a “Sweet and Sauer Sauce” for cauliflower—save the rest for a vegetarian take on the Reuben.

The author of Simply and Persiana Everyday—both Epicurious staff favorites—is back with 100 more crowd-pleasing recipes. She makes a pesto of pistachios, dill, and cilantro to toss with pasta, olives, red onion, and tomatoes, and simmers seafood and arborio rice in a brothy mixture of tomatoes, bell pepper, and harissa.

“FLAVOR IS MOLECULES,” pronounces one of the early pages of this book by the co-founder of the fermentation lab at Noma in Copenhagen. Johnson has a Ph.D. in flavor chemistry, but her writing is warm and fun, not academic. While there are some recipes in each section to illustrate the themes she’s covering, and sidebars about how to apply the basic theories, this is primarily a book you’ll read to completely change your understanding of how food works.

This book, the first English-language cookbook to focus on the culinary traditions of southern Thailand, highlights how the cuisines of this region balance dishes rich, spicy, tart, herbal, and aromatic. Bush gathers recipes from curry stalls, like fiery kingfish khua kling served with cooling cucumber and toasted shrimp paste dip with garlic and palm sugar. He heads to the Malaysian border for coconutty, galangal-scented curry broth with chicken and thin rice noodles, and to the islands for steamed packets of sticky rice and banana. In the countryside, he learns about the making of palm sugar—and cashew palm sugar brittle. On the coast, there’s squid with salted egg yolk and deep-fried prawns with tamarind.

This love letter to produce offers myriad ways to cook vegetables: tuna-stuffed artichoke hearts with golden fried leaves, Sicilian broccoli cooked in red wine with olives, creamy celery and walnut pesto, meatless ricotta and green pea polpette with spicy tomato sauce. This is the kind of book you’ll be glad to have if you tend to go to the farmers market without a plan in place.

Despite the name, this book from the writer of Salad Freak is more veg-forward, flavor-focused, hippie-inspired California cuisine than it is nutrition-guided cookbook. While not strictly plant-based, anyone trying to eat more vegetables will find tons to love here: red lentil, carrot, and enoki mushroom stew with a touch of smoked soy sauce; silky parsnip soup with crispy fried leeks and a swirl of parsley oil; charred cabbage basted with a mix of butter and mushroom powder. Damuck makes the case for bringing back the lentil loaf. We’ll have to try it and see.

In this collection of recipes both classic and new, Chef Junda Khoo shares family go-tos and recipes he learned from street vendors, as well as his own versions of essential dishes. He fills wonton skins with all the flavors of laksa—including the reduced-down soup. He flavors frozen blocks of iced calamansi tea with salted plum and adds mezcal for enjoying with a spicy meal.

Forget the “throw everything onto one pan and cross your fingers” school of sheet-pan dinners; these recipes from two food industry pros are particularly designed to optimize what your sheet pan can do. Think slowly-roasted shallots basted in maple butter, quick merguez meatball pitas with fresh herbs and yogurt, a no-paella-pan-needed riff on paella, and weeknight-friendly baked store-bought ravioli in spicy tomato sauce with white beans and capers.

Von Diaz highlights 125 recipes from the islands spanning the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Ocean here, with each section focused on ancestral cooking techniques that many of the cuisines share, despite distance and cultural differences. You’ll want to cook everything, starting with Guam’s citrus-marinated shrimp with grated coconut, Madagascar’s spicy lemon chile relish, Trinidadian stewed curry eggplant, and crab-stuffed fritters from Puerto Rico.

This book covers mid-morning snacks both savory and sweet; afternoon bites like Tuscan scarpaccia, a savory round bread with slices of zucchini and Parmigiano Reggiano; torta Bertolina, a grape-studded olive oil cake; and Florentine rice pudding in pastry cups. Of course, there are aperitivi and antipasti too.

You couldn’t have Korean food without gochujang, doenjang, and ganjang. Here, chef Mingoo Kang highlights the depth of flavor of these fundamental fermented soybean products—and dishes both classic and new to make at home. Think steamed cod with savory doenjang béarnaise, gochujang jjigae with pork shoulder and daikon, and asparagus bibimbap garnished with edible flowers.

This peek at the holiday menus of 30 cooks illustrates the varied food traditions across the Jewish diaspora: one family’s Rosh Hashanah is incomplete without fried eggplant with mint dressing, while another celebration features chopped liver, kasha varnishkes, and pickled cucumber salad. One family breaks the Yom Kippur fast with warm yogurt soup, another with gravlax. At Purim, there are hamantaschen filled with chocolate ganache, and date filled cookies topped with sesame seeds.

This book is full of chef’s secrets—how to make crispy potato crumbs that behave like panko but taste like chips, how to bump up brown butter with milk powder, how to dress up duck confit or scallops or branzino. Even if you don’t tackle the full restaurant-style dishes here, there are pro moves that are worth taking with you.

One of the best ways to cut down on waste is to cook one base ingredient that can go a few different ways throughout the week. Basic beans bubble with broccoli and Parmesan, but also pair nicely in a salad with tinned fish, crunchy breadcrumbs, and kale. Green sauce goes on a galette or flavors a simple soup. Breadcrumbs work for chicken schnitzel, but you’ll want to save some, on her advice, to season well with salt and sprinkle over ice cream with a drizzle of olive oil.

This book is full of ideas for foragers: you’ll want to make nettle furikake and a creamy nettle purée for saucing clams, ceviche with sea beans, and kabocha squash cooked in hot coals, filled with cheese and chanterelles. But even if you don’t have access to wild foods, you’ll find seasonal cooking inspiration here aplenty. We’re eager to cook both the celery root cassoulet and the sweet potato poutine.

Sauce is a cheat code for more interesting dinners—everyday roasted veg or grilled chicken can become something memorable if you’ve got the right drizzle. Boyd offers recommended pairings for her 50 simple sauces. Introduce your potatoes to smoky mornay or creamy Comeback Sauce; spoon Tomato-Ginger Sauce over grilled fish or fried eggs.

The latest from Andrés features 150 recipes from the eastern Mediterranean as served at his restaurant Zaytinya, which has locations in Washington DC, New York, and Miami Beach. Start with Greek zucchini fritters with caper and yogurt sauce for dipping, or carrot fritters with green pistachio and parsley sauce. Then get into the seafood: fried mussels with walnut tarator;  scallops with sumac and tzatziki; broiled oysters with feta, ouzo, and tomato sauce.

April

At the beginning of this book—her third—Sara Forte of Sprouted Kitchen describes hitting a wall in her cooking life and food career. In the busy years of having young children, she realized that what she cooked and wrote about needed “to be less romantic and leisurely, more practical and adaptable.” While not strictly vegetarian, the book is produce-forward: Her lentil and quinoa salad brings in arugula, feta, and peaches; she sets a butternut squash steak over quinoa and tops with a crunchy, spicy apple relish. In addition to make-ahead tips, she includes useful signposts to help if you need to prep dinner in little windows throughout the day.

Alyse Whitney wants your next gathering to be more fun. She’ll show you how to make a multi-dip snack plate with “crudités moats” and how to pair dips with dippers, both homemade and store-bought. Saag Paneer Artichoke Dip needs crispy scooped baby potatoes (or some pita chips); Deviled Spam Musubi Dip gets strips of crispy rice wrapped in nori.

These Basque bites include things on a toothpick, like the pickled pepper, anchovy, and olive combo called gildas, but also creamy salads and pickley things on toast, crispy fritters and croquetas, and pastry-wrapped snacks, all to be consumed before a meal.

Even if you’re pretty confident in your sandwich-making skills, you’ll pick up some fresh ideas here, like spreading the exterior of a cheesy, melty chicken sandwich with a mix of honey, soy sauce, hot sauce, and mustard just before you finish crisping it, or adding a touch of miso to your tuna salad. Some of these sandwiches are elaborate—pork loin gets paired with homemade pretzel buns and honey roasted figs—but plenty are bold-but-simple combos that you can assemble for breakfast, lunch, or dinner today.

Chef Edward Lee’s new bourbon book isn’t just a drinks collection or the standard add-whiskey-to-your-barbecue sauce offering. There are cocktails, like a Manhattan that pairs smoky Lapsang Souchong tea with bourbon and luscious oloroso sherry, and a fragrant Gold Rush with a touch of salt and a syrup sweetened with golden raisins. But this is also an ambitious collection of dishes and techniques both savory and sweet: a salad of roasted fennel with bourbon-glazed burnt oranges and feta; a trick for making bourbon-flavored salt; a mushroomy brown rice, bourbon, and spelt risotto.

This book begins with tapas: ham, egg, and chicken croquetas, shrimp fritters and ones made with salt cod. It covers breads and vegetables, including gazpacho made with stale bread and “ripe, tasty tomatoes,” then gets into seafood: red tuna with a sauce made from PX sherry and citrus; fideos with prawns and clams. There are lamb skewers rubbed with cinnamon, cumin, and coriander, and olive oil-fried torrijas infused with lemon and cinnamon. The dishes paint a picture of a cuisine shaped by many different communities going back centuries.

Ginette Mathiot wrote more than 30 cookbooks in her lifetime; her Je Sais Cuisiner was a bestseller published in 1932 with nearly 2000 recipes. This Phaidon collection culls it down, trying to offer all of the most popular home-cooked dishes in the French repertoire.

Yasmin Fahr, who often contributes weeknight recipes to the New York Times, aims in this book to help you find the recipes you need depending on your energy level (and mood). Turn frozen corn, feta, and broccolini, quickly broiled, into a dinner you can eat on the couch. Got enough steam for half an hour of cooking? Braise some salmon and veggies in coconut milk, or pile brioche buns with gingery, scallion-studded smashed chicken burgers with avocado and yogurt sauce. Feeling flush with energy and time? Invite friends over for Baked Tomato Mac ‘n’ Cheese and skillet-charred jarred artichoke hearts.

In this cookbook, Dinkovski, the founder of London-based supper club Mystic Burek, highlights the traditions of North Macedonia and her own diasporic spins on classic recipes. She crowns a banoffee pie with crunchy shreds of kadaif pastry, marries creamy feta, yogurt, and walnut salad with panzanella, and offers a hot fried cheese burek loaf with chile and honey.

Rocco DiSpirito takes on quick home cooking, loading up his mac and cheese with sausage and smoked provolone, and layering shrimp patties with fried green tomatoes. Some of the moves here feel more cheffy than weeknight—though if you feel like frying lobster halves on a Tuesday, this book will help you do it.

Some New Yorkers may remember Sorella, Emma Hearst’s acclaimed (and now-closed) Lower East Side restaurant. These days, Hearst is upstate at Forts Ferry Farm, and the vegetables grown there inspired this vegetable-focused (but not vegetarian!) cookbook. Parsnips find their way into a coconutty rum cocktail; Cabbage au Poivre wears a luxurious sauce of crème fraîche, cognac, shallot, and brined green peppercorns.

This collection of recipes inspired by the wild foods of the woods and shores of the West coast will show you what to do with sea lettuce and kelp, herring and candy cap mushrooms, spruce tips, miner’s lettuce, and fiddleheads.

As soon as you get this book, you’ll want to invite some friends over to help you cook (and devour) as many dishes as possible all at once: black pork curry and carrot top sambol; a feast of stringhoppers with egg curry and pol sambol; a vegan spread of cashew curry and raw mango curry, served with spiced beets and gingery leeks; pineapple curry with onion and ginger and chicken biryani with malay pickle and all the trimmings.

In their new celebration of modern Korean cooking, Chef Deuki Hong and TASTE’s Matt Rodbard start in Seoul. They find rose tteokbokki, which softens the gochujang heat with heavy cream and apple preserves. They sip an espresso tonic dressed up with orange syrup, and cool off between bites of barbecue with a granita made from radish kimchi. Back in the States, they check in with (and get recipes from) innovators like Northern Virginia’s Danny Lee of Mandu; Peter Cho of Han Oak in Portland, Oregon; Ted and Yong Kim of Seoul Sausage Company in LA; and Eddo Kim and Clara Lee of Queens in San Francisco.

With help from stunning photography of the scenery, Peppler, author of À Table and Apéritif, paints a picture of the cooking of this southeastern region of France, bounded at the north by the Alps, in the south by the Mediterranean, with the Rhône River to the west and the Italian border to the east. She calls out the -ades (tapenade, anchoïade, poivronade, etc.) for snacking with drinks, herbal bourride with fresh fish and mussels, and walks you through the assembly of the cream filled tarte Tropézienne sprinkled with pearl sugar.

Even if you never invite guests over spur of the moment, the recipes in this book will lower your stress whenever you’re hosting. The book begins with a collection of five minute appetizers. Dinner can mean 10-minute store-bought tortellini tossed with wine, mascarpone, frozen peas, and basil. Or it can mean looking to your pantry and grabbing jars of roasted peppers and olives, along with cans of cannellini beans and cherry tomatoes, and making them into a flavorful chicken dish.

The owner of London’s Max’s Sandwich Shop argues that the greatest breakfast sandwich of all time is a crusty roll with back bacon, seared scallops, and mayo, with hot sauce, lemon juice, or malt vinegar. He piles white bread with roasted celery root, boiled eggs, tonnato sauce, capers, and potato chips. And that’s just the beginning. This book is a wild, delightful ride.

Rinella believes that wild-caught food tastes better when it’s cooked outside. Whether you find yourself with just-caught mackerel, venison, goose, duck, or moose, Rinella will help you grill it, smoke it, or simmer it over your campfire.

Martínez’s latest cookbook focuses on the sort of home-cooked meals you wouldn’t often find in Mexican restaurants, as well as snacky antojitos like sopes and gorditas.

If you only ever use the microwave for steaming vegetables, you’ll find a handy chart for doing exactly that in this book. But Tim Anderson wants you to do more in the microwave—make brown butter cornbread, jackfruit and mushroom enchiladas, risotto, and yes, full fish dinners.

Christopher Kimball’s team at Milk Street frames this book as a modern kitchen bible, in the tradition of Joy of Cooking or Fannie Farmer, reflecting a more globally-influenced pantry and repertoire. It’s a vast 600-plus page recipe collection, interspersed with helpful tips and charts. If you’re feeling like you’re out of ideas for vegetables or you keep making the same soup over and over, this book will come in handy.

Lieu, the author of Modern Asian Baking at Home, goes savory here, sharing favorite dishes of the Asian diaspora, including recipes from family and friends as well as her Subtle Asian Baking community. There’s a rice paper hack for har gow at home, an easy sushi bake for potlucks, chicken smoked with barley tea and cocoa powder, and cheesy kimchi fried rice.

Jewish food authority Joan Nathan looks back on her personal history, weaving recipes and family photos throughout this memoir.

TikTok favorite Jenny Martinez shares 100 Mexican recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert. Follow her lead by flavoring the dough of your flour tortillas with a few puréed tablespoons of chorizo, and we’re guessing your life will never be the same.

A beginner-friendly guide to this traditional Japanese method of pickling your food by burying it in a bed of fermented rice bran and germ. Yamada walks you through setting up your fermentation bed, the best produce to use—she recommends trying avocado!—and how to pickle seafood before grilling.

“Instead of relying on cup ramen to survive, take my hand,” writes 25 year-old TikTok phenom Newt Nguyen. Paging through, you get the sense that Nguyen believes in you—and believes it’ll absolutely be worth it to make any of his six fried chicken recipes. Alongside tacos, salmon crispy rice, and a Chicken Parm engineered for maximum cheesepull, Nguyen shares recipes for the Vietnamese food that soothes his homesickness, and a collection of quick noodle and stir-fry dishes that really won’t take much more time on a weeknight than that instant ramen would.

Rosa Jackson, who runs a cooking school in Nice, highlights the specialties of France’s fifth-largest city in this collection: artichokes stewed in wine; socca and rosé; pan bagnat filled with tuna, anchovies, olives, sliced eggs, and tomatoes; golden plum tarts; and pissaladières gilded with tender onions.

Record producer Benny Blanco wants to help you throw “the greatest dinner party of all time.” That might mean a pool party with crab cakes and Key lime pie. It might mean chicken cutlets drizzled with honey, olivey pasta, and tiramisu. He also tucks in a few recipes begged from restaurants and some quick favorites that he promises are “so simple a toddler can make them (a.k.a., a stoned college student).”

Lee Kalpakis left her life as a professional recipe developer, food stylist, and private chef in New York City to live (and cook) in a 22-foot long 1976 Fleetwood Prowler camper in the Catskills while she and her partner constructed a cabin. This book is meant to serve just-for-the-weekend campers as well as those committed to a tiny-kitchen or outdoor-cooking life on the road or off the grid. Think campfire-cooked bucatini with charred tomato sauce; grilled cheese sandwiches stuffed with bacon, sauerkraut (cooked in the bacon) and sharp cheddar; silky puréed potato soup with jarred marinated artichokes, spinach, and capers; and picnics of canned smoked mussels, marinated in harissa and lemon and piled onto potato chips.

Stafford celebrates the ritual of pizza night at home with paired pizza and salad recipes for every week of the year. In the fall there’s a mashed potato and bacon pizza inspired by the one at Bar in New Haven, with the candied pecan and mixed green salad they serve at the restaurant. In winter you’ll quick-pickle some celery slices to sprinkle onto Buffalo Cauliflower Pizza and eat it with a cabbage wedge—both get some blue cheese dressing, of course. Spring brings ribbons of asparagus and ruffled prosciutto, scattered with funky Taleggio; summer corn mingles with Hatch chiles, mayo, and Oaxaca cheese.

The recipes in this book from New York Times reporter and author of the cookbook Indian-Ish come with reviews from real kids—plus Krishna’s memories of traveling to each of the chapter’s destinations. As you cook your way around the world with your favorite kiddo, you may find that everyone in the family has some new favorite dishes.

Vazquez shares the stories of 33 Salvadoran women in this collection, woven throughout their recipes for pupusas with curtido, crispy shrimp tortitas, tamales wrapped in banana leaves, and comforting soups.

Italians do happy hour better—your drink often comes with snacks on the house, and we’re not just talking a few measly olives. Ferrari organizes this book by the format of the snack: crunchy bites like brown butter polenta crackers or aniseed-scented roasty chickpeas; bundles of herby goat cheese wrapped in speck; skewers, toasts, and more.

The author of Bitter Honey charts a year in her Sardinian kitchen: boiled eggs with grated bottarga in spring, zucchini and white peach salad in the summer, chicken braised with grapes and fennel in the fall, pavlova with mandarin curd and fresh bay leaves in winter. The recipes aren’t strictly Sardinian—Clark finds treasures wherever she eats.

May

Chef Yevhen Klopotenko aims to bring “real Ukrainian cuisine out of hiding” with this treasury of 100 recipes, some of which he traces to ancient manuscripts. There are pillowy rolls topped with garlic and dill, chopped herring mixed with tart apple, and grated beet salad with fresh horseradish root. You’ll find borsch with pork ribs and smoked pears, green borsch with sorrel, and cold borsch made with kvas, which you can ferment yourself from rye bread or beets.

In this book of grilling ideas for every season from the author of Live Fire, you can select a party menu based on how much time you have until the guests arrive. Each list includes drinks and nibbles, a dip, a platter, a side, and dessert. Even if you don’t make the full menu, there’s a ton of fun inspiration here: start with snacky skewers with pineapple, prosciutto, and pickled chiles; warm an entire loaf of foil-wrapped, cream-cheese-stuffed garlic bread over coals; call everyone over to help themselves to sticky agrodolce sausages with chickpeas and peppers.

Between the recipes here, chef Fadi Kattan introduces readers to the Bethlehem vendors of fresh herbs and vegetables, the bakers offering scalding-hot kmaj, and the butchers in the old souk. Kattan weaves their stories into the fabric of family memories and iconic Palestinian dishes, organized by season.

Pitmaster Moe Cason, who stars in National Geographic’s World of Flavor series, started competing in the barbecue circuit in 2006. Some 260 contests later, he’s sharing his tips: “I hope my family recipes become your family recipes,” he writes. Come for the spicy mac and cheese; stick around for the pork chops stuffed with figs, feta, and basil. He stirs cream cheese into a pan of corn, diced bacon, butter, and jalapeño, then smokes it for an hour. We’d love to try it.

Massih offers his versions of Lebanese staples, as served in his Greenpoint, Brooklyn shop. “Just remember, I’m not your Lebanese grandmother,” he cautions, “so don’t be surprised when you see fresh spins on Middle Eastern classics.” He offers guidance on the number of dishes you need for a crowd, plus full sample menus, like a picnic with Aleppo Garlic Shrimp Cocktail, Pesto White Bean Dip, and Za’atar Chicken Salad Sandwiches, plus Salty Chocolate Tahini Cookies for dessert.

“Yes, we’re restaurant chefs,” begins this book. “No, this isn’t a restaurant cookbook. Why? Because we want you to actually cook these recipes.” And even if you’ve never been to eat at Kismet or Kismet Rotisserie in Los Angeles, you’re going to want to actually cook these dishes: the vinaigrette seasoned with oven-dried grape leaves; the marinated feta with coriander and fennel-roasted tomatoes and grapefruit; the main-dish caraway cabbage gratin with Gorgonzola; halibut skewers with cherry tomatoes, mint, and coconut vinaigrette. Cap off your dinner party with a milk chocolate tart crowned with sesame whipped cream.

Oakland chef Matt Horn writes that his second book is “a tribute, a love letter to the South and its indomitable spirit” with “legacy embedded in each recipe.” He shares buttermilk-brined fried chicken and Nashville’s spicy version, smothered chicken, and Chicken Brunswick Stew. Plus, you’ll find sides like hushpuppies and biscuits with honey butter or tomato gravy, and Mississippi mud pie for dessert.

This fun guide to Thai food in comic book form weaves in the history of each dish and lots of cooking tips, plus just enough food photography to keep your mouth watering.

These intricate recipes from Chef Dave Verheul of Embla in Melbourne often rely on a wood-fired oven, but even if you don’t have access to one, this is the kind of cheffy book you read for intriguing flavor combinations and fine dining techniques. He blends charred bay leaves into oil that marinates grilled cherry tomatoes, and adds olive brine into salad dressing. He serves oysters with a granita made from wine vinegar, and freezes a fluffy mix of fresh ricotta, beaten egg white, and whipped cream to top with an olive oil meringue. Even if the only recipe you make is the simple mix of butter, Dijon mustard, and crème fraîche, your Sunday suppers might be changed forever.

Edible flowers aren’t just for cake decoration; this book offers a wide range of recipes both sweet and savory. It’s organized by plant, so if you find yourself with lavender or marigolds, elderflower or wild violets, you’ll know what to do.

According to Dalkin, tons of quick, easy, everyday cooking can happen on the grill, especially when you’re talking about cumin-rubbed chicken kebabs, a charred-lettuce salad with grilled shrimp, or meaty trumpet mushrooms with chimichurri. There are a few dinner party menus in here too, plus some easy cocktails.