The 15 New Cookbooks We’re Excited About This Fall

One of my favorite things about cookbook season is how it gives us a peek into what publishers think we, as a society, want in a given moment. How people cook reflects how they live, but when it comes to cookbooks, it would be more accurate to say that how people buy cookbooks reflects how they would like to live. The cookbooks we keep on our shelves always hold some level of aspirational value. And how do we want to live right now, according to the cookbook world? 

One common thread is that we’re desperate for in-person community. This season sees the release of big party-focused cookbooks, like Dan Pelosi’s straight-to-the-point Let’s Party and Brie Larson and Courtney McBroom’s Party People, full of ambitious, themed spreads and tips for setting the mood through tablescapes. We also see books about how to throw less-formal gatherings, such as Hetty Lui McKinnon’s Linger, Chelsea Fagan’s Having People Over, and Samin Nosrat’s Good Things. These guides are more concerned with various ways of communing over food rather than maximizing the aesthetics and specifics of hosting. Either way, there seems to be a clear message: We want to cook for and eat with others. (That we want to do this at home: potential recession indicator?)

Of course, other books that piqued our interest this season were more idiosyncratic. These releases went deep into one region, like Michael W. Twitty’s foundational Recipes from the American South, or paid homage to one special restaurant, like Kathy and Peter Fang’s House of Nanking (or, in the case of Eric Wareheim and Gabe Ulla’s Steak House, a collection of special restaurants). With so many incredible releases this fall, it’s hard narrowing this list down (as always), but these are the 15 new cookbooks that have the Eater staff most excited this season. —Bettina Makalintal, senior reporter

Let’s Party: Recipes and Menus for Celebrating Every Day

Dan Pelosi

Union Square & Co., out now

If there’s one word to sum up food personality Dan Pelosi, it’s joy. The recipe developer, better known by his Instagram handle @grossypelosi, made a name for himself with crowd-pleasing recipes, such as his famous “vodka sawce” and ultra-thick chocolate chip cookies. His ebullient, approachable perspective on cooking gives just about anyone the confidence to invite others over for a homemade meal, paired with good wine and conversation. It’s only natural that the follow-up to his debut cookbook, Let’s Eat, is titled Let’s Party, and that it’s full of party menus for every season. The recipes are broken down with day-by-day prep and include plenty of entertaining tips. 

While some of the parties might be a little more time-intensive (a holiday cookie party or Thanksgiving feast), others can be thrown together with spontaneity (dips by the pool, breakfast for dinner). Followers will recognize dishes and get-togethers inspired by those who show up frequently in Pelosi’s own celebrations, including his 103-year-old grandfather Bimpy and his boyfriend Gus, to whom the cookbook is dedicated. The recipes, many of which follow Pelosi’s signature of being straightforward in execution but impressive in flavor, leave plenty of room for additional adaptation — and the opportunity for every host to add their own creative flair and truly make the party their own. —Stephanie Wu, editor-in-chief

Korean Temple Cooking: Lessons on Life and Buddhism, with Recipes, the Life and Work of Jeongkwan Snim

Hoo Nam Seelmann

Hardie Grant, out now

Korean Temple Cooking is a portal to the inner workings of South Korea’s Baekyangsa Temple, a Buddhist temple situated in Jeollanam-do, roughly 150 miles from Seoul. Written by South Korea-born journalist and author Hoo Nam Seelmann, the book opens an intimate window into the life, philosophy, and cooking of Jeongkwan Snim, who was featured on Chef’s Table. Korean Temple Cooking doesn’t set out to just be a list of recipes; instead, it traces Seelmann’s own journey to the temple and through its verdant wooded grounds, and her meeting with Snim. Snim describes her path to Buddhism, how she has handled the sudden interest in herself and temple cooking since her turn on Chef’s Table.

The recipe section begins with the history of temple food, moving through the meaning of base ingredients such as tofu, rice, noodles, and namul, which broadly encompasses vegetables, leaves, roots, tubers, and more. Each ingredient is contextualized within the country’s history and its place at the temple. Fermentations take the spotlight and recipes are presented by the season. Mirroring Snim’s cooking at the temple, all of the recipes in Korean Temple Cooking are vegan. 

Véronique Hoegger’s photography brings the cookbook to life, transporting you into ephemeral moments at the temple like golden-leafed trees peeking through a foggy hillside and Snim, in earth-toned garments, preparing kimchi. Flipping through the book feels akin to sitting down for a meal at the monastery; the bright greens of a breaded zucchini or deep black of sesame porridge appear in such vivid detail it’s almost as if they were right in front of you. 

As summer ends, Korean Temple Cooking reintroduces Buddhist traditions, such as traditional robes, temple architecture, and teachings. Finally, a glossary of ingredients acts as a quick guide to the rest of the book. As soon as I finished it, I went back to the beginning and started reading again while looking into Baekyangsa’s temple stay. —Rebecca Roland, deputy editor, Eater Southern California/Southwest

Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love: A Cookbook

Samin Nosrat

Random House, out now

It’s a rare and special feat when someone writes a cookbook that feels like it inspires a paradigm shift in how the average person thinks about food. Samin Nosrat managed that with 2017’s Salt Fat Acid Heat, a book — then a show — that used those four basic principles to teach anyone to think like a chef. Fans were drawn to Nosrat’s generous, easy-to-parse style of teaching and her kind, welcoming nature. How do you follow that up? Enter Nosrat’s much-awaited second book, Good Things.

If Salt Fat Acid Heat is more about the theory behind cooking — Nosrat describes it as a “veritable manifesto” designed to free cooks from recipes — Good Things is somewhat more about the reality of cooking, which is that sometimes you just want someone to tell you what to make. Enter Good Things, so named because it’s full of Nosrat’s “treasures” collected over a lifetime of cooking. The book spans nearly 500 pages and it earns its space on the shelf, bursting with recipes as well as charts and formulas for understanding the foundations of great food. Nosrat writes that “usefulness” to the reader is her priority, and it shows.

If what you liked about Salt Fat Acid Heat was Nosrat’s humanity and humility, Good Things offers both in abundance. Nosrat writes not only of the joy of cooking but also of struggle; depression and loss in the years after Salt Fat Acid Heat forced her to “recalibrate [her] values,” she writes. “I began asking myself, ‘What is a good life?’” She advocates for the ritual of imperfect but routine communal dining over the meticulously curated dinner party. There’s a spiritual element throughout Good Things rooted in the idea that cooking brings meaning to our lives and can allow us to share what’s valuable to us with others. Nosrat has, once again, made a very good book. —BM

Mokonuts: The Cookbook

Moko Hirayama and Omar Koreitem

Phaidon, September 25

One of the most memorable meals of my life was a lunch at Mokonuts, the intimate Japanese Lebanese restaurant in Paris. I think often of a soothing, brothy meat dish I had on a cold December day in this tiny, warm restaurant, accompanied by bread, red wine, and amazing cookies. For me, it was a beautiful representation of what Parisian food should be. Now, I don’t have to take a plane to revisit that experience, since co-owners Moko Hirayama and Omar Koreitem gathered their best recipes into this stunning book.

Mokonuts’ eponymous cookbook is a historical collection of what the restaurant was and is, as its menu is ever-fluctuating. Koreitem bylines the savory portion of the book, and Hirayama writes the sweets and breakfast section; together, they draw from their multifaceted backgrounds and experiences: both Lebanese and Japanese, as well as American, British, and Parisian. Koreitem explains how he settled on flavors like adding a lemon ancho chile broth to a salmon confit dish. 

Truth be told, many of the recipes are ambitious to reproduce for the typical home cook, sometimes calling for shucking your own scallops for crudo, fileting your own trout for gravlax, and sourcing and breaking down pigeons. But then, there are also more approachable ones, including for the restaurant’s famed labneh and other elegantly cozy dishes such as one of eggs, peas, and sea urchin. 

Another section that amplifies the duo’s multicultural approach is the savory breakfast options — traditionally less common in France — such as spicy avocado melts and not-sweet Mokotecao cookies. These recipes offer more flexibility and customization options (add sesame seeds to the cookie if you want!). Should there be a follow-up baked goods book? I think yes. —Nadia Chaudhury, deputy editor, Northeast

Six Seasons of Pasta: A New Way with Everyone’s Favorite Food

Joshua McFadden with Martha Holmberg

Artisan, September 30

Joshua McFadden forever changed the way I — and probably you — cook and eat. His recipe for kale sauce, first published in 2017’s Six Seasons, is one of my most reliable dishes; I’ve written before that it’s more of a way of life than a recipe at this point. His influence resonates in other ways: He helped popularize the kale salad in the United States and provided the original inspiration for the viral butter boards. McFadden’s newest cookbook, Six Seasons of Pasta, will be similarly essential. 

The original Six Seasons is structured around growing seasons, with recipes for the produce you’d expect to find during each. (McFadden makes the case that there are six, not four, seasons since summer produce comes in distinct waves.) Six Seasons of Pasta applies a similar lens, featuring artichoke- and asparagus-laden pastas in the spring and creamy, bean-filled pastas in the fall. Sections on ragù and “any season” cooking (e.g., carbonara) guarantee that you’ll be prepared for any craving. There’s a new take on kale sauce too, proving that cooking is always a work in progress, not just a singular endpoint.

A boon for those of us who love pasta but not enough to dedicate ourselves to the from-scratch approach, McFadden calls for exclusively dried pasta in this book. He focuses instead on sauces and the “build-in-the-skillet” strategy, making this book highly cookable and welcoming to the average home cook. Consider this one if you’re a pasta devotee who could use some new ideas, or if you’ve always wondered why your bowls of noodles are never quite up to par with a restaurant’s. —BM

House of Nanking: Family Recipes from San Francisco’s Favorite Chinese Restaurant

Kathy and Peter Fang

Abrams, September 30

One of the most beloved Chinese restaurants in San Francisco, House of Nanking has been drawing everyone from famous directors to bewildered tourists into its bustling dining room for almost 50 years. As a kid growing up in California, the small restaurant was a must-visit whenever my family was in the Bay Area and I had a favorite House of Nanking shirt plastered with the iconic rainbow font. 

This cookbook doesn’t just dive into Nanking’s famous recipes that combine Shanghainese, Cantonese, Hunan, and other regional Chinese techniques, but it also tells the multigenerational story of the Fang family, from Peter and Lily Fang opening Nanking to their daughter Kathy Fang reluctantly joining the family business and opening the expanded Fang restaurant in 2009. Peter and Kathy Fang detail how they drew inspiration from San Francisco’s vibrant Chinatown and break down everything you need to know about cooking in a wok (even on an electric stove). For lifelong fans of the restaurant and beyond, the stories before each recipe provide a delightful peek into years of family memories.

Here are the essential recipes that every Nanking devotee craves, like crunchy sesame chicken with glossy sweet potato, Prawns in Twin Happiness Sauce (both sesame shrimp and shrimp in a Tsingtao beer sauce), and Veggie ABC (a medley of eggplant, mushrooms, and tofu), alongside family dishes that Peter remembers his mother serving, like the refreshing and herbaceous tofu and Calimeris salad that they ate during hot Shanghai summers. There are also their takes on simple Chinese recipes, like a tomato-egg stir fry upgraded with creamy egg tofu and dashi. Also useful, the Fangs dive into less well-known ingredients in a thorough ingredients glossary and list the best San Francisco markets and international supermarket chains from which to buy Chinese produce and pantry staples. 

Reading this cookbook and cooking the dishes I’d coveted since I was a child transported me back to that chaotic dining room, even though I haven’t been back to the House of Nanking in years. —Emily Venezky, editorial associate

Linger: Salad, Sweets, and Stories to Savor

Hetty Lui McKinnon

Knopf, October 7

When I see a Hetty recipe, I trust it. Few cookbooks in my collection are more useful on the average day than Tenderheart. Still, the premise of McKinnon’s newest cookbook initially gave me pause. Per the marketing copy, Linger is a book about salads as the “ultimate comfort food.” Huh, I thought, thinking of Sweetgreen slop bowls. To many, the salad is the poster child for the solitary desk lunch. And yet, in Linger, McKinnon convinces us of a freer vision than functional wellness food: salad as a medium for creativity and, more importantly, as a conduit for community.

To McKinnon, salads “unleashed” her as a cook, allowing her to find “a new beginning, renewed purpose, a sense of belonging, connection with others, and self-acceptance,” she writes. To McKinnon, anything can be a salad so long as it has a dressing or a sauce. Salads can be served at room temperature, mostly prepped ahead, and easily scaled up, and that is what makes them so conducive to gathering. McKinnon’s salads are flavorful, textural, nourishing, and full of tasty bits and dressings with which to fill your fridge, like spicy cilantro oil and a chile-crisp riff on remoulade. 

Come for the approachable (and as always, quietly vegetarian, though also usually adaptable to vegan) recipes; stay for McKinnon’s ruminations on self, family, and community. In Linger, McKinnon once again proves that she’s one of the most well-rounded food writers working today. She photographed the entire book, too, in real time during gatherings with friends in her home. At least in my kitchen, Tenderheart now has some real competition. —BM

Family Thai: Bringing the Flavors of Thailand Home

Arnold Myint and Kat Thompson

Abrams, October 7

Arnold Myint’s debut cookbook, co-written with Eater editor Kat Thompson, is a loving exploration of one family’s experience cooking Thai food in the United States. Myint’s parents — Patti and Win Myint, Thai and Burmese immigrants, respectively — opened International Market & Restaurant in Nashville in 1975, when the city wasn’t yet familiar with Thai cuisine. Arnold Myint and his sister Anna now run a new iteration of the restaurant, where he offers his own specialties. 

An ode to the way immigrants make a new food culture of their own, Family Thai combines Myint’s takes on Thai cooking — pad see eiw with pappardelle; hot dog salad with cilantro, chiles, and fish sauce — with his mother’s own popular, boundary-blurring dishes. Instead of pad Thai and tom yum, Myint focuses on more overlooked dishes from the Thai canon.

Myint writes his recipes with the home cook top of mind. Unlike some cookbooks that can be dogmatic about using only from-scratch curry pastes, Family Thai welcomes time-saving substitutions. While his mom’s bamboo chicken has too many canned products for him to use at the restaurant now, the recipe is convenient for the home cook. Red curry paste, after all, can now be found in far more grocery stores in the U.S. than in 1975 — a testament to the now-essential nature of Thai cuisine in this country. —BM

Steak House: The People, the Places, the Recipes

Eric Wareheim with Gabe Ulla

Ten Speed Press, October 14

If you told me in 2008 — at the peak of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! fervor — that 17 years later I would be following Eric Wareheim’s recipe for wedge salad, I would have assumed it was an elaborate bit. But life is a long and winding road, and here I am whipping up an earnest Russian dressing from Wareheim’s new cookbook Steak House — the multihyphenate comedian-director-wine-guy–landscaper also has “cookbook author” in his slash line. (In fairness to my teenage self, Wareheim’s oft–chronicled meanderings through the food world still sometimes come off like a decade-long bit, rife with schtick, caricature, and post-irony.) This is actually Wareheim’s second cookbook, after the bestselling Foodheim, and it’s full of those same proclivities.

Steak House is an exuberant veneration of the iconic American meat-staurant, full of Wareheim-isms (“shraaaaamp,” p. 89) and cool-kid stories including an “ephemeral” steakhouse night with chef Chris Kronner, tales from the likes of Bob Odenkirk and T-Pain, and flash photos of haphazard dishes on stained white tablecloths. It’s fun, it’s casual, and it’s wild. 

For the most part, so are the recipes. They’re divided into sections like a menu, dropped in between grouped odes to steakhouses. Recipes are succinct, with informal instructions often stacked two or three to a page. They’re not the book’s centerpiece, but they work, including a tomato and stone fruit salad and Wareheim’s take on creamed spinach. 

In some ways, steak is the least essential part of a steakhouse. What matters is the accompaniments, both on the plate and in the atmosphere. You buy this book to celebrate steakhouses, to revel in the Wareheim of it all, and then, maybe, to throw together a crunchy salad or shrimp DeJonghe with a slab of meat. Ultimately, it’s about having a good time. —Ben Mesirow, associate editor, travel

Recipes from the American South

Michael W. Twitty

Phaidon, October 15

In his deeply personal new cookbook, writer Michael W. Twitty traces the roots and evolution of Southern cooking. He sets the scene, in a short introduction, with the confluence of Native American and West Central African culinary traditions, the impact of European colonization, and the bounty of Southern crops, all of which melded together to create a distinctly American cuisine — one that is often misunderstood and underappreciated. 

With his recipes, Twitty highlights the broad range of Southern food. The opening chapter has dozens of flour-based breads, including six different types of biscuits. This might feel like overkill, until you realize that reading each recipe illuminates exactly how a purportedly simple bread, one that can be found in restaurant and home kitchens across the South, can express the multifaceted complexities of this massive region. The cookbook shines when it’s spotlighting regional specialties — Maryland crab soup, Chinese Mississippi collard greens, Texas caviar, Virginia fried apples, and Gullah Geechee pot roast all make appearances — as well as when it’s showcasing the breadth of Southern ingredients, from heirloom tomatoes and benne seeds to peanuts and shellfish. 

And in a subtle way to further dispel misconceptions, there are plenty of recipes that can be made in 30 minutes or less, vegan and vegetarian dishes, and dairy- and gluten-free options, all marked with icons. Whether you grew up with Southern cooking or are just beginning to learn its intricacies, this thoughtful and extensive cookbook cements the deep legacy of this cuisine on American foodways. —SW

Having People Over: A Modern Guide to Planning, Throwing, and Attending Every Type of Party

Chelsea Fagan

Ten Speed Press, October 21

Not enough people are throwing parties: This is the central thesis of Chelsea Fagan’s spirited new entertaining guide Having People Over. Fagan is best known as the co-founder and CEO of the Financial Diet, a fact which might initially foster confusion as to why she’s written a book about throwing a great party. But Fagan’s ultimate strength is in her ability to abolish readers’ self-limiting beliefs and help them understand that the adulthood they dreamed of having — with chic cheese platters, quality banter, and, most importantly, a sense of community — is within grasp, requiring only that one make an effort to host. “In a culture that is increasingly estranged from itself, with communities fraying at the edges, gathering is an important act,” she writes in the intro. “Bringing people together is one of the most powerful things we can do right now.”

This is, by the way, not a cookbook, but a meditation and an inspirational reminder that socializing in person is good for us, that gathering is needed to form and deepen the relationships that make life worthwhile. Fagan hopes to lower the barrier to entry to having people over as much as possible, and the suggestion that one needs to make elaborate dishes in order to entertain would muddle that message. There are a few recipes in the book — Fagan calls them Back-Pocket Recipes — and they’re the types of libations and snacks that impress without fuss (or long prep times), such as cacio e pepe fried olives and tomato pepperoncini martinis. But she makes the point many times over that throwing a party need not be an expensive endeavor (she was raised by parents that hosted many events at their modest home, despite having very limited finances), and that a warm, welcoming ambiance is far more crucial to group dynamics than a caviar platter or super-expensive linens. Having People Over is a manifesto that partying is a state of mind, not a Pinterest board. —Hilary Pollack, deputy editor

Party People: A Cookbook for Creative Celebrations

Brie Larson and Courtney McBroom

DK, October 21

Brie Larson’s career is a fascinating one. She got her start as a child actress, then became an indie darling in films such as Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Room, then ascended to the status of Marvel superstar. Now, in the present day, she’s a cookbook author. Cooking isn’t an entirely new venture for her, it should be noted: She starred in the 2023 miniseries Lessons in Chemistry, in which she plays a scientist who becomes the host of a television cooking show in the 1950s. During filming, she met co-author Courtney McBroom, the show’s head food consultant and before that, Milk Bar’s culinary director, and their friendship led to this absolutely joyous, girly pop, mega-millennial party cookbook — the duo calls themselves the “Party People” because, well, they love hosting food-centric parties. 

The book is a blend of cookbook, teen magazine (there’s a questionnaire on how much of a party person you are), friendship book, and yearbook. The recipes themselves are eclectic, festive, often retro, and accessible. Texas is represented often — McBroom is from Wichita Falls — with recipes like Mexican martinis and chile con queso; Larson offers takes on her grandmother’s cheesy bread and pomegranate jellies. There are New American-ish global touches on party foods — miso deviled eggs and coconut lime rice pilaf — while other dishes are resourceful, like ranch dressing made with the spice packets from packaged ramen, or a cake made with Ritz crackers and cherry Kool-Aid-flavored cream cheese frosting.  

The Party People philosophy: Life is short, everything sucks, plan hella parties with your BFFFs (best food friends forever), and live life like a Kesha song. —NC

Padma’s All American: Tales, Travels, and Recipes from Taste the Nation and Beyond: A Cookbook

Padma Lakshmi

Knopf, November 4

Padma Lakshmi is one of those multihyphenates who is everywhere all the time. (When does she rest?) In her newest tome, the former Top Chef host and food expert turns her Hulu television series Taste the Nation into a cookbook, which Lakhmi has said was the intention from the get-go. 

There’s a refrain throughout the book about how immigrants made and make America what it is. Food-wise, Lakshmi points to how globalization and immigration have created a mosaic of uniquely American food that draws from third-culture influences and culturally borrowed ingredients — turmeric and gochujang are everywhere now — and calls back to the nation’s Indigenous roots. 

Lakshmi collects her recipes from fellow friends, chefs, and home cooks she visited while filming Taste the Nation, alongside her own inventions. For example, there’s Biracial Latkes, an ode to her daughter — who is half-Indian and half-Jewish — in which the potato pancakes are paired with green chiles and cilantro. In a series of interspersed essays, Lakshmi pays further tributes to all those people she met along the way during production. There’s one particularly moving essay about her Lebanese friend Kamal, whose Muslim family found out he was gay and how that impacted him. 

It’s an approachable book in which she tells you why she adapted recipes in certain ways, like adding green apples and papaya to a tom yum recipe, or guides you through both grill- and stovetop-cooked dishes. There are asides and reassurances, like she’s beside you calmly telling you it’s okay if your tostones break apart. Overall, the book is like a peek into Lakshmi’s own Rolodex of personal connections and recipes gathered throughout the years. —NC

Something from Nothing: A Cookbook

Alison Roman

Clarkson Potter, November 11

For a certain ilk of discerning, millennial-adjacent cooks, few recipe writers have had greater influence over what we make for dinner in recent years than Alison Roman, who contributed to the 2020 bucatini shortage and helped usher the term “brothy beans” into the vernacular. Despite that influence, Roman hasn’t published a savory cookbook since 2019. In fact, some of her most zeitgeist-y recipes, like the shallot pasta, live scattered across the internet. Her newest book, Something from Nothing, solves that issue of collation, combining some of Roman’s familiar hits with ample new dishes, all of them savory.

Something from Nothing is Roman’s most self-assured and realistic book yet, relying on the possibilities unlocked by having the right stuff on your shelves over temperamental factors like perfect produce or excessive displays of effort. For this reason, it promises to be a reliable all-season companion. 

As I began to cook and read through Something from Nothing, I realized that I had already welcomed some of these dishes — like Roman’s no-fry take on eggplant Parm, which I’d first seen in her newsletter — into my repertoire, to the point that I almost forgot they’d come from Roman in the first place. To me, that’s the best thing a recipe can be: second nature. Something from Nothing is full of recipes that could quickly become canon for many cooks. —Bettina Makalintal

Turtle Island: Foods and Traditions of the Indigenous Peoples of North America

Sean Sherman with Kate Nelson and Kristin Donnelly

Clarkson Potter, November 11

The chef Sean Sherman is one of the most prominent advocates of North America’s Indigenous cuisine, running the award-winning Minneapolis restaurant Owamni and the nonprofit North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NATIFS). With Turtle Island, Sherman brings his mission of promoting Indigenous foodways to even more people. Turtle Island, like the rest of Sherman’s work, is about both paying homage to the past and positioning Indigenous foodways as a path for the future.

Turtle Island, Sherman writes, is a concept that “transcends” geography. It references the mythology shared by many cultures, including the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) people, that the world was created on the back of an ancient turtle. Accordingly, the book’s 13 chapters — a reference to the number of scales on a turtle’s shell — are structured by regions with different culinary heritage and ingredients. It’s by design that you might not be able to cook every recipe in the book, Sherman writes: Their inclusion is about documentation and “help[ing] you look at where you live through an Indigenous lens.” 

Even if you don’t, or can’t, cook from Turtle Island, it’s an incredibly engaging read, full of evocative descriptions of landscapes and the abundance of ingredients you can harvest there. Throughout the book, Sherman weaves in historical context that many of us might have found was just brushed over in school. This is an essential work, especially for anyone interested in culinary history and the natural world — how we’ve grown distant from it but also how, through food, we might reconnect to it, too. —Bettina Makalintal