The most recommended books on American cuisine

Who picked these books? Meet our 18 experts.

18 authors created a book list connected to American cuisine, and here are their favorite American cuisine books.
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Book cover of The Border Cookbook: Authentic Home Cooking of the American Southwest and Northern Mexico

Jackie Alpers Author Of Taste of Tucson: Sonoran-Style Recipes Inspired by the Rich Culture of Southern Arizona

From my list on southwestern regional home cooking.

Why am I passionate about this?

Jackie Alpers is an award-winning professional food photographer and author. She is a longtime contributing recipe developer & photographer for The Food Network, Refinery29, TheKitchn, TodayFood, Real Simple, National Geographic, and Edible Baja Arizona Magazine among others. She has been featured in articles for Reader’s Digest, CNN, Good Morning America, The New York Times & NPR. She writes, cooks, and styles recipes from her sun-lit studio in Tucson, Arizona.

Jackie's book list on southwestern regional home cooking

Jackie Alpers Why did Jackie love this book?

The Border Cookbook will teach you just about everything you need to know about the many different styles of Southwestern cuisine from the southern border regions. Trailing from northern Mexico to southern California, across Arizona and up through northern New Mexico, the book is organized by recipe instead of region so you can see how ingredients are uniquely utilized. Headers explain the history and regional significance of each dish.

By Cheryl Jamison, Bill Jamison,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Border Cookbook as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Now more than ever, Southwestern food is a hugely popular trend. As ingredients are becoming more readily available to at-home cooks, there is a great demand for simple, delicious, and authentic recipes that bring Mexican and Southwestern food to our own tables.
In their James Beard Book Award-winning cookbook, authors Cheryl Alters Jamison and Bill Jamison combine the best of Mexican and Southwest cooking, bringing together this large region's Native American, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo culinary roots into one big, exuberant book-The Border Cookbook. In over 300 recipes they explore the common elements and regional differences of border cooking. They…


Book cover of Cross Greek Cookery

Andrew T. Huse, Bárbara Cruz, and Jeff Houck Author Of The Cuban Sandwich: A History in Layers

From my list on reads for when you’re hungry.

Why are we passionate about this?

Our obsessions with food and history mean that recipes are not the end of the journey, but the beginning. Recipes are an answer to a whole host of questions, challenges, and opportunities, and those are the stories that interest us. A recipe with no history is like the punch line with no preceding joke, incomplete at best.   

Andrew's book list on reads for when you’re hungry

Andrew T. Huse, Bárbara Cruz, and Jeff Houck Why did Andrew love this book?

Capitalizing on the charming landmark “Cross Creek” novel about her fish-out-of-water life in central Florida’s backwoods in the 1920s, Rawlings shares recipes using ingredients she harvested from her primitive surroundings.

There isn’t much call in the Instacart and UberEats era for entertaining dinner guests with Pot Roast of Bear, Lamb Kidneys with Sherry, or Alligator-Tail Steak. The days of serving Jellied Tongue have long passed, thankfully. Rawlings and her Cross Creek neighbors ate those dishes by necessity more than choice.

You devour what the land provides, whether it’s by shovel, by hook, or by gun. When the world gives you loquats, you make Loquat Jelly.

By Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Cross Greek Cookery as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Classic Book on Southern Cooking
First published in 1942, Cross Creek Cookery was compiled by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings at the request of readers who wanted to recreate the luscious meals described in Cross Creek -- her famous memoir of life in a Florida hamlet.
Lovers of old-fashioned, down-home cooking will treasure the recipes for Grits, Hush-Puppies, Florida Fried Fish, Orange Fluff, and Utterly Deadly Southern Pecan Pie. For more adventuresome palates, there are such unusual dishes as Minorcan Gopher Stew, Coot Surprise, Alligator-Tail Steak, Mayhaw Jelly, and Chef Huston's Cream of Peanut Soup.
Spiced with delightful…


Book cover of The New Southern-Latino Table: Recipes That Bring Together the Bold and Beloved Flavors of Latin America and the American South

Charles Reagan Wilson Author Of The Southern Way of Life: Meanings of Culture and Civilization in the American South

From my list on savoring Southern foods.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm a retired professor who wrote about and taught about the American South for almost four decades. I directed a research center focused on the South, and I helped found an institute dedicated to the study of Southern food. The South’s creative traditions in music and literature are well known, and its foodways are now recognized as a distinct American cuisine that represents the region’s innovations in culture. Through reading about southern food, readers can explore the traditions of eating and cooking in the region, and the creative contributions of ethnic groups with national and global sources. I've chosen books that give flavor to thinking about the South as a distinct place in the imagination.

Charles' book list on savoring Southern foods

Charles Reagan Wilson Why did Charles love this book?

Guitierrez forged a hybrid cookbook around the blending of Southern and Latin American ingredients and cooking techniques.

In the process she gives readers a glimpse into the twentieth century South of increasing ethnic and cultural identity. Like many recent cookbooks, hers is as much memoir as cooking guide.

She relates her memories of living part of the year in Guatemala and part of each year in North Carolina. She claims that southern food found her soul and she discovered a southern belle within herself.

Gutierrez has taught thousands of people how to cook, and she uses her educational skills to highlight the surprising affinities between the foodways of Latin and southern regions, including diverse ethnic roots in each tradition and many shared basic ingredients.

Filled with 150 innovative recipes that show the delights to the palate of blending two notable cuisines into one new, contemporary southern one.

By Sandra A. Gutierrez,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The New Southern-Latino Table as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this splendid cookbook, bicultural cook Sandra Gutierrez blends ingredients, traditions, and culinary techniques, creatively marrying the diverse and delicious cuisines of more than twenty Latin American countries with the beloved food of the American South. The New Southern-Latino Table features 150 original and delightfully tasty recipes that combine the best of both culinary cultures. Gutierrez, who has taught thousands of people how to cook, highlights the surprising affinities between the foodways of the Latin and Southern regions--including a wide variety of ethnic roots in each tradition and many shared basic ingredients--while embracing their flavorful contrasts and fascinating histories. These…


Book cover of Cook's Illustrated Baking Book

Jessica Harlan Author Of Homemade Condiments

From my list on learning something new about cooking.

Why am I passionate about this?

As the author of nine cookbooks, I strive to help readers master new skills and to become more comfortable in the kitchen. I’m constantly reading other cookbooks to keep my fingers on the pulse of what’s happening in the food world, as well as to improve my own culinary prowess. It’s been nearly 20 years since I graduated from culinary school, and I love that I can open a book to refresh a forgotten skill, learn a new one, or delve into the “why” behind cooking’s biggest questions. These books have kept me entertained and intrigued, not to mention well-fed. I hope they do the same for you! 

Jessica's book list on learning something new about cooking

Jessica Harlan Why did Jessica love this book?

Most people identify either as cooks or bakers, and I can see why—it certainly takes a different mindset to bake bread or a cake. Baking is a far more precise science, which is one of the reasons I’m very picky about what baking recipes I trust. It’s one of the reasons I love having Cook’s Illustrated Baking Book in my arsenal. I have always been a big fan of the magazine, where the writers prepare countless versions of the same recipe, changing ingredients, methods, and other factors to arrive at the most perfect version. This cookbook follows the same format, covering savory recipes like tarts, quiches, pizzas, and rolls, in addition to every classic sweet recipe you could want. It was this book that ended my long search for the perfect chocolate chip cookie… the Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie is a refinement of the classic Toll House Cookie. I’m glad…

By America's Test Kitchen (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Cook's Illustrated Baking Book as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Baking demystified with 450 foolproof recipes from Cook's Illustrated, America's most trusted food magazine.

The Cook’s Illustrated Baking Book has it all—definitive recipes for all your favorite cookies, cakes, pies, tarts, breads, pizza, and more, along with kitchen-tested techniques that will transform your baking. Recipes range from easy (drop cookies and no-knead bread) to more ambitious (authentic croissants and dacquoise) and the trademark test kitchen expertise shines through each one. Discover why spreading the dough and then sprinkling the berries leads to better Blueberry Scones, why cubed versus shredded extra-sharp cheddar cheese makes all the difference in our irresistible Cheese…


Book cover of The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South

Charles Reagan Wilson Author Of The Southern Way of Life: Meanings of Culture and Civilization in the American South

From my list on savoring Southern foods.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm a retired professor who wrote about and taught about the American South for almost four decades. I directed a research center focused on the South, and I helped found an institute dedicated to the study of Southern food. The South’s creative traditions in music and literature are well known, and its foodways are now recognized as a distinct American cuisine that represents the region’s innovations in culture. Through reading about southern food, readers can explore the traditions of eating and cooking in the region, and the creative contributions of ethnic groups with national and global sources. I've chosen books that give flavor to thinking about the South as a distinct place in the imagination.

Charles' book list on savoring Southern foods

Charles Reagan Wilson Why did Charles love this book?

This book is a people’s history of the modern south, told through what people in the region have cooked and eaten. 

Edge is my former student who became the founding director of the Southern Food Alliance and the author of more than a dozen books on food.

He tells a story of what the modern South inherited in terms of cooking ingredients, techniques, and traditions, and he shows the central role that cooks and waiters served in the civil rights movement. He is particularly adept at sketching profiles of southern food leaders from Paul Prudhomme to Colonel Sanders.

The book is perhaps best in showing the changes in the southern food scene over the last three centuries so that now southern food has become a shared culinary language for the nation.   

By John T. Edge,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Potlikker Papers as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“The one food book you must read this year."
—Southern Living 

One of Christopher Kimball’s Six Favorite Books About Food

A people’s history that reveals how Southerners shaped American culinary identity and how race relations impacted Southern food culture over six revolutionary decades

Like great provincial dishes around the world, potlikker is a salvage food. During the antebellum era, slave owners ate the greens from the pot and set aside the leftover potlikker broth for the enslaved, unaware that the broth, not the greens, was nutrient rich. After slavery, potlikker sustained the working poor, both black and white. In the…


Book cover of The Homesick Texan Cookbook

Jackie Alpers Author Of Taste of Tucson: Sonoran-Style Recipes Inspired by the Rich Culture of Southern Arizona

From my list on southwestern regional home cooking.

Why am I passionate about this?

Jackie Alpers is an award-winning professional food photographer and author. She is a longtime contributing recipe developer & photographer for The Food Network, Refinery29, TheKitchn, TodayFood, Real Simple, National Geographic, and Edible Baja Arizona Magazine among others. She has been featured in articles for Reader’s Digest, CNN, Good Morning America, The New York Times & NPR. She writes, cooks, and styles recipes from her sun-lit studio in Tucson, Arizona.

Jackie's book list on southwestern regional home cooking

Jackie Alpers Why did Jackie love this book?

Longing for the food from home yet finding her quest unobtainable to fulfil, Lisa Fain, a 7th generation Texan, took matters into her own hands and began exploring ways to recreate Tex-Mex dishes in her NYC apartment. From this process a cookbook was born. The Homesick Texan is for every armchair traveler who wants to recreate a little bit of Texas, not matter where they may be at the moment.

By Lisa Fain,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Homesick Texan Cookbook as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

When Lisa Fain, a seventh-generation Texan, moved to New York City, she missed the big sky, the bluebonnets in spring, Friday night football, and her family's farm. But most of all, she missed the foods she'd grown up with.

After a fruitless search for tastes of Texas in New York City, Fain took matters into her own hands. She headed into the kitchen to cook for her friends the Tex-Mex, the chili, and the country comfort dishes that reminded her of home. From cheese enchiladas drowning in chili gravy to chicken-fried steak served with cream gravy on the side, from…


Book cover of AMA: A Modern Tex-Mex Kitchen

Jackie Alpers Author Of Taste of Tucson: Sonoran-Style Recipes Inspired by the Rich Culture of Southern Arizona

From my list on southwestern regional home cooking.

Why am I passionate about this?

Jackie Alpers is an award-winning professional food photographer and author. She is a longtime contributing recipe developer & photographer for The Food Network, Refinery29, TheKitchn, TodayFood, Real Simple, National Geographic, and Edible Baja Arizona Magazine among others. She has been featured in articles for Reader’s Digest, CNN, Good Morning America, The New York Times & NPR. She writes, cooks, and styles recipes from her sun-lit studio in Tucson, Arizona.

Jackie's book list on southwestern regional home cooking

Jackie Alpers Why did Jackie love this book?

Josef Centeno honors the food he grew up with in San Antonio. The book is named for his great-grandmother, “Ama´” and the influence of both his family, and his life as the chef of Los Angeles’s Bar Ama permeate the book. “Reimagined” is the word Josef uses to describe his recipes, and I think it’s a perfect descriptor for his particular vision.

Chef Centeno’s taste leans towards acidic, with lots of citrus and vinegars. Words like pickled and vinaigrette appear often in recipe titles and there is no shortage of chiles and salsas. I learn something every time I make a new recipe from this book, which is something I aspire to have my own cookbooks to do for others.

By Betty Hallock, Ren Fuller, Josef Centeno

Why should I read it?

1 author picked AMA as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An Eating the West Award Finalist 2020

Tex-Mex is a delicious, irreverent cuisine that combines the deep traditions of Texan and Mexican cooking. Think meaty stews, breakfast tacos, and tres leches cake. Home cooks will learn how to make them all-in addition to crunchy salads, slow-cooked meats, and fresh cocktails-in this collection of more than 100 recipes from San Antonio native and Los Angeles chef and restauranteur Josef Centeno. Organized into chapters by type of food-including breakfast, vegetables, main courses, desserts, and a super nacho party-this is down-home cooking and grilling at its most inspiring. Presented in a colorful package…


Book cover of Barbecue

Charles Reagan Wilson Author Of The Southern Way of Life: Meanings of Culture and Civilization in the American South

From my list on savoring Southern foods.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm a retired professor who wrote about and taught about the American South for almost four decades. I directed a research center focused on the South, and I helped found an institute dedicated to the study of Southern food. The South’s creative traditions in music and literature are well known, and its foodways are now recognized as a distinct American cuisine that represents the region’s innovations in culture. Through reading about southern food, readers can explore the traditions of eating and cooking in the region, and the creative contributions of ethnic groups with national and global sources. I've chosen books that give flavor to thinking about the South as a distinct place in the imagination.

Charles' book list on savoring Southern foods

Charles Reagan Wilson Why did Charles love this book?

Reed is a leading scholar of southern culture, and he brings his considerable knowledge of the region to bear in a slim book loaded with stories and recipes about barbecue.

Since early settlement of the South, southerners have held barbecues to mark homecomings, holidays, reunions, and political campaigns.

In a lively and witty style, Reed traces the story of southern barbecue from its root in the sixteenth-century Caribbean, showing how the slow, smoky cooking of meat established itself in the coastal South and then spread inland.

He discusses how choices of meat, sauces, and cooking methods vary from one place to another in the region, reflecting local environments, farming practices, and ethnic traditions.

He suggests that barbecue in the South, in its diverse expressions, is the closest thing we have in the United States to Europe’s traditions of wines and cheeses, as one finds mustard sauce in South Carolina and…

By John Shelton Reed,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Barbecue as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

John Shelton Reed's Barbecue celebrates a southern culinary tradition forged in coals and smoke. Since colonial times southerners have held barbecues to mark homecomings, reunions, and political campaigns; today barbecue signifies celebration as much as ever. In a lively and amusing style, Reed traces the history of southern barbecue from its roots in the sixteenth-century Caribbean, showing how this technique of cooking meat established itself in the coastal South and spread inland from there. He discusses how choices of meat, sauce, and cooking methods came to vary from one place to another, reflecting local environments, farming practices, and history.

Reed…


Book cover of Coyote Cafe: Foods from the Great Southwest, Recipes from Coyote Cafe

Jackie Alpers Author Of Taste of Tucson: Sonoran-Style Recipes Inspired by the Rich Culture of Southern Arizona

From my list on southwestern regional home cooking.

Why am I passionate about this?

Jackie Alpers is an award-winning professional food photographer and author. She is a longtime contributing recipe developer & photographer for The Food Network, Refinery29, TheKitchn, TodayFood, Real Simple, National Geographic, and Edible Baja Arizona Magazine among others. She has been featured in articles for Reader’s Digest, CNN, Good Morning America, The New York Times & NPR. She writes, cooks, and styles recipes from her sun-lit studio in Tucson, Arizona.

Jackie's book list on southwestern regional home cooking

Jackie Alpers Why did Jackie love this book?

Can a cookbook change the course of your life? Perhaps. I attended art school in the late 1980’s. A favorite Sunday morning diversion was wandering through the aisles of the nearby Book Loft in Columbus, Ohio. One day I came across the Coyote Cafe Cookbook and my life was subtly changed forever. It put the seed of what would grow into a passion for Southwestern cuisine into my being, and it may have been part of the catalyst for me moving to this region. The recipes are intriguing and a little fancy. Cooking from this book is a treat.

By Mark Charles Miller,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Coyote Cafe as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Now in paperback!When Mark Miller opened the doors of Santa Fe'¬?s Coyote Cafe in 1987, the face of American cuisine changed forever. Blending centuries-old culinary traditions with modern techniques, Miller pioneered the emerging Southwestern cuisine, earning accolades and thrilling diners at the Coyote with his robust, inspired cooking. Originally published in 1989, COYOTE CAFE was Miller'¬?s first cookbook, and it has since sold over 200,000 copies, making it one of the best-selling full-color cookbooks ever. Nearly 15 years later, with Southwestern influences entrenched in kitchens across the country, we'¬?re excited to make this landmark book available to a new generation…


Book cover of The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook: Featuring More Than 1,200 Kitchen-Tested Recipes

Dinah Bucholz Author Of The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook

From my list on cookbooks for novice and experienced chefs.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve loved cooking and baking since I was a little girl. I attempted to bake a chocolate cake when I was nine without a recipe and put the resulting glop in a plastic bowl in the oven. Luckily, I forgot to turn the oven on and my mother discovered it later, no harm done. I was always a foodie but also a tremendous reader with a great love for the English language, so food writing marries my two passions. My published works include The New York Times bestselling The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook (over a million copies sold), and I write a food column for a women’s magazine.

Dinah's book list on cookbooks for novice and experienced chefs

Dinah Bucholz Why did Dinah love this book?

If you are starting out in life and can only get one cookbook, get this one. It contains recipes for the classics as well as the familiar, basic dishes you must have in your repertoire—and the recipes are foolproof. Because the recipes are thoroughly tested, you can hardly go wrong if you follow the detailed instructions.

By America's Test Kitchen,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Like the best treasured cookbooks of the past, The America's Test Kitchen Family cookbook offers more than 1,200 kitchen-tested recipes, more than 1,500 4-color photos and much more. Here are some of the special features of this book: *Test Kitchen Tips Illuminate Key Recipe-Specific Facts *Hundreds of Variations Give Cooks Lots of Recipe Choices *Equipment Ratings Point Out Our Favorite Brands and Explain Why *Ingredient Testings Rate All Manner of Supermarket Ingredients So Cooks Can Make the Best Choices *Fast Recipes are Highlighted Throughout the Book *Prep Times and Total Times Make Clear How Long a Recipe Will Take *A…