Today, we will look at a few of the best Samin Nosrat cookbook recommendations.
Samin Nosrat is a chef, food show host, and podcaster. She is most known for the book Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, which we will get into later. She also hosted a Netflix series by the same name, and created the podcast Home Cooking.
Samin Nosrat really seems to be a master chef, so it’s no surprise we all want to know which cookbooks she recommends, so we can mimic her tasty dishes. And she has plenty of cookbook recommendations.
Alright, let’s learn which cookbooks Samin Nosrat recommends the most.
List of Samin Nosrat Cookbook Recommendations
Here is the full list of the best Samin Nosrat cookbook recommendations:
- My Bombay Kitchen by Niloufer Ichaporia King
- Honey From a Weed by Patience Gray
- Gran Cocina Latina by Maricel Presilla
- The Simple Art of Perfect Baking by Flo Braker
- Taste of Country Cooking by Edna Lewis
- Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat
My Bombay Kitchen by Niloufer Ichaporia King
My Bombay Kitchen: Traditional and Modern Parsi Home Cooking by Niloufer Ichaporia King is about 360 pages long, and was released in 2007.
When Samin Nosrat recommended the cookbook, My Bombay Kitchen, she said, “The night the cooks look forward to most each year at Chez Panisse, and perhaps diners, too, is Parsi New Year, when Niloufer Ichaporia King takes the helm of the kitchen. Parsi cooking is exquisite, existing at the intersection of Indian and Persian, and I can never get enough of Niloufer’s recipes. I adore her Parsi deviled eggs.”
This cookbook is all about Persian food. Persia is modern day Iran, and they are known for their lavish and exotic dishes. This book was written by a Parsi in India. The food in the book is an expression of this.
In My Bombay Kitchen, there are 165 recipes. This allows Persian and Indian food to be easily accessible in anyone’s kitchen.
The best part about this cookbook is that it gives you insight into the lives of the people who make this food. There are techniques, ideas, and ingredients to learn about.
The recipes range from easy to medium to advanced, so there is something for everyone in My Bombay Kitchen.
Honey From a Weed by Patience Gray
Honey From a Weed by Patience Gray was published in 1986, and is 375 pages long.
Samin Nosrat really loves this cookbook. She said, “This was the first cookbook I ever saw, let alone read, that strayed from the usual format. Ms. Gray followed her husband, a 20-century sculptor, on the hunt for marble in often remote locations throughout the Mediterranean. Written with humor, elegance and grace, it’s a culinary catalog of a journey and a kind of cooking that’s the ‘result of a balance struck between frugality and liberality.’ This is a cookbook to read in bed.”
This cookbook specializes in food from the Mediterranean. Not only food, but also the way of life in the region.
Patience Gray had traveled and stayed in the area for over 25 years learning all she could about the region and its food.
Honey From a Weed is part memoir, part cookbook, and full of culture. You will learn about the recipes, herbs, feasts, festivals, and definitely the wine.
Travel around the Mediterranean with Patience Gray and Honey From a Weed.
Gran Cocina Latina by Maricel Presilla
Gran Cocina Latina by Maricel Presilla is a massive 912 page cookbook that was the best cookbook published in 2012.
When Samin Nosrat recommended this cookbook, she said, “This extraordinary masterwork could only have been written by someone with an academic’s patience and sense of history and tradition. Vastly detailed and rich with anthropological, historical, and cultural information, I refer to this book first anytime I want to learn or better understand anything about Latin cuisine.”
Gran Cocina Latina is all about food from the Latin world. We get to explore countries from Mexico to the Caribbean to Argentina. Maricel Presilla has traveled to these countries extensively over the last 30 years.
The interesting thing about this cookbook is how it explores each region and turns you into an armchair traveler. You also become a historian with all the amazing facts about the food from this region.
There are over 500 Latin recipes in this cookbook. You will learn how to make popular dishes such as empanadas, tamales, sofritos, sancocho, flan, and tres leches cake.
Along with the recipes there are beautiful photos that will make your mouth water. There are also over 75 drawings.
Between the photos, recipes, food, and writing, this is easily one of the best cookbooks ever made, especially when it comes to Latin food.
The Simple Art of Perfect Baking by Flo Braker
The Simple Art of Perfect Baking was written by Flo Braker, published in 2003, and is 488 pages full of amazing recipes.
Samin Nosrat wrote, “I’m not one for recipes, really, but I do need them when baking. Flo Braker is a master at writing them. The recipes in this book are utterly perfect, and reading them closely taught me how to use butter better to get textures I’d thought weren’t possible! The buttermilk cake topped with chocolate sabayon frosting is pure childhood nostalgia.”
While most of the cookbook recommendations on this page have to do with dinner type food, this one is all about desserts and baking. I know we have to have some bakers in the house.
There are many recipes to choose from when it comes to The Simple Art of Baking. You will learn how to make cake with fluffy frosting, cream filling, flaky pie crusts, puff pastries, sponge cake, souffle, cranberry pecan tart, and many, many more.
The recipes in this book will have you looking like a professional baker.
Taste of Country Cooking by Edna Lewis
Taste of Country Cooking by Edna Lewis is an older cookbook, but it’s a classic. This was published in 1976, and is about 268 pages long.
When Samin Nosrat recommended the cookbook, she said, “I love Miss Lewis’s intimate, evocative writing about growing up on a farm in Freetown, Virginia. The true—and generally uncredited— progenitor of farm-to-table eating in this country, Miss Lewis is a legend, and all American cooks should get to know her writing and her recipes.”
This is one of the most popular cookbooks of all time, and are sure to find it in your grandmother’s home. Edna Lewis has included recipes for any day of the year, whether it is snowing and freezing, or bright and sunny. It’s all about the seasons.
You have the first taste of spring, the massive feasts of the outdoors in the summer, the harvest of veggies in the fall, and the warm, hearty meals of winter.
Some of the recipes in this cookbook are Corn Pone and Crispy Biscuits, Sweet Potato Casserole and Hot Buttered Beets, Pan-Braised Spareribs, Chicken with Dumplings, Rhubarb Pie, and Brandied Peaches, along with others created specifically for holidays like Easter and Christmas.
These are recipes straight from Miss Lewis’s heart. She and her family have been preparing this food for generations.
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking is Samin Nosrat’s own book. Of course, we needed to include it on this list of Samin Nosrat’s cookbook recommendations. Why wouldn’t she recommend her own cookbook?
Samin Nosrat worked on the book for 7 years, perfecting every recipe, and the science behind everything before releasing it to the public. Now it’s one of the most loved cookbooks in the world.
This book will change your outlook on food. You will transform how you prep and cook food because this is a masterclass on cooking.
There are over 100 recipes in Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. Each one teaches you something about the 4 main ingredients this book is named after.
Salt enhances flavor, fat adds texture and flavor, acid balances the flavors, and heat changes the texture. Knowing these four tidbits of information will make sure that whatever you cook will be delicious.
One interesting thing about Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat is the use of illustrations. There are over 150 illustrations of the recipes in this book.
There is a reason that Samin Nosrat used illustrations instead of pictures, saying “I knew from the beginning this book couldn’t be photographed because it was about concepts, and about teaching people looseness in the kitchen. Photos are so precise and representational. I wanted to give you a way to use whatever you had on hand and not feel tied to a recipe.”
Fun fact: This cookbook was actually so popular that it became a TV series on Netflix.