20 Ways to Become a Better Cook

Phaidon consistently publishes some of the most beautiful cookbooks, and What to Bake & How to Bake It ($35) by Jane Hornby is no exception. Thankfully, its beauty isn't skin- (or rather, cover-) deep; each recipe includes helpful step-by-step photos as well as a huge, glossy finished image. (Unlike many cookbooks that might not even include a photo for each recipe, there are 10 on average per dish.) It's almost like having the author in the kitchen with you, cooking side by side.

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Love the spices and flavors of Indian cuisine, but find cooking it at home to be more than a little intimidating? Aarti Paarti: An American Kitchen With an Indian Soul ($28) by Aarti Sequeira is for you. Sequeira's warm and friendly voice — the spice primer is called "turma-what?" for example — makes already exciting Indian-American recipes (think masala kale chips) even more appealing.

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Homemade Decadence: Irresistibly Sweet, Salty, Gooey, Sticky, Fluffy, Creamy, Crunchy Treats ($30) by Joy Wilson reads exactly like her charming blog Joy the Baker. (Which is, of course, a big compliment.) Recipes range from homey cinnamon pull-apart bread to sophisticated lavender earl grey ice cream, and the hilarious headnotes will further convince you that you want to make pretty much everything within its pages. If you love brunch and baking, get a copy, stat.

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What's Ina Garten's secret to throwing an elegant, seemingly effortless party? As it turns out, a lot of smart planning; in her latest cookbook, Make It Ahead: A Barefoot Contessa Cookbook ($35), she shares her many strategies for prepping and cooking everything from salads to desserts (even a Thanksgiving turkey!) ahead of time, so that you too can entertain like a pro. Alongside recipes, expect menus, tips (so you can transform recipes already in your repertoire into make-ahead dishes), and plenty of pictures of her home and garden to ooh and ahh over.

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No matter how accomplished a cook you are, getting a delicious meal on the table without dirtying a mountain of dishes can be a challenge, to say the least. Enter, One Pot: 120+ Easy Meals from Your Skillet, Slow Cooker, Stockpot, and More ($26) by the editors of Martha Stewart Living, a brilliant collection of low-effort, high-reward dinner recipes. Organized by vessel — cast-iron skillets, dutch ovens, slow cookers, and half-sheet pans all get fair play — this is one that's bound to be in constant rotation in your kitchen.

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Dorie Greenspan's Baking Chez Moi ($40) is the book for you if you're looking to bake the way an effortlessly cool French woman does. That's because Greenspan — a legendary cookbook author and part-time Parisian — sourced many of these homey dessert recipes from her French friends and neighbors. Simple cakes, tarts, cookies, and confections rule here, rather than, as Greenspan puts it, "fussy, time-consuming desserts most of us associate with French pastry," though a few more-involved favorites are included as well.

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The Kitchn Cookbook: Recipes, Kitchens & Tips to Inspire Your Cooking ($33) by Sara Kate Gillingham and Faith Durand reads as a natural extension of the website off which it's based (The Kitchn), in bound and printed form. As in, expect plenty of inspirational apartment tours (a boon for those looking to renovate, make the most of a rental space, or just snoop a bit), cooking and organizational tips, and even a brilliant day-by-day cleaning schedule to keep yours in check without stressing out.

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Sean Brock's Heritage ($40) is a strong contender for most beautiful cookbook of the bunch, both in terms of visuals and prose. Brock's earnest enthusiasm for regional Southern fare — Lowcountry eats in particular — is contagious; this is the sort of book you'll want to read cover to cover, not just for the recipes, but also for the background on everything from heritage breeds of livestock to the origins of Hoppin' John. Do know that this is a restaurant cookbook, so many recipes are complex, multicomponent affairs, but don't let that put you off. In many cases the headnotes provide suggestions for simplifying and others still are simpler homey dishes.

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From the yellow-polka-dotted text block (google "text block bookbinding" if you don't know what we're talking about) to the dreamy photography (star food photographer Matt Armendariz kills it, like always), Huckleberry: Stories, Secrets, and Recipes From Our Kitchen ($35) by Zoe Nathan, is a winner. Some recipes require relatively advanced pastry skills (the fresh blueberry brioche and cinnamon raisin bagels, for example) but most are simple enough that a newbie baker could successfully pull it off, making for a nice mix.

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As the authors — Michelle Davis and Matt Holloway — of Thug Kitchen: The Official Cookbook: Eat Like You Give a F*ck ($25) put it, "it's easier to sauté kale with some garlic than it is to eat pizza bites without burning the f*ck out of your tongue," so what are you waiting for? Armed with this ridiculously profanity-laden cookbook, you'll not only learn how to cook kale, but also how to make "plant nachos" (aka salad), stock your pantry on a budget, and make delicious vegan meals like roasted beer and lime cauliflower tacos, all while cracking up over the commentary.

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Jamie Oliver's Comfort Food: The Ultimate Weekend Cookbook ($35) by Jamie Oliver, is pure dude food (not that we're complaining). Expect plenty of hearty dinners and desserts, ranging from nostalgic (at least for Oliver) British fare — think fish and chips, shepherd's pie, and chicken tikka masala — to comforting dishes from around the globe. One aspect we could probably do without: the calorie counts on each page. Frankly, sometimes we'd rather not know exactly what's going on with that brownie or stew calorically, but maybe that's just us.

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We've eagerly awaited all of the cookbooks on this list, but perhaps none more so than Yotam Ottloenghi's latest, Plenty More: Vibrant Vegetable Cooking From London's Ottolenghi ($35). Thankfully, it lives up to our high expectations; each recipe and accompanying photo is more tempting than the last. Essentially a continuation of Plenty, Plenty More is packed with exotic ingredients you'll want to seek out at ethnic markets and will inspire you to double-down on vegetable-centric cooking.

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Whether you're a baker of breads, cookies, cakes, or pies, The Baking Bible ($40) by Rose Levy Beranbaum should be on your shelf. Like Beranbaum's previous single-subject "bibles," it's just the thing to turn to when you want not only a detailed, foolproof recipe, but also an explanation for why it works. Plus, we just can't get over how dreamy the cover image of kouign amann looks. (Seriously, those flaky layers!)

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While many cookbooks focus on fast and easy recipes, The Make-Ahead Cook ($27) by the editors at America's Test Kitchen takes a different approach to weeknight cookery: smart strategies for planning ahead. Whether you're a slow-cooker devotee, a casserole lover, or prefer to do a bit of prep the morning or night before, this book has plenty of solutions. Of particular note is its chapter dubbed one grocery bag, three dinners. This genius section groups trios of dinner recipes together that are all based off of a 12-ingredient-or-less grocery list, taking the guesswork out of meal planning.

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If you haven't visited Brooklyn's utterly charming Ovenly bakery, thumbing through the pages of (and cooking from) Ovenly: Sweet and Salty Recipes From New York's Most Creative Bakery ($30) by Erin Patinkin and Agatha Kulaga is a close second best. Many aspects are winning, but what we appreciate most (aside from the tempting recipes) are the detailed photo tutorials for intimidating baking techniques like frosting a cake or making scones and the choose-your-own-adventure-style "base" recipes that allow for experimentation.

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This may sound a bit cliché, but it's true: you don't have to be a vegan, or even a vegetarian, to appreciate Vegan Holiday Cooking From Candle Cafe: Celebratory Menus and Recipes From New York's Premier Plant-Based Restaurants ($23) by Joy Pierson, Angel Ramos, and Jorge Pineda; we're certainly not. Sure, a good portion of the recipes use divisive vegan substitutes like soy milk, tempeh, or egg replacer, but if those ingredients aren't your thing, there are plenty more that don't. Alongside chapters for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Eve are sections for Lunar New Year, the Super Bowl, and Valentine's Day. And many of the recipes are appropriate year-round.

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Let's call Dominique Ansel: The Secret Recipes ($35) by Dominique Ansel what it is: a lovely, inspirational coffee-table cookbook. (There's nothing wrong with that.) Sure, there are some beginner- and intermediate-level recipes, but many are so intense and time-consuming that they're best made by a team of bakers. Hats off to you, if you attempt the epic Cronut recipe at home!

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Flip through David Frenkiel and Luise Vindahl's gorgeous Green Kitchen Travels: Healthy Vegetarian Food Inspired by Our Adventures ($35) and you're bound to be filled with wanderlust. It reads almost as a travel diary, as its pages are filled with recipes, photos, and anecdotes from the couples' travels. You don't need to be vegan or gluten-free to enjoy this book, but if you are, this one's a must as many recipes cater to those diets (all of the recipes are vegetarian).

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The dishes in Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Fast: A Better Way to Cook Great Food ($35) come together speedily thanks to a clever tweak to traditional recipe writing. Rather than including the required prep in the ingredients list, Bittman formats the recipes to have you prep as you go, so that not a moment is wasted. Small but important details like suggested sides for each main dish, tips for speeding things up (if you're truly short on time), and ways to add extra flavor if you have a few extra minutes, make this a must-read for pretty much any cook.

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Printed in a large format that plays up its extraordinarily beautiful photos, The New Classics ($50) by Donna Hay is one of those rare cookbooks that both excels as a coffee table book and as an actual instructional manual. Recipes range from basics with a twist (think soufflé omelets and bacon-wrapped meatloaf) to more exotic fare like sesame-crusted salmon with pickled daikon or pumpkin and tofu laksa, making for a good mix. Because it's an Australian cookbook, an inexpensive kitchen scale for metric measurements is a must, and you may have to google a few ingredients here and there — garfish, brown onions, and beef scotch fillet come to mind — but it's otherwise very user friendly. Really, we can't recommend this book enough.

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