Finding the Best Cookbooks for Culinary Travelers

1. What is Culinary Travel, and Who is a “Culinary Traveler”?

“Culinary travel.” It rolls right off the tongue and sounds like delicious fun, doesn’t it? What is it, you ask?

Does it mean signing up for food tours or taking cooking lessons on your next trip? Does it merit an official certification from the Food Network after completion of an Italian immersion program on simmering spaghetti sauce, hard cheeses, and al dente pasta?

According to this article, not necessarily. Culinary travel, also known as culinary tourism, simply means that self-proclaimed “taste trekkers” pair their trips with some adventurous eating of food and drink that reflects the local cuisine, heritage, or culture of the place. The World Food Travel Association defines “culinary tourism” as “the act of traveling for a taste of place in order to get a sense of place.^TM”

For example, if you’re in New Orleans, it might mean enjoying some coffee and beignets at the Café Du Monde French Market. It’s as easy as that. Sign me right up!

2. 400+ Cookbooks for the Culinary Traveler Organized by Destination

If you’re like me, you’re tired of your weekly dinners and weekend takeout routine and need some new recipes. In a year without international travel, it makes perfect sense to turn to books for inspiration and practical recipes to add some spice back into our lives. A cookbook has the power to take your tastebuds on a little trip through some delectable international dishes.

Yes, we can all Google until our fingers are blue for new recipes, but how do we know if those recipes will be any good? Well, I’ve consulted over 40 sources, including James Beard and the IACP cookbook award winners, to create a webpage with over 400 recommended cookbooks for the culinary traveler or adventurous home cook.

I organized the cookbooks by continent, country, and/or region so that you can find the best recipes from around the world. Books receiving more than 1 recommendation are highlighted as being the “best of the best” cookbooks. Books with no identifiable sense of place are grouped under the heading “other.”

The webpage includes cookbooks with recipes for main meals, side dishes, desserts, and special diets like gluten-free, vegetarian, and vegan. I will leave it to you to click the images and read the online book descriptions, customer reviews, and prices to choose what deserves a place in your cookbook collection.

Animation by Neha Naghate on LottieFiles

3. Why Cookbooks Make the Best Gifts

Full disclosure time: I love to read, cook, and eat, so I think that cookbooks make the very best holiday and/or birthday gifts for the following reasons:

Cookbooks are the perfect size and always fit: most people can make room for another book, and shipping costs are free or manageable.
Cookbooks are the perfect price point and usually cost less than $30.
Cookbooks can reflect the gift-giver’s thought process of considering the recipient’s interests/needs.
Cookbooks offer a variety of options inside: multiple recipes provide multiple opportunities to enjoy the contents.
Cookbooks can complement other gifts. For example, a cookbook on the Greek Islands can complement cruise tickets (just hit CTRL+F to search for “Greece” on our webpage to find The Foods of the Greek Islands cookbook). A cookbook on Instant Pot® recipes can complement the gift of an Instant Pot® (just hit CTRL+F to search for “Instant” on our webpage to find the Good Housekeeping Instant Pot® Cookbook).
There is usually very little emotional baggage associated with giving or receiving a cookbook unless the recipient is highly sensitive about their cooking abilities. In that case, take a look at our collection of recommended travel memoirs and travelogues for gift-giving inspiration.
You cannot have too many cookbooks. One woman in the United States has almost 7,000 cookbooks and is still adding to her collection.
Unlike a single recipe, cookbooks often teach important culinary skills that make home cooking more productive and enjoyable. Home cooks can also reap the long-term benefits of healthier and more economical meals. According to one study, restaurant meals are almost 5 times more expensive, and meal kits are almost 3 times more expensive, than cooking from scratch at home. The study found that, if you cooked 1 more meal at home per week instead of ordering a restaurant-delivered meal, you could save around $16 per meal and $832 a year. Wouldn’t it be great if all that extra money could go straight into a travel fund instead?
Cookbooks give you superpowers. It is one thing to be able to order a restaurant-quality meal from a trained chef. It is quite another to find a written recipe for the home cook that makes your meals memorable. When people want to travel to eat at your house because they know something delicious is coming their way on an ordinary night, that is a superpower.

What are you waiting for? Are you concerned that someone in your family won’t welcome the novel cuisine?

I get it. We all know someone who is only familiar with paella (the Spanish rice dish) because of the Seinfeld episode or kimchi (the Korean fermented vegetable dish) because of a Kim’s Convenience episode. We all have trepidatious family members afraid of anything “spicy” or strange, but there is no better place for those eaters to sample new cuisines than at home with the ability to make corrections or substitutions based on personal preferences. If you execute the new dishes well, they might even inspire your next trip!

Maybe you are worried that a new cookbook would be a waste of money if you can’t source all of the foreign ingredients at your local grocery store? I think that you’ll be surprised by what a little online shopping or savvy food substitution can do. For example, the following articles identify online stores offering food and pantry items to get you started:

If you can’t find the exact ingredient that a recipe calls for, however, you can probably find a reasonable substitute. For example, I just made a recipe that called for ground Kashmiri chile. I am pretty sure that I will be able to find it at an Indian grocery store near me, but it wasn’t worth a special trip across town during a pandemic for one ingredient. Instead, I consulted the Gourmet Sleuth website and substituted smoked paprika, and we absolutely loved our dinner.

After a very tough year with limited to non-existent travel opportunities or group meals, now is a wonderful time to try (or gift) a new cookbook packed with the potential to refuel, transport, and inspire future meals and trips from the comforts of home.

Happy cooking!