Every year, there’s a flood of new cookbooks in the fall, as publishers anticipate the holiday (and cookbook award) season. But if you’re in need of fresh recipe inspiration, or you’re looking for a good gift idea for a home cook, baker, or cocktail-maker who already has last year’s best cookbooks in their collection, we have good news: You don’t have to wait that long. There’s an impressive fresh crop of cookbooks on the way this summer. Here are some of the titles we’re most excited about, organized by publication date.
May
Find many more May titles on this list of spring cookbook releases, and in these guides to exciting new vegetarian and vegan cookbooks, cocktail books, and baking books.
Janusz Domagala, who appeared on The Great British Bake Off in 2022, celebrates the LGBTQ+ community in this book, offering a wedding cake with rosettes of rainbow buttercream and vibrant rainbow drips; Rocky Horror-inspired bites melding chocolate, mini marshmallows, popping candy, and jelly lips; meringues tinted with stripes of every-colored gel, and a pudding tart festooned with marshmallow charms from a box of cereal.
“I am often asked by many of my followers about the exact measurements I use for my recipes,” writes Bilal Bhatti early in this book. “The truth is, I don’t use conventional measurements, it’s all ‘eyeball cooking.’” To encourage readers to cook more intuitively, he measures by mug and finger pinch, and recommends tasting as you go. The book, which focuses on the Pakistani food that Bhatti grew up with, begins with flatbreads and staples like Chicken Karahi; okra cooked with onion, tomato, cinnamon, and cumin; and biryani layered with chicken, saffron, mint, and cilantro. He highlights favorites from his mother’s repertoire and bites served by street vendors, plus sweets including kulfi in a variety of flavors.
The Great British Bake Off star Sandro Farmhouse brings the party with his Espresso Martini Cheesecake. He reimagines Black Forest cake as a cookie and tints his crepe cake in rainbow hues. He hides chopped chocolate truffles or pralines in between layers of a giant skillet full of cookie dough, then drizzles the whole thing with salted caramel.
Devan Rajkumar, more widely known as Chef Dev, spins palak paneer into spanakopita. He offers a vegan version of pepperpot—and also reimagines that Guyanese favorite as a platter of wings. Chicken parm gets a fenugreek- and cumin-spiced tomato sauce, and lamb meatballs get the vindaloo treatment. But this book is also a tribute to dishes made by Rajkumar’s mother, grandmother, and family friends, passed down from one cook to another.
Villasuso aims to highlight “a different side of Mexican food, the food you eat in people’s homes, the food that doesn’t get promoted enough or talked about.” There are tons of quick meals here, like creamy 20-minute chipotle-mushroom tacos and miso and mezcal jumbo shrimp, but also large-format dishes for celebrations, like salmon al pastor and chicken pozole.
June
This debut cookbook from Khushbu Shah, the former Restaurant Editor at Food & Wine, celebrates Indian American culinary innovation. While some of the recipes here are classics, others show how Indian American cooks adapted dishes to the ingredients available: the snack mix that contained fried lentils and flattened rice flexes to take on cornflakes, rice Chex, Kix, and Froot Loops; fried flour tortillas step in for papdi in a chaat drizzled with tamarind and cilantro chutneys. Other dishes bring Indian flavors into American staples, or offer something entirely new. We cannot wait to try the Cheesy Masala Corn Pizza, the Tadka Focaccia, and the Tamarind Chutney Margarita.
Katherine Lewin’s New York shops aim to make dinner parties feel more special—and this book offers support in the form of recipes. There are “Bigger Night” menus for every season: a spring birthday party with shawarma-inspired salmon and Tahini Hot Fudge Sundaes, a New Year’s Eve feast with fondue and amaro-frosted chocolate sheet cake. But it’s the suggestions for lower-key gatherings that may catch your eye: the salad to perfectly accompany takeout pizza, the fritto misto you and your friends can devour in the kitchen, an evening of DIY BLTs that everyone will enjoy.
“The truth is that inspiring and successful dishes follow a basic formula, and anyone with a vocabulary of sauces and finishes can be successful in the kitchen,” says chef Camille Becerra. This book aims to give you the building blocks that you need to create your own fresh, produce-forward meals. There are “modern mother sauces” that can go a million ways, like a yogurt drizzle that’s herby with sorrel or nutty with tahini, or aioli with green olives or whipped into tonnato. She offers a range of pickled items, deeply-flavored seasoning pastes, and crunchy finishing touches like a spicy toasted mix of cacao nibs, buckwheat groats, and sesame seeds—and then gets into example dishes where these elements are employed. Marinated rhubarb meets cabbage and roasted pistachios in a salad; buttery clams and brothy rice are finished with romesco.
“This book sits at the intersection between Italian, American, and Italian American baked goods,” writes Poliafito, the owner of Ciao, Gloria in Brooklyn. He transforms fig-filled cuccidati into butter scones, and marries gingerbread and amaretti. We cannot wait to make the tiramisu-inspired Italian Krispie Treats.
These recipes, writes Georgina Hayden, “nod to my Greek-Cypriot heritage, but are shaped by my busy family life.” That means baked potatoes get the spanakopita treatment and prawn saganaki ditches the pan for a skewer. First up for us: the cookies with feta, white chocolate, and dried sour cherries.
While the title certainly feels a little retro—we don’t think great hosting is determined by your gender—this book is full of fresh ideas for party snacks and memorable dinners. Who doesn’t want to be welcomed into an evening with a giant tower of shoestring fries, or edamame on ice with a black vinegar mignonette? Zizka—the author of One-Bowl Meals, Cook Color, and several other cookbooks—wants you to play with your food a bit, serving garlic knot waffles instead of bread, mixing tangy kumquat slices into your crab cakes, and encrusting pieces of chicken with salt and vinegar potato chips.
We cannot wait to cook the Korean street food in this new book by Su Scott, the author of Rice Table. “In Seoul,” she writes, “days move fast and nights stay young and free. Tradition and modernism co-exist symbiotically.” There are crispy seaweed rolls filled with sesame-oil-dressed sweet potato vermicelli, and sweet fried pancakes stuffed with roasted peanuts and salted Nutella. Perilla leaves are spread with grated spam and oyster sauce bound with egg, folded over, then crisped in a skillet. There are soju cocktails here—plus late-night noodles (stir-fried buttered kimchi udon, please) and comforting hangover-cure soups.
It’s mesmerizing to watch Darlene Schrijver on TikTok, adding salad ingredients one after another into her giant wooden bowl. But if you actually want to cook along with her, printed recipes are handy. This book includes classics like the Niçoise, wedge, and Caesar, plus recipes associated with various celebrities. But it might be most useful when you’re not sure what to do with what you have on hand—dress that leftover chicken with Schrijver’s Honey Hot Sauce Vinaigrette and toss with walnuts, avocado, and greens; pair frozen peas with chopped bacon, cheddar, scallions, and a lemon dressing. Should you find yourself with lox, cream cheese, and a couple of everything bagels, that can all go into a salad too.
The recipes here trend simple, and that is the point: “Italians have perfected the art of getting a huge amount of flavour out of just a handful of good-quality ingredients,” writes Randall, who worked for many years as Head Chef at London’s renowned River Café. You’ll find roasted eggplant tossed with sweet bell peppers and tomato passata and topped with burrata. Creamy asparagus, potato, and leek soup gets a dollop of pesto. Garlicky broccolini purée becomes a bright green pasta sauce. You’ll want to dig in.
“Almost every culture has ice cream,” writes Borlongan, the flavor chemist behind Los Angeles-based Wanderlust Creamery, pointing out that there’s no good reason for Western flavors to be the default. This book celebrates “looking at ice cream from a broader, more worldly, and adventurous perspective,” with recipes for green mango sorbet, brown butter halva ice cream, honey butter corn ice cream with honeycomb candy, passionfruit pineapple ice cream with salted dried plum powder, and alfajores ice cream sandwiches.
July
J.M. Hirsch, the editorial director of Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street and author of two previous cocktail books, offers the formulas for drinks that are ready to be served right out of your freezer. (A pro dinner party move, if there ever was one.) If you’re starting with a full bottle of spirits, he notes how much you’ll want to pour off and save (plus what to do with it!) in order to mix the drink right in the bottle. There are lots of classics and bartender favorites here—some tweaked a bit so they don’t turn slushy as they chill—but also some newer combos like a Tahini Martini and a margarita infused with coconut oil and flavored with limoncello.
Any home gardener or avid farmers market visitor will find inspiration in this new book. Diacono stuffs a mix of soft herbs, crunchy radishes, pickled rhubarb, and feta into pitas. He tosses roasted grapes and goat cheese into a pasta dish filled with runner beans. He blends milk-poached celery root into a creamy sauce for pappardelle, and serves roasted squash (or whatever vegetables you want to roast) with mole and toasted pumpkin seeds. There’s a chapter of desserts that includes a dish made with eggplant, chocolate, and coconut milk, as well as a sweet corn cheesecake and a tomato and plum crumble.
August
Kiano Moju, a cooking video producer and recipe developer, will draw you into her kitchen (that’s jikoni in Swahili) with pumpkin chapati and piri-piri fried oyster mushrooms, roast chicken thighs in a mixture that marries Nigerian obe ata and creamy vodka sauce, berbere-spiced bacon, and crispy fried mandazi enriched with coconut milk and scented with cardamom. Though the Kenyan fried puffs of dough are not typically dusted with powdered sugar, she takes inspiration from the beignets of New Orleans and gives them a generous sprinkle.
Irina Janakievska found herself paging through her grandmother’s cookbooks after she passed away, soon vowing “to set out on a journey to teach myself to cook like the inspiring women and men in my family, and to recreate the recipes lovingly documented by them as well as the flavors so vividly preserved in my memories.” This book extends the project which she began on her website in 2015, focusing largely on the varied cuisines of what was formerly Yugoslavia. There’s so much in this treasury; we’ll start with potato-filled burek or fried and marinated long green peppers, grilled skewers of pork with apple and plum, or plum-filled potato dumplings topped with sweetened walnuts and cinnamon.
Đặc biệt “refers to something special, luxurious, or over the top…It’s not code for spending more money or effort,” though, writes Nini Nguyen, a Top Chef contestant and cooking class instructor. “Đặc biệt can mean adding a surprise note of ginger to a sauce, or using a nontraditional cut of meat. Coming from Michelin-starred restaurants, the đặc biệt element for me includes the finesse, technique, and thoughtfulness to every dish.” She explains how to dress up hủ tiếu, a pork and seafood noodle soup, with little quail eggs or chewy tapioca noodles and lots of fried shallots and black pepper; why you should soak pickled baby eggplant in sweet chili sauce; and how to go deluxe with your Viet-Cajun Seafood Boil. This would be a great one for a cookbook club potluck where everyone brings a different dish.
“This isn’t a Latin American cookbook,” writes Marisel Salazar. “It’s a collection of dishes that people who came or whose families came from those countries to America eat here now.” That means San Antonio migas and cinnamon rolls with guava paste and cream cheese in the morning and crispy battered San Diego fish tacos in the afternoon. The BLT meets chicken salad, piled on fried plantain halves to make a jibarito. Sip a Mojito Iced Coffee while you dive in.
Patricia Tanumihardja, author of Farm to Table Asian Secrets, Instant Pot Asian Pressure Cooker Meals, and Asian Pickles at Home teamed up with her mother, chef Juliana Suparman, to assemble this collection of recipes. You’ll find tamarind-glazed baked—or air-fried—tempeh, sheet-pan nasi goreng, lots of grilled meats on skewers or wrapped in banana leaves, and iced espresso with pandan syrup and chunks of avocado.
When Alexa Soto went vegan, her family balked at first. But as she traveled in Mexico and cooked old family recipes, she kept returning to her conviction that “traditional Mexican food is rooted in plants,” and she soon found ways to honor her family’s most treasured dishes in ways that aligned with her plant-based eating. Here, she shares an almond-based cotija for sprinkling on tostadas, ceviche starring hearts of palm, jackfruit birria, and roasted oyster mushrooms with mole negro. We’re excited to cook them all.
Luu, the author of Vietnamese and Vietnamese Vegetarian, highlights vegetable-packed everyday cooking in her latest book. There’s rice paper wrapped around a fried egg and eggplant slices for lunch, or softened in a salad of king prawns, mango, and fresh herbs. She shares a quick chicken pho and a sweet-and-sour salmon soup that takes less than 30 minutes to throw together. We’re bookmarking her Baked Marmalade Chicken Thighs With Spring Onion Noodles and her quick glass noodles with lemongrass and clams.
Scarr’s Pizza on the Lower East Side of Manhattan has gotten a lot of attention: Pete Wells at The New York Times praised its “seductively light, even delicate” crust; our colleagues at Bon Appétit pronounced it “close-to-perfect pizza.” This photo-filled book shares Pimentel’s recipes and advice, so you can try to emulate the DJ Clark Kent (with Italian chicken sausage, garlic, and fresh mozzarella) or the Vegan Vodka Pie. He shares his dialed-in sauce to cheese ratio, which varies depending on the style of crust you choose, plus recipes for heroes and cocktails, but what you’re really here for are the tips you need for better pizza crusts at home.
Taiwanese popcorn chicken. Crispy Korean seafood pancakes. Singapore chile crab. Bánh mi. Onigiri filled with a soft boiled egg. This book offers a taste of street food across Asia, and you may find it difficult to choose which dishes to cook first. (We’ve got our eye on the Thai Banana Roti.)
Rosenstrach, who you may know from her previous books The Weekday Vegetarians or Dinner: A Love Story, looks at plant-based eating with her “efficiency goggles” in this new cookbook, aiming to tackle common challenges: How do you not fall back on pasta every night? How do you actually make sure you’re eating vegetables when you eat vegetarian? And most importantly: How do you speed up dinner? She highlights 30-minute options like roasted broccoli and brussels sprout reubens and Crispy Honey-Harissa Glazed Chickpea Bowls; freezer-friendly ideas like a vegan smoky tomato and white bean soup; and make-ahead moves like savory bread pudding with mushrooms, Swiss chard, and a touch of horseradish.