And just like that, 2026 is well underway. This winter, there’s a roster of new cookbooks catching our team’s attention. These titles are dreaming up ways to bring people together (looking at you, Everyone Hot Pot), inspiring us to refresh our spice cabinets (The Diaspora Co. Cookbook is a great motivator), and transporting us to warmer places without having to board a plane (cook from My Jamaican Table and you’ll feel the island sun). Read on for our standout titles of the season (organized by release date), hand-chosen (and cooked from) by our staff.
I have been yearning for breakfast inspiration: something to help me get out of my egg-heavy routine. After taking a gander through Cozy Vegan, a collection of 100 approachable vegan recipes by cook and Glow Diaries founder Liz Douglas, I’ve found some hope. Douglas’s approach is simple: with short ingredient lists used to create satisfying plant-based dishes. She has a plethora of beginner-friendly recipes like creamy pâté made from portobello mushrooms and sausage rolls with textured vegetable protein. For an eggless breakfast, I prepped the 10-minute Tropical Chia Pudding the night before, so it could sit in the fridge and thicken to a spoonable consistency. The next morning, I shot out of bed, excited to taste the mango-and-passion-fruit-based treat. It was excellent. Next on my list are not too sweet banana bread and freezer grab-and-go burritos. —Cristina Correa, social media manager
Cozy Vegan: 100 Delicious, Plant-Based Comfort Food Recipes
I love hot pot. The choose-your-own-adventure approach. The intimate and communal atmosphere. Lucky for me, chef and pro baker Natasha Pickowicz has just dedicated an entire cookbook to this style of cooking. Everyone Hot Pot is a guide to hosting the ultimate hot pot party at home. There are shareable recipes, naturally, but also touching dedications to her family and anecdotes about the parties of her youth. She offers nuggets of wisdom—like ways to manage your prep time, how to scale up and down, and what to substitute in when you hit hurdles shopping for ingredients. The abundance of fun broth ideas stood out to me: Charred Tomato and Lemongrass Broth; Tingly Beef Broth; Tea Bag Broth. But for nights when hosting hot pot may not be on the menu, Pickowicz also offers up simpler stand-alones like Scallion Pancakes, Cucumber and Peanut Pyramids, and of course, a Pickowicz specialty: desserts. —Mallary Santucci, senior culinary producer
Everyone Hot Pot: Creating the Ultimate Meal for Gathering and Feasting
It’s rare for an old dog like me to learn several new tricks in one sitting, as I did with Jerrelle Guy’s We Fancy. The book is an ode to embracing the simple twists that can level up meals to extraordinary heights. Confronted with the demands of entrepreneurship, mixed with what she describes as a “fog of depression,” Guy had to slow down, reset, and reapproach cooking. It frankly hits close to home. As someone with multiple burnouts behind me, I found that the only way to work in food media and not also resent my status as family cook was to make the process fun for me. For Guy, that means cooking joyful recipes like four-ingredient tomato soup paired with jalapeño-popper-inspired breadsticks (a clever layering of bread with cream cheese and pickled jalapeños, with a crisp coating of Parmesan). She also has a version of baked tofu nuggets, dredged in heavily seasoned crispy rice cereal, a revelatory gluten-free breading. In the Test Kitchen, we sampled the Carrot and Miso Wedge Salad, which tempers the fibrous carrot with applesauce for a natural sweetness and smooth body. The optional topper of “frazzled onions,” crunchy chickpea-battered wisps, will likely be skipped on weeknights for a store-bought alternative, but are sure to appeal to anyone who’s willing to take a fancy sideroad. —Chris Morocco, food director
We Fancy: Simple Recipes To Make The Everyday Special
There is a recipe in Ella Quittner’s Obsessed With the Best that encapsulates the cookbook well: Giant Frozen Bowties (Trust Me!). “Giant” as in, the size of a plate, like a piece of farfalle for Godzilla. It’s covered in pesto and you eat it with a fork and knife. “Frozen” as in, after you make from-scratch pasta dough, you must freeze it before boiling it, to optimize the level of chew. And “(Trust Me!)” as in, Quittner has thought about this recipe more than you ever have, or will, so really, you should trust her. I worked with Quittner years ago at Food52, where she wrote the column “Absolute Best Tests,” which inspired this book. So I’ve been looking forward to it for a while. It has all the obsessiveness that made her series such a hit—including 20 head-to-head tests—and more. You can learn the best way to poach an egg or cook bacon or bake biscuits. (I baked the biscuits, cleverly tenderized with vodka, and wow.) Or you could make one of her smart spinoffs, like eggs poached in milk that turns into ricotta, both heaped onto toast. (High on my list.) But my favorite part of the book is Quittner’s writing, as deeply reported as it is utterly fun. —Emma Laperruque, director of cooking
Obsessed with the Best: 100+ Methodically Perfected Recipes Based on 20+ Head-to-Head Tests
Sana Javeri Kadri, founder of the popular Diaspora Spice Co., has worked with Asha Loupy on recipes incorporating their brand’s products online for years. Now the two have created a whole cookbook. As Kadri writes, The Diaspora Spice Co. Cookbook’s goal was “to reveal the depth and complexity of South Asian cuisine, and perhaps for the first time in recent history, to center South Asia in our understanding of how to cook with spices.” To research and develop the book, Kadri and Loupy traveled with their photographer to the farms and kitchens of Diaspora Spice Co. partners and their families (many of whom are credited as recipe contributors in the books). In each home, the authors observed invaluable techniques that South Asian home cooks use daily. Like in farmer Shirley Parameswaran’s Jammy Egg Curry, where boiled eggs are scored before they’re nestled into the sauce, in order to sop up as much flavor as possible. When we made this recipe in the Test Kitchen, we loved how the sweet-slanting curry permeated through so much of the silky egg white. We also made brothy Pahadi Rajma, a “zhuzhed up” version of a Himalayan-style kidney bean dish that’s a staple in the Tons Valley. After two hours on the stove, it turned earthy, buttery, and unquestionably nourishing. —Rebecca Firkser, Test Kitchen editor
The Diaspora Spice Co. Cookbook: Seasonal Home Cooking from South Asia’s Best Spice Farms
Tanya Bush, the coeditor of Cake Zine and creator of the popular Instagram account @will.this.make.me.happy, is releasing her debut book, Will This Make You Happy, in March. It’s rich with narrative, following Bush’s whirlwind year shaped by love, disappointment, elation, confusion, and ambition. She writes, “Sometimes a single year can mark a sudden and definitive shift: In this one, I decided to become a baker. I wrestled my way into the kitchen, traveled to Italy for a strange internship, took a job at a local bakery, fell out of love and back into it again.” Sprinkled with transformative desserts, the recipes in the book feel practiced and assured. Bush inspires confidence with dessert pairings and flavor substitutions, so much so that I took my own liberties. When making her Lemon Thyme Crème Brûlée, I split the cream base in half and attempted another infusion—one with goji and ginger—for a different herbal spin. The consistency of the custard was perfectly smooth, the shell crackly, and flavors for both well-pronounced. I’m tempted to try another version using earl grey or masala chai for the custard infusion, plus Bush’s suggested lavender sugar for the caramel shell. And for what it’s worth, the Genmaicha Snickerdoodles indeed Made My Neighbors Happy, and the Miso Caramel will be going in my everyday joe for the foreseeable future. —Ingu Chen, art director
Will This Make You Happy: Stories & Recipes from a Year of Baking
My Jamaican Table is a tender love letter to Jamaica. It comes from three-time Chopped champion Andre Fowles, who hails from Kingston. Grazing through the pages, you immediately feel Fowles’s radiant pride in his home country’s traditions and island culture, which has been influenced by Indigenous, African, Indian, Chinese, and European communities. He writes about this rich history with lyrical reverence: “From the fiery spices of African heritage to the aromatic herbs of Indian cuisine, every dish tells a story of resilience and adaptation. This fusion defines not only our culinary identity but the spirit of Jamaica itself—dynamic, colorful, and always evolving.” The book shares a mishmosh of classic recipes like dusted-jerk-seasoning-used-nine-ways, and ones where Chinese ingredients, like soy sauce and hoisin are front and center. Looking for a feel-good meal, I made Fowles’s Jerk Salmon With Herb Salsa. As the salmon blackens in a skillet, the spices awaken, encrusting the fish in peppery piquant. I drizzled the gingery cilantro salsa atop, which had a cleansing citrus quality, attributed to the liberal usage of lime zest and juice. I also tried out the Plantain and Black Bean Salad, a welcome accompaniment to the salmon. The plantains roast on a sheet pan and become chewy with honey-like caramelized edges. All in all, a knockout meal. —Nina Moskowitz, associate editor, cooking
My Jamaican Table: Vibrant Recipes from a Sun-Drenched Island
Anna Hezel’s debut cookbook, Tin to Table, extolled the virtues of briny canned fish and proved two theses along the way: One, that grazing hour is the most exciting food arena when it comes to parties. Two, that party snacks need not be expensive and overwrought to be truly delicious. Both of these apply to her latest release, Party Tricks. I first acquainted myself with Hezel’s cooking sensibility through her writing on Epicurious, where she worked as a senior editor and waxed poetic on frozen amaro and a three-ingredient affogato-ish boozy sundae from Marcella Hazan, which she describes as “wildly chic.” I’d bestow that same descriptor on her new cookbook, which is full of wildly chic snacks fit for hosting. Think fried dates with blue cheese, Canned Clam Croquettes, and Shrimp Butter & Saltines, the latter of which called to me in particular. It’s so easy, requiring you boil shrimp until just opaque and pulse them in a blender or food processor with butter, onion, celery, parsley, and cayenne. In mere minutes you have a delectable spread, ideally served on saltines (as the recipes suggests) or on toast points, as I opted for. —Li Goldstein, associate newsletter editor
Party Tricks: Easy, Elegant Recipes for Snacking and Hosting
I gasped when I first laid eyes on Anna Stockwell’s The Butter Book. It’s designed to resemble a stick of butter, down to the wax-paper jacket, cheerful blue type, and Kerrygold-yellow cover. Come on! So fun. And that’s before you even open a page. I’ve been a fan of Stockwell’s work ever since her tenure at Bon Appétit and Epicurious, followed by her cookbook, For the Table. This title is a fun departure—something you’d want on your coffee table as much as in your kitchen. There’s a brief history of butter; a guide on how to make your own; a glossary on types; a case for butter sculpting as a new hobby. I could turn butter into a seashell! Or a cow. And that cow could be made of not just butter, but Green Goddess Butter (anchovy, parsley, and tarragon) or Miso-Orange Butter (what it sounds like). I decided to try her Pommes Anna (À La Anna)—a French classic I’ve been wary to attempt—and it was a delight. Crispy, custardy, and of course, so buttery. —E.L.
More winter books we’re excited to cook from:
The Nonalcoholic Bar by John deBary: Bar expert John deBary is serving up a collection of inventive, non-alcoholic cocktails, everything from A Moderate Mule to Tahini Dreamsicle.
The Ramadan Kitchen by Ilhan Mohamed Abdi: In her debut cookbook, creator Ilhan Mohamed Abdi celebrates Ramadan’s rich culinary traditions, featuring global flavors from East and North Africa, the Middle East, and the wider Muslim diaspora.
Cocina Puerto Rico by Mia Castro: TV personality Mia Castro transports you to Borinquen, sharing her abuela’s sacred recipes that are adapted for your home kitchen.
