I have a confession. I have a slight obsession with cookbooks. Especially those that combine my love of gardening and growing veggies and herbs with my love of cooking delicious and simple recipes. I really only have 3 criteria when it comes to deciding whether or not a cookbook is good or not. 1) The recipes use minimal store-bought/processed ingredients 2) The recipes taste good 3) They don’t take hours upon hours to make. So with that, here are my top three favorite cookbooks that checked those boxes for me!
Grow. Cook. Eat. By Willi Galloway
As a gardner and a huge believer in growing your own food, I LOVE this cookbook! It fills in the gaps between growing food in your garden and how to use it in your kitchen. This cookbook also provides useful planting and growing information as well as how to harvest all the edible parts of the plant and then provides recipes and ways to store it. This is one of my most used cookbooks and I love that it takes you from garden to table with such ease.
Seven Fires- Francis Mallman
I bought this for Matt for Father’s Day a few years ago after we binge watched the first season Chef’s Table on Netflix. One of Matt’s favorite episodes was about Francis Mallman because of his approach to cooking food with fire. A lot of times I tend to buy cookbooks and then only use one or two recipes but not with Seven Fires. This is one of those books that has food stains on it from being used all. the. time. It’s Matt’s go-to when he’s in the mood to cook! We love the chimichurri recipe (so good on ANY type of meat!) and the Shepherd’s Pie recipe.
Savor by Ilona Oppenheim
This is another farm-to-table type of cookbook that helps me figure out how to cook the things I pull from my garden (or sometimes the forest!). I love how simple and rustic these recipes are and also how there are helpful tips: everything from what type of grain mill to invest in or when the best time to forage pine nuts are. I like to use this book when I’m in the mood for simple, but unique recipes. Matt just brought home a bag of fresh plums so I’ll be trying out the plum cobbler recipe from Savor this week!
Honorable Mentions: Magnolia Kitchen by Joanna Gaines
I really love this cookbook and use it a lot of times when I want to find a good, southern, comfort-food recipe. It truly offers a nice variety of delicious, easy recipes! My only tiny food-snobby critique is the use of store bought products in some of her recipes (some recipes call for Pillsbury biscuits, Velveeta cheese, Jiffy corn muffin mix, Oreo’s etc). I just prefer making things from scratch and try to limit processed foods so it’s more of a preference thing. Other than that, I haven’t tried a recipe from this book that I didn’t like!
Host- Eric Prum and Josh Williams
Another honorable mention with this cookbook! I honestly just forget about this book because I love the others so much! But as I flipped through this one again, I really love the simplicity and the focus on…well..hosting! This book is going to be my go-to when we have friends over again– it includes recipes for drinks, how to put a cheese board together, and truly offers a variety of simple, no fuss recipes that really focus on highlighting the ingredients themselves. This is perfect when you have little ones running around but still want to quickly whip up something delicious and beautiful for company!
There ya go! My top three favorite cookbooks with some honorable mentions! What are your go to cookbooks??
