Loved Salt Fat Acid Heat? Try These Cookbooks Next

It’s difficult to understate the success of Samin Nosrat’s cookbook Salt Fat Acid Heat. Following its release in 2017, the book earned several accolades, including but not limited to a James Beard Award, a spot on the New York Times bestseller list, and an adaptation into a Netflix series. Rare is it that a debut cookbook written by someone without a large preexisting fan base makes such a splash, but the book continues to this day to be a go-to resource for anybody looking to develop their confidence in the kitchen and is in many ways a modern classic.

Neither a conventional cookbook or a dense cooking reference manual, Salt Fat Acid Heat, breaks down the fundamentals of good cooking into easy-to-understand concepts and does so in a way that not only endows a greater sense of understanding behind the components of a good meal, but also encourages you to get creative in the kitchen without relying on a prescriptive recipe.

But as great as Salt Fat Acid Heat is, it’s by no means the cookbook to end all cookbooks. If anything, it’s a first step into learning and developing as a cook, and there’s much more out there to help build up and strengthen your abilities in the kitchen—which is the whole reason for this list.

Below are several books that staffers at Bon Appétit recommend for anybody who has read through Salt Fat Acid Heat and is looking for more resources to grow as a home cook. The list includes books that emphasize simplicity, adaptability, and skill-building (and have a similar vibe to Nosrat’s book). There are also a couple of meatier reference books that get into the science and technique of cooking in a way that, while sometimes technical, are still very easy to understand. Some are old, some are new, but all of them have plenty to learn from.

Start Here by Sohla El-Waylly

Reading Start Here is the closest you can get to having one-on-one intensive cooking lessons with former BA staffer and chef Sohla El-Waylly without her actually being in the room with you. Think of El-Waylly’s book as a sort of proxy mentor—a friendly and unintimidating resource of cooking information that provides you with both the how and the why, and does so in a way that feels casual and conversational. The book is structured around 12 culinary lessons, like how to season, how to manage cooking temperature, proper browning techniques, and basic breadmaking. Within each section are lessons, helpful tips, explanations, and recipes clearly labeled from easy to difficult to help you hone your skills. For more challenging recipes, she preempts potential mistakes with a “what the hell happened” section. By the end, you’ll know how to poach an egg, laminate dough, sear off a perfect chicken thigh, and make mayonnaise from scratch.

The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters

Samin Nosrat got her start in the kitchens of Chez Panisse, Alice Waters‘s monumentally influential American restaurant located in Berkeley, CA. Waters was an early advocate for shaping locavore and farm-to-table-style cooking that has come to define many aspects of fine dining in the country to this day. This book is a distillation of all that into an approachable collection of adaptable recipes that emphasize seasonal cooking. Lessons include how to plan a menu, her philosophy on assembling salads, and how to braise and slow cook large cuts of meat.

Recipes 1-2-3 by Rozanne Gold

Rozanne Gold built a cookbook empire of three ingredient recipes. Her series of 1-2-3 books are filled with recipes that are strong as is, but are just as friendly to riffs and adaptations. True to the conceit, each recipe includes three ingredients—with suggestions for add-ons and wine pairings. The surprising thing is how sophisticated so many of the recipes are. Porcini-stuffed poulet rôti, sirloin with an oyster sauce reduction, and a pan seared tuna nicoise are just a few of the deceptively simple dishes contained within.

Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish

Baking bread is an intimidating endeavor in its own right, and few explain the fundamentals as well as Ken Forkish, which is why he’s considered a definitive resource for bread baking by many in the culinary industry. This book doesn’t make bread baking easy, but it does make it easier to understand. You’ll learn the ins and outs of leavening and fermentation, different types of flour and why they matter, and a variety of different bread-making methods that you can execute at home.

Flavor Thesaurus by Niki Segnit

Test kitchen editor Kendra Vaculin swears by this book as a wellspring of cooking inspiration, and it’s both informative and entertaining in equal measure. The general conceit is a breakdown of varied flavor parings, from the expected (chocolate, coffee) to the more unconventional (black pudding, mint). It’s not a cookbook exactly, but it is a great jumping-off point for experimentation in the kitchen and a worthwhile addition to any kitchen bookshelf.

The Flavor Equation by Nik Sharma

There’s a lot going on in this book, which takes an exacting and scientific approach to the nature of taste and how we experience it. Sharma also has a knack for providing interesting answers to questions you’d never think to ask but come with interesting answers, like what makes fermented dairy products like yogurt different from spoiled milk, how the pH of an onion impacts its ability to caramelize, or thorough breakdowns of every type of sweetener used in the kitchen and how they are best applied. That may sound intimidating, but Sharma has a way of making learning super technical and random information about taste very fun and engaging. The recipe section is organized by taste sensation ( brightness, saltiness, richness, etc.), and also happens to be insanely good. Check out the chocolate miso bread pudding, or the burrata with chili oil and Thai basil.

The Food Lab by J Kenji Lopez Alt

J Kenji Lopez Alt is probably the preeminent food nerd of his generation. He is well-known for his exhaustive investigations of culinary techniques and his overall dedication to understanding (and explaining) the science of cooking. The Food Lab is his magnum opus, with nearly 1000 pages of culinary know-how, delivered in his relaxed and easy-to-understand style, with plenty of pictures along the way. If you have a question about cooking, chances are he’s already asked it, and the answer is very likely in the pages of this book.