The best cookbooks of 2024 according to the Los Angeles Times
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"The year 2024 had us hugging our cookbooks. They brought us solace, nostalgia, inspiration, delight, reclamation, beauty and deliciousness when much of the rest of the world seemed to induce fear and uncertainty.
Our list of favorites for 2024 includes something for every kind of food book lover.
Recipes came from a tiny creek in the Appalachians and the rice terraces of Yunnan. Through them, authors gave voice to their ancestors, explored identity, put spins on centuries-old traditions, shared their love for Sicilian sweets, Chinese breakfasts, heirloom beans.
This year’s list also features fresh books from many Los Angeles authors. Cook vegetables better with Sarah Hymanson and Sara Kramer’s “Kismet,” or make saag paneer lasagna and green chutney pizza from “Amrikan” by food writer Khushbu Shah. “Wafu Cooking” is a California take on “Japanese-style” fusion, by way of cooking teacher Sonoko Sakai. Former L.A. Times cooking columnist Ben Mims dives deep into cookies from around the world. And Adrienne Borlongan, founder of Wanderlust Creamery, shows us exactly how to re-create her wildly wonderful flavors for ice cream.
Here is L.A. Times Food’s list of the best cookbooks of 2024."
By Betty Hallock, Jenn Harris, Stephanie Breijo, Danielle Dorsey, Bill Addison, Sarah Mosqueda, Cindy Carcamo and Laurie Ochoa
"After a seven-year break following the 2017 publication of her 11th cookbook, Joan Nathan emerged in 2024 with two new cookbooks, each a meaningful addition to the evolving story of food and identity. In “My Life in Recipes,” Nathan, as I…
"In the brand-new “A Sweet Year,” organized with a chapter and overview for each Jewish holiday, Nathan has devised what should become a children’s cooking classic. With an inspired structure for teaching young cooks, each recipe specifies…
"Kiano Moju’s “AfriCali” cookbook shares her perspective as someone who was born to a Kenyan mother and a Nigerian father, grew up in the Bay Area (with summers often spent visiting her Maasai family in Kenya) and has since traveled all…
"For her debut cookbook, Khushbu Shah gathers recipes that blend traditional Indian dishes with the ingenuity of Indian mothers who substitute American grocery store items for hard-to-find ingredients. The resulting adaptations are…
"Bestselling cookbook author and Food Network personality Ina Garten has popularized phrases like “How easy is that?” and “Store-bought is fine,” making entertaining like a domestic goddess feel attainable rather than aspirational. Her…
"Steve Sando is the man behind Rancho Gordo, the heirloom bean company you have no doubt seen at your local gourmet market or on the menu of your favorite restaurant. Sando has made a career of saving, sourcing, growing and cooking with…
"From the first pages of Kristina Cho’s book, I felt a kinship with the author. Being both Chinese and Eastern European, I’m often pulled in two directions. I too have been accused of not being “Chinese enough.” Cho’s experience is…
"There are so many ways to appreciate former L.A. Times cooking columnist Ben Mims’ magnum opus on the topic of cookies. With 300 recipes and matching images for many of them, the book covers more shapes and styles and levels of difficulty…
"For a blend of Italian baked goods old and new, “Dolci” can’t be beat. That’s because author and first-gen Italian American Renato Poliafito channeled his heritage and his growing pains into a career and a new cookbook that seamlessly…
"Arielle Johnson — a food scientist who helped establish the fermentation lab at Noma in Copenhagen and an advisor to some of the world’s top chefs — breaks down how we experience flavor. What we taste refers to salty, sour, sweet, bitter…
"I appreciate the ethos of Georgina Hayden’s “Greekish,” a casual, I-do-what-works-for-me approach to cooking inspired by her Greek Cypriot heritage. It’s still a deep dive into the cuisines of Greece and Cyprus, with an acknowledgment of…
"In the follow-up to their 2016 bestselling cookbook “Koreatown,” authors Deuki Hong and Matt Rodbard think even bigger. They expand beyond the flavors of the Korean American diaspora with “Koreaworld” and dig into Korean cuisine’s “global…
"In her 100th cookbook, Martha Stewart shares 100 of her favorite recipes and an intimate glimpse into her personal life. Black-and-white photos of Stewart, her family and significant places and milestones over the years are peppered…
"This is a book designed to appeal to every diet and persuasion, whether you’ve been plant-based for years or just starting to flirt with the idea. Joe Yonan introduces the basics, building the foundation for a myriad of meals that begin…
"Chef Yotam Ottolenghi and his co-authors define comfort food as simultaneously nurturing, convenient, nostalgic and indulgent. That’s the best way to describe the recipes in “Ottolenghi Comfort: A Cookbook.” The Israeli-born British chef,…
"Novelist and poet Crystal Wilkinson writes movingly about her Black Southern Appalachian foremothers, giving shape and voice to her family’s kitchen ghosts — those who passed their rural Kentucky foodways from generation to generation.…
"“Oh, that’s Richard Hart,” says Marcus, the pastry chef on FX’s “The Bear” portrayed by Lionel Boyce, when a colleague asks him about a picture taped to his workstation for inspiration. This isn’t TV fiction: Hart was a chef in London,…
"The comforting sopa de res, savory panes con pollo and other Salvadoran dishes featured in “The SalviSoul Cookbook” will entice any reader and likely raise childhood memories for those who are part of the Salvadoran diaspora. Vasquez’s…
"The creativity abounds in Matty Matheson’s latest, an ode to the simpler pleasures in life: soups, salads and sandwiches. In the third cookbook by the Canadian chef, internet personality and “The Bear” producer and actor, all three…
"L.A.-based Owen Han, creator of spectacularly successful sandwich content, wrote his first book, and it’s highly cookable. Yes, it’s all sandwiches — who doesn’t love them? — that means his very broad definition (some would argue too…
