A cookbook is a must-have item for every kitchen. A cookbook is a kitchen reference containing a collection of recipes.
A cookbook can help you prepare desired and new dishes without any hustle, even if you are a complete beginner.
So, if you’re willing to get a cookbook and want to enjoy delicious dishes with your family, then here’s a list of the 5 best cookbooks for beginners that you should read.
What is a cookbook?
A cookbook is a collection of recipes, instructions, and information about the preparation and serving of foods at their best. Cookbooks may specialize in a particular cuisine or category of food. Recipes in cookbooks are organized in various ways.
Cookbooks may be written by individual authors, who may be professional chefs, home cooks, food bloggers or writers, professional restaurant cooks, institutional cooks, or more specialized audiences.
Some cookbooks are didactic, with detailed recipes addressed to beginners, people, or cuisines, which may document the composition of a dish or even precise measurements, but not the deep information.
5 Best Cookbooks for Beginners in 2024
List of the best beginner-friendly cookbooks:
1. Indian Cookery Course
This book is a comprehensive guide to Indian cooking that explores the myriad regional varieties of authentic, healthy, and lesser-known Indian recipes.
This book has chapters broken down into Rice, Bread, Meat, Fish and Seafood, Poultry, Eggs, Dairy, Lentils, Beans, Vegetables, Snacks and Sides, Grills, Salads and Raitas, Chutneys and Relishes, Desserts, and Drinks.
Overview of India’s colorful traditions and geographical differences, from the earthy lentil dishes of the North to the coconut-based curries that are a staple in the South.
Advice on the building blocks of Indian cuisines, such as how to make a basic curry and how to make traditional Indian food at home,.
The Indian Cookery Course is the ultimate guide to everything you ever wanted to know about Indian food. A varied range of dishes as well as providing insights into ingredients, techniques, and step-by-step masterclasses.
Author of the Book: “Monisha Bharadwaj” is an award-winning chef, author, and food historian. She was awarded Cookery Writer of the Year by the Guild of Food Writers, and her books have been shortlisted for awards such as the Andre Simon Award and the Cordon Bleu World Food Media Awards.
Check on Amazon >> [Most Recommended]
- Also read: 5 Best Indian Food Cooking Online Classes
2. The Plant-Based Recipe Cookbook
Did you know that vegan eating is catching on with more people every day?
Here’s a reminder of the importance of a meal plan, as it is designed to kickstart your vegan fitness lifestyle. The Plant-Based Recipe Cookbook will take you on a journey to attain the body of a Greek god, “Vegan style”!
This plant-based online recipe cookbook will show you simple ways to stay healthy and get the kind of body you’re proud of when eating any of these delicious vegan recipes.
- Want to feel more energized by shedding excess weight?
- Want to improve your fitness and overall well-being?
- Want to save more money on takeout and junk food?
If yes, then this online Cookbook is for You.
Following a healthy, balanced vegan diet ensures a host of health benefits as well as the prevention of some of the major diseases striking people.
It can help lower your risk of chronic diseases like heart attacks and type 2 diabetes. Not just that, it encourages self-control by limiting your nutrition to specific foods and eliminating processed foods.
- Also read: 5 Best Plant-based Online Cooking Classes
3. Tiffin: Memories and Recipes of Indian Vegetarian Food
Captain Thomas Williamson, in his East India Vade Mecum, describes ‘Tiffin’ as a little dinner taken at 1.00 or 2.00 p.m., a time that remained unchanged right up until India’s independence from British rule.
The word ‘tiffin’ itself is thought to be derived from tiffing, an 18th-century English slang term for ‘Shipping’.
Tiffin, luncheon, Anglo-Indian, and Hindustani in English—we believed the word to be a local survival of an English colloquial or slang term. Compiled originally by Captain Francis Grose.
Tiffing, eating, or drinking out of mealtime, besides other meanings. Tiffin, if not made the principal meal of the day, should invariably be light and consist only of bread or biscuit, fruits, and a glass of sherry or claret.
Hull goes on to say that some people make tiffin an excuse for a double dinner, but anyone who eats largely at both of these meals eats more than is necessary.
Heavy tiffins make men heavy and sleepy and interfere with the due performance of active work in the later part of the day.
Either take a substantial tiffin and a light dinner, or a substantial dinner and a light tiffin. Tiffin was a light midday meal enjoyed by 19th-century India. When the evening dinner became a heavy daily repast, only a light afternoon meal was necessary.
This was called Tiffin, a word that first appeared in an ad in 1807 in Anglo-Indian writing. Tiffin is a play on the time of day and the nature of the food served in many homes in India—an informal snack or light meal served at breakfast or with late afternoon tea.
Several small commercial eateries known as tiffin rooms became popular; two such in Bengaluru are known as Mavalli Tiffin Rooms.
On the other hand, the Central Tiffin Room in Malleswaram, a suburb in North Bengaluru, is low-profile and a favorite haunt of the local denizens. Eateries such as these, with their own eclectic fare, dot the cityscape in India.
Recently, while traveling by road in South India,. Some were several stories high, while others were very modest, thatched huts, while others were very modest, thatched huts displaying signboards in Tamil that said ‘Tippen Taiyaar’, meaning, Tiffin and Meals Ready.
In the Madres area for a light afternoon snack of items like the Uppma, Dosai, and Vadas, to the extent that many take it to be an Indian language word.
4. Homemade Goodness Book
The Homemade Goodness is an amazing cookbook. It’s not just a regular cookbook. In fact, it’s a one-stop shop for everything that you would need in your culinary arsenal.
Be it putting together lip-smacking dishes in no time or creating a feast on those special occasions,.
Homemade goodness has something to offer everyone. This book outlines the basics and techniques that go into creating some of the dishes that are perceived to be the simplest.
It also provides an array of essentials for a kitchen, their health benefits, and all those make-ahead preparations that would save you time in the kitchen.
This book is one of the best homemade recipe books. Crisp, clear, precise, and well-written recipes, and it’s really great to read and valuable for anyone looking for easy cooking.
5. Complete Cookbook for Young Chefs
This book is Amazon’s best cookbook and an ICPA Award winner. America’s Test Kitchen is bringing its scientific know-how, rigorous testing, and hands-on learning to kids in the kitchen.
The cookbook every kid chef needs for themselves. Recipes were thoroughly tested by more than 750 kids to get them just right for cooks of all skill levels, including recipes for breakfast, snacks and beverages, dinners, desserts, and more.
Step-by-step photos of tips and techniques will help chefs feel like pros in their own kitchens. America’s Test Kitchen will encourage young chefs to truly learn the best recipes from the best cooks.
For kids who are interested in cooking, this “Complete Cookbook for young chefs” introduces kids to all the basics, and of course, there are a whole lot of easy and very tasty recipes to try.
Younger cooks and emergent readers may feel overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of information contained on a page, as the format sometimes reflects the procedural and chronological nature of a recipe.
6. How to Cook Everything The Basics
Mark Bittman’s highly acclaimed, bestselling book How to Cook Everything is an indispensable guide for any modern cook. How to Cook Everything The Basics reveals how truly easy it is to learn fundamental techniques and recipes.
From dicing vegetables and roasting meat to cooking building block meals that include salads, soups, poultry, meats, fish, sides, and desserts.
Bittman explains in this book what every home cook, particularly novices, should know. Bittman’s practical tips, variation ideas, and visual cues that accompany each of the 185 recipes, cooking with How to Cook Everything The basics are like having Bittman in the kitchen with you.
This is an essential teaching cookbook, with 1,000 photos illustrating every technique and recipe. Special Basics features are scattered throughout simple board subjects with sections like Think of Vegetables in Groups, How to Cook Any Grain, and 5 Rules for Buying and Storing Seafood.
Detailed notes appear in blue type near selected images. Here, Mark highlights what to look for during a particular step and offers handy advice and other helpful asides.
Tips and variations let cooks hone their skills and be creative. This book has straightforward directions, practical tips and variation ideas, and helpful photos for each of the recipes.
This book is for true beginners and perennial students, one that captures the pleasure and simplicity of everyday home cooking and makes it accessible to everyone in full color, step-by-step action.
The basics are the ultimate confidence-builder. How to Cook Everything The Basics is a rare cookbook that teaches by example.
Also read:
Why is it Important to Read a Recipe Book before cooking?
A cookbook or recipe book is a kitchen reference containing recipes. A cookbook is also a chronicle and treasury of the fine art of cooking, an art whose masterpieces created only to be consumed would otherwise be lost.
A new Cookbook is like a passport to a different life of new foods, new combinations, and new techniques.
For anyone who feels immersed in the world of ideas, the tangible pleasures of preparing a meal are uniquely satisfying. By using Cookbooks as a series of directions, however, we miss the chance to learn.
If you are really passionate about cooking, aiming for a career in the kitchen, or trying to be a more mindful home chef, this is the main reason you really need to read cookbooks.
A Brief History of Cookbooks Worldwide
The earliest collection of recipes that have existed in Europe is called De re coquinaria, written in Latin. The current text appears to have been compiled in the late 4th or early 5th century; the first print edition is from 1483.
The earliest cookbooks known in Arabic are those of Al-Warraq and Al-Baghdadi. Manasollasa from India contains recipes from vegetarian and non-vegetarian cuisines, which preceded the cookbook writing history in Europe by a century.
After a long interval, the first recipe books to be compiled in Europe since Late Antiquity started to appear in the late thirteenth century.
The earliest genuinely medieval recipes have been found in a Danish manuscript dating from around 1300, which in turn are copies of older texts that date back to the early 13th century or perhaps earlier.
With the advent of the printing press in the 16th and 17th centuries, numerous books were written on how to manage households and prepare food. Many of them published their own books detailing their recipes in competition with their rivals.
