So Christmas happened, and apparently my family has been paying attention to my cookbook obsession because I unwrapped three books that immediately went onto my shelves. And yes, I’ve already started mentally planning which recipes I’m hitting first. Let me walk you through what landed under my tree.   Benares: Michelin Starred Cooking Okay, full disclosure: I didn’t have a single Indian cookbook in my collection before this. That’s embarrassing given how much Indian food I order and how often I’ve thought “I should learn to make this properly.” So Benares is filling a legitimate

I own 44 cookbooks. I’ve been collecting them for years, and most of them are barely touched. They look great on my shelf. I’ve bookmarked recipes. I’ve told myself I’ll make that someday. Someday is 2026. Starting January 1, 2026, I’m cooking three recipes from a different cookbook every week for 44 weeks. I organized the whole thing geographically—starting in North America, then moving through Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, before ending with vegetables, baking, and fermentation. Some of these books I’ve been dying to cook from.Some of them I’m pretty sure are

Okay, so I have a problem. The problem is that I cannot stop researching cookbook releases, and now I know way too much about what’s coming out in 2025. After going down an embarrassing number of “best of 2025” lists, one thing became very clear: the same five cookbooks keep showing up everywhere.   These are not necessarily my top cookbooks of the year. I haven’t cooked from most of them yet, mostly because I already own 44 cookbooks that I’m committed to actually using in 2026. But if you’re trying to decide what’s genuinely