25 Cookbooks Every Man Should Own

Joy of Cooking (Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker and Ethan Becker)

Hands-down the most popular cookbook in America, with some 18 million copies in print over 11 editions stretching back to its first publication in 1930. You want the 1975 edition, available on Amazon for around $8.00, or the 2006 one – the most recent, and what you’ll likely find on store shelves – and not the widely and justly maligned 1997 version, which did away with the excellent pickling and cocktail sections and gutted much of the original’s rambling charm. With 4,500 recipes to chose from, you might try closing your eyes and plunking your finger on any old page. The vast majority of recipes not only hold up 85-years later, but reveal the authors to have been inspired geniuses. [$30; thejoykitchen.com]

The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating (Fergus Henderson)

A slim volume from the Swami of nose-to-tail cuisine, The Whole Beast unpacks the sweet and glorious particulars of cooking an entire pig, from the ears and brains to the spleen, hooves, tongue, liver, heart, and more. What’s remarkable is that most if not all of it is delicious, even the boiled ox tongue and “deconstructed piccalilli,” and far less esoteric in their preparation than you’d think. Which is why Ferguson and his offal-centric London restaurant, St. John, have earned countless accolades from chefs like Daniel Boulud, Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain, who in his introduction declares Ferguson’s signature Roast Bone Marrow and Parsley Salad his “Death Row Meal,” the last he’d eat “before they turned up the juice.” [$20; amazon.com]

Heritage (Sean Brock)

As Brock acknowledges in his opening pages, Heritage is as much about a way of life as it is about food. He spends nearly as much space describing the people and places of his native South that inspire his cooking as he does on the actual dishes. “It turned into a kind of journal,” Brock admits. “I wanted it to be both a document of my experience and a reference for cooks.” Hence the recollections of learning to make unusual Appalachian dishes with his grandmother, like “leather britches” – wild goose beans strung and dried outside on the porch – and the mini-biographies of the specialty purveyors who supply Brock with his ingredients. But the recipes themselves receive plenty of attention, too, and despite Brock’s reputation for genre-bending, highly technical cuisine, nothing here requires rebuilding the culinary wheel, even for casual weekend cooks. The formidable pickling section is itself a small miracle. [$40; amazon.com]

Good Fat Cooking: Recipes for a Flavor-Packed, Healthy Life (Franklin Becker and Peter Kaminsky)

This cookbook isn’t nearly as boring as it sounds. In fact, at times it’s a downright revelation, and its measured tone a welcome counterweight to the doom-and-gloom of many anti-fat apparatchiks. By “good fat” the authors mean natural sources of fat like olive oil, avocados, nuts, etc., and not industrial trans-fats, which the Mayo Clinic refers to as “a cholesterol double whammy” for magically raising your LDL (“bad”) cholesterol while simultaneously lowering your HDL (“good”) cholesterol. The authors – a chef and a prolific cookbook writer – have forged many great, surprisingly healthy, Mediterranean-influenced dishes out of some unlikely ingredients. Who knew, for instance, that it was possible to make a totally satisfying panna cotta without any of its main ingredients of heavy cream, honey, sugar, and egg whites? [$30; amazon.com]

Catalan Cuisine: Vivid Flavors from Spain's Mediterranean Coast (Colman Andrews)

First published in 1988 and still in print, Colman Andrews’ homage to Catalonia remains the ur-text of northeast Spanish cuisine. Leafing through it, you quickly see why Spain has spawned so many of the world’s most inventive chefs. In addition to ironclad recipes for Catalan standards like paella and bacallà are bold departures for fried Camembert with tomato preserves, pickled chicken, olive oil soup, and a cocktail called the Alicia (essentially a Sidecar with a splash of cava). Tapas, however, are noticeably absent. As Andrews explains, they “aren’t much more than a culinary footnote in Catalonia.” A founding editor of Saveur, where he won six James Beard awards and helped launch the foodie movement as we know it today, Andrews is also a terrific, occasionally profound, writer, and you might consume this book cover-to-cover simply for the prose. [$18; amazon.com]

Gran Cocina Latina: The Food of Latin America (Maricel E. Presilla)

Presilla draws from a lifetime of traveling and cooking across Central and South America for her magisterial book, which won the 2013 James Beard Foundation Cookbook of the Year award. More than 500 recipes from Mexico to Argentina to the Caribbean and back showcase the region’s broad culinary diversity – a dizzying fusion of indigenous, African, and European traditions – and will have you radically rethinking your whole approach to cooking. It’s almost impossible to choose favorites, but standouts include Cuban Ground Beef Hash, Drunken Stewed Plantains, Brazilian Salt Cod and Potato Casserole, Mole Poblano, and Tres Leches Cake. [$45; amazon.com]

Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Vol. 1 (Julia Child)

When Child’s landmark show “The French Chef” debuted on American television in the early 1960s, it shook a nation of Betty Crocker acolytes to its core. The distance between Crocker’s popular “meat-stretchers” – for instance, “hot dog salad/peanut logs” – and Child’s subtle boeuf bourguignon was fairly great. But we quickly surrendered to the charms of this smart, brassy, linebacker of a woman and lined up in droves to buy her book. More than a half-a-century later, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Vol. 1 is still the foundational text for French cuisine in America, with 524 recipes of unassailable greatness, as well as crucial guidelines for knifing crêpes, folding egg whites into a soufflé, and making quenelles. [$40; amazon.com]

America's Test Kitchen: The Complete Vegetarian Cookbook

True to its name, this smart and endlessly enlightening cookbook is about as definitive as its possible to get in the modern vegetarian realm. Besides the many hundreds of excellent recipes, including one for what’s probably the single greatest home-cooked root-vegetable gratin in the free world, are a whole battery of tips, tidbits, asides and ephemera on how, for instance, to properly prep and braise Brussels sprouts (not as easy as it seems), a technique for fashioning the perfect gnocchi ridge, and the correct methodology for pinching, flattening and griddling pupusas. While the folks at ATK could be accused of some professional overkill – the “Why this recipe works” preamble to each dish can be tiresome – it’s daunting to think of all the muscle and brainpower that went into every single one of these recipes. [$30; americastestkitchen.buysub.com]

Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto (Aaron Franklin and Jordan Mackay)

Less of a cookbook than a metaphysical and logistical omnibus on how, why, what, and when to barbecue, including step-by-step instructions on building a 1,000-gallon smoker out of scrap metal – there are even recommendations for welders and disc grinders – assessing the properties and types of wood (along with tips on how to split it and build a fire), and how to effectively wield a fire shovel. It’s the kind of book you digest slowly, on the porch, bourbon in hand, while plotting your new career path as a pitmaster. In addition, Aaron Franklin, whose eponymous Austin restaurant has made him a mountaintop mystic among barbecue freaks, provides readers with endless nuggets of hard-won insider wisdom. The back-pages contain a handful of recipes for his famous Central Texas-style of barbecue. [$30; amazon.com]

Outlaw Cook (John Thorne)

Going on 30 years now, chef and author John Thorne has been a beacon of sanity amidst a rising tide self-important, insufferable foodie snobbery. An early proponent of cooking for oneself and a writer of rare grace and intelligence, Thorne helped remind us to take a deep-breath and relax – it’s just cooking. Readers tend to admire him not so much for his recipes (at one point he even says, more than a little disingenuously, that he’s not a great cook) but for his refreshingly sensible and modest approach to cuisine. Despite his disclaimer, Thorne’s recipes are included here for a reason, and many are quite good. Some, like his “beef with carrots” – preceded by a charming digression on his trials perfecting the dish – are passed among cooks today the way great mixtapes once were, with hushed tones of wonder and reverence. This book – part cookbook, part essay collection, part campfire meditation on the joys of slow and simple cooking – occupies a rightful place among the world’s celebrated culinary tomes. [$17; amazon.com]

The New York Times Cookbook (Craig Claiborne)

Claiborne’s name still echoes through halls of American gastronomy. The longtime critic for The New York Times, who passed away in 2000, almost single-handedly invented the idea of the restaurant review in the 1950s, bringing a level of objectivity and gravity to a subject that few took seriously. He wrote more than 20 books, but his 1961 classic The New York Times Cook Book, is his most enduring, and like The Joy of Cooking a before it, quickly won shelf-space in millions of American kitchens. It was thanks to Claiborne, Betty Fussell wrote, that “a nation of Puritans discovered food was pleasure, and like sex, you could do it at home.” Although many of the recipes have been tweaked and fine-tuned over the years, the originals – particularly for classics like coq au vin, beef stroganoff, cacciucco, and brandied peaches – suggest a simultaneously sprawling and discriminating palate. [$37.50; amazon.com]

How to Cook Everything: 2,000 Recipes for Great Food (Mark Bittman)

It’s nearly impossible to find an American kitchen these days lacking a copy of Bittman’s flagship, How to Cook Everything, or any one of its similarly ubiquitous brethren. Like any talisman, the book casts a sacramental glow far beyond its actual utility, which isn’t to say it’s not great – it undoubtedly is – but rather that its popularity owes as much to our herd instincts as Bittman’s cooking chops. A tireless New York Times dining columnist, the man has cooked more than seems possible in one lifetime, and it’s comforting knowing he’s still out there, right this very minute, fussing over his excellent pancake recipe. How to Cook Everything, now in its 10^th edition, is a helpful reference tool both for beginners – those who might scratch their heads over, say, the differences between chopped, minced and diced, or wonder what in the hell pigweed is – and for seasoned cooks looking for quick, surefire recipes for corn fritters or shrimp jambalaya. [$35; amazon.com]

Yolele! Recipes from the Heart of Senegal (Pierre Thiam)

In Africa, Senegalese cuisine is considered second only to Moroccan – a rich and glorious blend of mighty, meaty, mesmerizing flavors – and yet in the West it remains a widely overlooked, back-alley mystery. Pierre Thiam, a former Iron Chef participant who hails from Senegal’s southern Casamance region, is doing his damnednest to change that. His landmark cookbook, Yolele! (Fulani for “let the good times roll”), delivers a roundhouse punch to complacent American palates, offering a variety of recipes that merge West and North African traditions with French and Portuguese colonial influences and even a dash of Vietnamese-émigré soul. Few dishes capture the boundless vibrancy and brilliance of African cooking better than Thiam’s soupi kandja royale, a fiery Scotch bonnet pepper, lamb, and shrimp stew that’s a direct progenitor of Louisiana gumbo. [$22; amazon.com]

The Taste of Country Cooking (Edna Lewis)

“For fuck’s sake, the South pretty much taught us all to cook,” Anthony Bourdain once said. He might have added that Edna Lewis, in a sense, taught the South how to cook. Her 1976 masterpiece, The Taste of Country Cooking, came out at a time when there were few if any good cookbooks about Southern food and helped revive a cuisine that was in danger of fading from the popular imagination. Divided into four meaty sections – spring, summer, fall, and winter – and sub-divided into chapters like “An Early Spring Dinner After Sheep-Shearing” and “Morning-After Hog-Butchering Breakfast” – the book honors the fresh, simple country dishes Lewis grew up eating in a Virginia community settled by freed slaves. Skip right to Winter for the pan-seared spareribs with soy-honey glaze, hot mince pie, and coconut layer cake. [$25; amazon.com]

The Frankies Spuntino Kitchen Companion & Cooking Manual (Frank Falcinelli, Frank Castronovo & Peter Meehan)

This cookbook explains why Frank Castronovo and Frank Falcinelli’s restaurants have achieved cult-like status among New York’s culinary gatekeepers. The recipes are straight-up barnstorming miracles, without a single dud among them. My inaugural stab at the hazelnut panna cotta, in particular, lives in my household as a kind of Excalibur moment, after which I attained total dominion over dessert-making. Something similar happened when I made the meatballs, and again when I made the French toast, and again…You get the picture. There are a ton of red-sauce Italian cookbooks out there, some of them very good, but few that convey the pure beauty and simplicity of the cuisine as well as this. [$25; amazon.com]

Hints and Pinches: A Concise Compendium of Aromatics, Chutneys, Herbs, Relishes, Spices, and Other Such Concerns (Eugene Walter)

Eugene Ferdinand Walter (1921-1998) was one of the South’s great culinary champions and literary raconteurs. Despite this and his legendary dinner parties with Truman Capote, William Faulkner, T.S. Eliot, and others, he remains largely forgotten outside his native South. But Walter’s influence on southern cuisine, namely through his oddball, discursive cookbooks, is unparalleled. Hints and Pinches, which he illustrated himself, suggests a singular and inquisitive palate, detailing personal concoctions for cardamom apple pie, baked bass with pomegranate seeds, cognac cookies, and this one for tea sandwiches: “If you want an unusually good tea sandwich, chop together nasturtium stems, the delicate inner leaves of celery and put on bread spread with either Philadelphia cream cheese or homemade mayonnaise flavored with onion or garlic juice.” [$8; amazon.com]

Southern Food: At Home, on the Road, in History (John Egerton)

“The South, for better or worse, has all but lost its identity as a separate place, and its checkered past now belongs to myth and memory,” Egerton once wrote, “but its food survives.” Egerton, who died in 2013, probably did more than anyone to preserve and promote the South’s rich culinary history, writing 20 books and helping found the Southern Foodways Alliance, which is dedicated to the region’s food and culture. His 1987 masterwork, Southern Food, is a sprawling culinary road-trip supersaturated with the author’s infinite brilliance and intense affection for his homeland, and also sadness at its thorny racial legacy. His encyclopedic digressions on barbecue sauce, the Hot Brown, country ham, and the gastronomic prominence of lunch, to name a few, are full-bore literary gold. Recipes skew from fried chicken and shrimp remoulade, to squirrel and benne seed wafers, to planter’s punch and juleps, to cornpone, cobblers and dumplings. [$33; amazon.com]

Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking (Marcella Hazan)

It’s hard to think of a more important chef in the U.S. than Hazan, who before she passed away in 2013, was often called the Julia Child of Italian cooking, credited with introducing Americans to the cuisine more-or-less single-handedly 40-years ago. Mario Batali or Giada Pamela De Laurentiis probably don’t exist without Hazan’s groundwork, which prepped American stomachs for things like Bolognese and chicken fricassee. Her hearty, simple, and deeply satisfying traditional Northern Italian dishes, laid out over 700 pages, feel as utterly fresh and inviting today as ever. [$35; amazon.com]

Bistro Cooking at Home (Gordon Hamersley)

French cuisine made easy: Gordon Hamersley’s restaurant, Hamersley’s Bistro, has been Boston’s go-to French joint for decades, making his book exactly the right bistro-cooking introduction for the skeptical American male.

You can hate Frenchmen for taking six-week vacations and politely declining to join our wars, but French technique remains the backbone of every modern culinary education. And while no practical man ought to muddle his brain with the vagaries of French haute cuisine, bistro food is the perfect repertoire to master, the ideal set of basic dishes to commit to memory so you no longer even need to consult a recipe. Low-key and traditional, bistro food is pretty much everything you crave to make and eat anyway: steak and fries, roast chicken, onion soup, braised lamb, grilled fish. And because Hamersley has been serving this stuff for a generation now, his interpretations have exactly the right mix of French flair and American hardiness. [$35; amazon.com]

Chez Panisse Vegetables (Alice Waters)

Eat your vegetables: Alice Waters, who opened the legendary Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, California, in 1971, is arguably the most influential chef in the history of American cuisine. As a champion of French country cooking, and as the lady who taught much of the country how to pronounce arugula, Waters is the original advocate for the fresh local fruits and vegetables that every restaurant now wants you to know it’s using. Next time you see a menu listing Warmed Happy Girl Goat Cheese over Sleepy Moose Farms Mixed Greens, thank Alice. And tip your hat to her after purchasing bags of fresh “spring salad mix” at CostCo.

Arranged from A to Z, from amaranth greens to zucchini, Chez Panisse Vegetables is the only book you’ll need to prepare nearly every single vegetable you’ll ever stumble upon in an American farmers market. Mini essays tell you when specific vegetables are in season and how to gauge ripeness and spot quality. The cookbook offers a battery of French- and Italian-influenced recipes for soups, salads, pastas, pizzas, gratins, and side dishes composed of some vegetable you’ve never even heard of. This book will enable you to cruise the farmers market, buy everything that looks good, haul it home and know you’ll be able to blow minds and make your cardiologist smile. Best of all, you can finally stop making that pathetic steamed broccoli you’ve been choking down since college.

Absurdly simple recipes you’ll be loving for years: roasted winter vegetables; pasta with potatoes, rocket, and rosemary; butter­nut squash pizza. [$35; harpercollins.com]