I’ll be honest, over the past three months I haven’t done much cooking. It’s usually an important part of my life, but teaching this semester has consumed my time and brain, so I’ve been relying a lot on take-out and Trader Joe’s stir-fries. (I mean, they are life-saving.)
Thank you so much for recommending my content, Melinda! I'm so honored. I just received the book Vegetable Revelations by Steven Satterfield, and it's both inspiring and beautiful. I have no doubt I'll be living in it once CSA season rolls around!
If you like Indian you should check out the blog Pipping Pot Curry. Meeta makes great recipes and a lot are for the instant pot or air fryer.
My library is also doing a cookbook club series and Yotam Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem: A Cookbook is next month. It has a ton of delicious recipes, so I may even buy this one to have on hand all the time.
Oh no cookbooks are my favorite 😂 top ones in my kitchen:
- for the love of soup by Jeanelle Mitchell. So many delicious and pretty healthy but still filling soup recipes. Old but a staple in my house!
- I love America’s test kitchen stuff. I have their healthy air fryer book which is great (the turkey burgers!) And then a couple of their like grocery store magazines I cook out of all the time. My favorites are best-ever slow cooker recipes, dinner for two, and last minute dinners.
- I reference my joy of cooking book all the time for how to cook things.
- the art of simple food by Alice waters is awesome.
- favorite food blog is cookie and Kate. It’s vegetarian but we add simple meat to a lot of the recipes.
- second favorite is salt and lavender for easy comfort food, especially for things kids and picky eaters will like. The homemade hamburger helper is a home run.
- finally! If you have a wok, stir frying to the sky’s edge is the best for how to use it right and loads of delicious stir fry recipes.
I love https://smittenkitchen.com/. Deb Perelman's three Smitten Kitchen cookbooks are all excellent. Her recipes are full of strong, bright flavors and lots of veggies. She is a perfectionist who tests her recipes repeatedly, eliminating steps until she's sure that every step and ingredient is necessary for flavor. You know she'll never make you do a step that's not absolutely necessary for the dish. Not all of her recipes are quick, easy weeknight meals, but many of them are, and she's up front about how long things actually take (no saying you can caramelize onions in 15 minutes, for example). She's a home cook in a tiny New York City apartment with a tiny kitchen, with no space for single-use appliances. So none of her recipes require fancy tools or equipment. I go back to her recipes over and over again.
I love Dinner: Changing the Game by Melissa Clark. Also any America's Test Kitchen Cookbook. I just got I Dream of Dinner (so You Don't Have To) by Ali Sagle. I haven't made any recipes yet but I love all her recipes for NYT Cooking!
I’ve also been loving my friend Maggie Battista’s “A New Way to Food,” which came out a few years ago. The flavors are on point, my newly-picky kid loves her oatmeal, cashew crème fraiche and tuna nicoise pasta recipes, and the message of loving the body you have is a timeless one.
I have been leaning on https://dishingupthedirt.com for the past decade! Andrea Bemis is a farmer and her recipes are seasonal, healthy and straight forward. She also has a few cookbooks out which are beautiful. I have made dozens of her recipes and genuinely none of them have ever disappointed!
Yes! I agree. I love Pinch of Yum and Caroline Chambers. Probably half of my meals each weeks come from those two. The Pinch of Yum crispy black bean tacos are a fan favorite at my house.
I’m a cooking instructor (and cookbook hoarder) so I’ll try not to overdo this! Quick note - if you have more than a few cookbooks, try the website EatYourBooks.com; you can set up a free account, log the cookbooks you have, and when you search for a particular ingredient or dish the site will tell you exactly where to find it in your collection, with page numbers.
My faves:
- Julia Turshen is my favorite cookbook author (especially Simply Julia). She really *gets* home cooks. She’s so warm, approachable, and practical, and I find her recipes have big payoff for minimum effort. She also teaches online classes and they’re amazing.
-Seconding those who have mentioned Deb Perelman and Hetty McKinnon, both gems.
-Many families I work with love Jenny Rosenstrach’s cookbooks (esp Dinner: The Playbook).
- Woks Of Life, both the site and the cookbook, are such great resources for delicious, approachable Chinese home cooking.
- I have two suggestions for when you’re in the depths of hating cooking: 1) Give yourself a FULL BREAK if you can for a few days (eg takeout, snacks for dinner, boxed mac and cheese) so you aren’t just relentlessly pushing through the dread of cooking. 2) Give yourself permission to build a meal around crowd-pleasing foods like hot dogs or chicken tenders.
- My other, completely opposite suggestion (your mileage may vary): romanticize your cooking a bit once in a while. No need to cook anything complex, but maybe try a different cultural dish than you usually prepare, find the recipe for a favorite restaurant dinner, make an indoor picnic, cook something retro like fondue (not that hard and who doesn’t like dipping veggies + bread into cheese?!)... it’s easy to feel stuck in the weeknight slog, so maybe worth shaking things up deliberately once a month or so.
I have celiac disease but love to cook and bake. Nicole Hunn's https://glutenfreeonashoestring.com is absolutely the best. She has great resources for people who are just trying to figure out how to be gluten free too! I am now the official baker in my family b/c of her recipes. Also, if you sign up for her newsletter she actually reads and replies if you send her an email - so cool! :)
Oh, and I have to give a shout out to yummy toddler food! I make her recipe for oatmeal banana muffins or oatmeal pumpkin muffins every week. She is also responsible for half of the meals in my house this week (including zucchini pasta sauce - so good).
Thanks for sharing this! And thanks for the thread, Melinda. I needed to inject some new life into dinner. Especially as it gets hot here in the South, and I groan at the idea of turning on the oven.
Recipes from Real Simple. They aren’t barebones but they aren’t overtly complex (looking at you, Martha Stewart). Family has a favorite lasagna, baked Mac and cheese and beef strew and others ripped from the pages.
Thank you so much for recommending my content, Melinda! I'm so honored. I just received the book Vegetable Revelations by Steven Satterfield, and it's both inspiring and beautiful. I have no doubt I'll be living in it once CSA season rolls around!
So glad to have found your work, Nicki! Excited to dig into the GF content. I can never get enough.
Yay! Thank you so much, and I hope you enjoy the recipes.
If you like Indian you should check out the blog Pipping Pot Curry. Meeta makes great recipes and a lot are for the instant pot or air fryer.
My library is also doing a cookbook club series and Yotam Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem: A Cookbook is next month. It has a ton of delicious recipes, so I may even buy this one to have on hand all the time.
Yum, thanks for the Pipping Pot Curry rec!!! I love Jerusalem — so many wonderful recipes in there. Some take a lot of time, though.
Oh no cookbooks are my favorite 😂 top ones in my kitchen:
- for the love of soup by Jeanelle Mitchell. So many delicious and pretty healthy but still filling soup recipes. Old but a staple in my house!
- I love America’s test kitchen stuff. I have their healthy air fryer book which is great (the turkey burgers!) And then a couple of their like grocery store magazines I cook out of all the time. My favorites are best-ever slow cooker recipes, dinner for two, and last minute dinners.
- I reference my joy of cooking book all the time for how to cook things.
- the art of simple food by Alice waters is awesome.
- favorite food blog is cookie and Kate. It’s vegetarian but we add simple meat to a lot of the recipes.
- second favorite is salt and lavender for easy comfort food, especially for things kids and picky eaters will like. The homemade hamburger helper is a home run.
- finally! If you have a wok, stir frying to the sky’s edge is the best for how to use it right and loads of delicious stir fry recipes.
I’ll stop but man I love cookbooks 👩🏻🍳
Thank you!!! This is awesome!!!
These days I’ve been relying on Instagram cooking accounts. Justine Snacks and Half Baked Harvest have reliably delicious recipes. This one from HBH is a crowd pleaser! We added grilled chicken: https://www.halfbakedharvest.com/spinach-and-sun-dried-tomato-burrata-pasta/
Thanks! I'll start following them!
I love What to Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking!
Same! So many of Caro’s recipes are now on repeat at my house. She also has fun mom content on IG.
I love https://smittenkitchen.com/. Deb Perelman's three Smitten Kitchen cookbooks are all excellent. Her recipes are full of strong, bright flavors and lots of veggies. She is a perfectionist who tests her recipes repeatedly, eliminating steps until she's sure that every step and ingredient is necessary for flavor. You know she'll never make you do a step that's not absolutely necessary for the dish. Not all of her recipes are quick, easy weeknight meals, but many of them are, and she's up front about how long things actually take (no saying you can caramelize onions in 15 minutes, for example). She's a home cook in a tiny New York City apartment with a tiny kitchen, with no space for single-use appliances. So none of her recipes require fancy tools or equipment. I go back to her recipes over and over again.
YES, I love Smitten Kitchen. Deb is a gem. I recently made the baked pasta with sausage and broccoli rabe.... yummmmm
Oh, yeah, that one's delicious. :-)
I love Dinner: Changing the Game by Melissa Clark. Also any America's Test Kitchen Cookbook. I just got I Dream of Dinner (so You Don't Have To) by Ali Sagle. I haven't made any recipes yet but I love all her recipes for NYT Cooking!
Ooh! I have Melissa Clark's pressure cooker cookbook but not this one. I'll check it out!
I really like Hetty Lui McKinnon’s Substack. She shares my love for veg cuisine and H Mart.
https://tovegetableswithlove.substack.com/
I’ve also been loving my friend Maggie Battista’s “A New Way to Food,” which came out a few years ago. The flavors are on point, my newly-picky kid loves her oatmeal, cashew crème fraiche and tuna nicoise pasta recipes, and the message of loving the body you have is a timeless one.
H Mart is one of my favorite places on earth.
I love Chetna Makan for all foods Indian. Her 30 Minute Indian is a constant reference. https://a.co/d/cwhyStv
I have been leaning on https://dishingupthedirt.com for the past decade! Andrea Bemis is a farmer and her recipes are seasonal, healthy and straight forward. She also has a few cookbooks out which are beautiful. I have made dozens of her recipes and genuinely none of them have ever disappointed!
Pinch of Yum on Instagram. She has an SOS series of super quick super easy recipes that are great.
Yes! I agree. I love Pinch of Yum and Caroline Chambers. Probably half of my meals each weeks come from those two. The Pinch of Yum crispy black bean tacos are a fan favorite at my house.
I’m a cooking instructor (and cookbook hoarder) so I’ll try not to overdo this! Quick note - if you have more than a few cookbooks, try the website EatYourBooks.com; you can set up a free account, log the cookbooks you have, and when you search for a particular ingredient or dish the site will tell you exactly where to find it in your collection, with page numbers.
My faves:
- Julia Turshen is my favorite cookbook author (especially Simply Julia). She really *gets* home cooks. She’s so warm, approachable, and practical, and I find her recipes have big payoff for minimum effort. She also teaches online classes and they’re amazing.
-Seconding those who have mentioned Deb Perelman and Hetty McKinnon, both gems.
-Many families I work with love Jenny Rosenstrach’s cookbooks (esp Dinner: The Playbook).
- Woks Of Life, both the site and the cookbook, are such great resources for delicious, approachable Chinese home cooking.
- I have two suggestions for when you’re in the depths of hating cooking: 1) Give yourself a FULL BREAK if you can for a few days (eg takeout, snacks for dinner, boxed mac and cheese) so you aren’t just relentlessly pushing through the dread of cooking. 2) Give yourself permission to build a meal around crowd-pleasing foods like hot dogs or chicken tenders.
- My other, completely opposite suggestion (your mileage may vary): romanticize your cooking a bit once in a while. No need to cook anything complex, but maybe try a different cultural dish than you usually prepare, find the recipe for a favorite restaurant dinner, make an indoor picnic, cook something retro like fondue (not that hard and who doesn’t like dipping veggies + bread into cheese?!)... it’s easy to feel stuck in the weeknight slog, so maybe worth shaking things up deliberately once a month or so.
We adore The Defined Dish in our home! Both of Alex’s cookbooks are in heavy rotation and we’ve yet to make a thing we didn’t love. (She’s great on IG too: https://instagram.com/thedefineddish?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=)
I have celiac disease but love to cook and bake. Nicole Hunn's https://glutenfreeonashoestring.com is absolutely the best. She has great resources for people who are just trying to figure out how to be gluten free too! I am now the official baker in my family b/c of her recipes. Also, if you sign up for her newsletter she actually reads and replies if you send her an email - so cool! :)
Oh, and I have to give a shout out to yummy toddler food! I make her recipe for oatmeal banana muffins or oatmeal pumpkin muffins every week. She is also responsible for half of the meals in my house this week (including zucchini pasta sauce - so good).
Thanks for sharing this! And thanks for the thread, Melinda. I needed to inject some new life into dinner. Especially as it gets hot here in the South, and I groan at the idea of turning on the oven.
Recipes from Real Simple. They aren’t barebones but they aren’t overtly complex (looking at you, Martha Stewart). Family has a favorite lasagna, baked Mac and cheese and beef strew and others ripped from the pages.
I love Damn Delicious and Danielle Walkers’s cookbooks. I also just got Feed These People by Jen Hatmaker-it has lots of yummy recipes as well.