8 Cookbooks By Black Chefs You Need This Holiday Season

Black Cookbooks

Sistah Girls, the holiday season is here, and this is the time when that one family member makes the executive decision to try their hand at a new dish to add a little razzle-dazzle to the holiday menu.

And every year that family member is given a major side-eye because they couldn’t stick to the original menu. Maybe you’re the one tired of eating the same thing this holiday season and you want to mix it up a little.

But this year, that’s okay because we have some amazing cookbooks that you can peruse to help pick out that new dish that’s going to have the family eating your food quietly.

Let’s get into this list…

My America: Recipes from a Young Black Chef: A Cookbook by Kwame Onwuachi & Joshua David Stein

Sistah Girls, this book contains more than 125 recipes!

My America is a celebration of the food of the African Diaspora, as handed down through Onwuachi’s own family history, spanning Nigeria to the Caribbean, the South to the Bronx, and beyond. From Nigerian Jollof, Puerto Rican Red Bean Sofrito, and Trinidadian Channa (Chickpea) Curry to Jambalaya, Baby Back Ribs, and Red Velvet Cake, these are global home recipes that represent the best of the patchwork that is American cuisine.

Interwoven throughout the book are stories of Onwuachi’s travels, illuminating the connections between food and place, and food and culture. The result is a deeply personal tribute to the food of “a land that belongs to you and yours and to me and mine.”

Simply West African: Easy, Joyful Recipes for Every Kitchen: A Cookbook by Pierre Thiam with Lisa Katayama

This is West African food for every kitchen, a generous, warm welcome to its delicious, irresistible culinary mainstays and rhythms. If you already cook with ingredients like hearty greens, yams, black-eyed peas, and okra, or have enjoyed Southern staples like jambalaya and gumbo, you have tasted the deep culinary influences of this interconnected region that spans Senegal, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Nigeria, and more.

Now, in Simply West African, celebrated chef and West African cooking authority, Pierre Thiam unlocks the region’s essential tastes for the everyday home cook. With helpful tips and tricks that teach readers the basics of the cuisine, Pierre shows how seamlessly these flavorful, easy-to-execute dishes can become weeknight staples or the star of your table for weekend gatherings.

Ghetto Gastro Presents Black Power Kitchen by Jon Gray (Author), Pierre Serrao (Author), Lester Walker (Author), Osayi Endolyn (Author)

Part cookbook. Part manifesto. Created with big Bronx energy, Black Power Kitchen combines 75 mostly plant-based, layered-with-flavor recipes with immersive storytelling, diverse voices, and striking images and photographs that celebrate Black food and Black culture, and inspire larger conversations about race, history, food inequality, and how eating well can be a pathway to personal freedom and self-empowerment.

Ghetto Gastro Presents Black Power Kitchen is the first book from the Bronx-based culinary collective, and it does for the cookbook what Ghetto Gastro has been doing for the food world in general—disrupt, expand, reinvent, and stamp it with their unique point of view.

Ghetto Gastro sits at the intersection of food, music, fashion, visual arts, and social activism. They’ve partnered with Nike and Beats by Dre, designed cookware sold through Williams-Sonoma and Target, and won a Future of Gastronomy award from the World’s 50 Best.

Marvel’s Black Panther The Official Wakanda Cookbook by Nyanyika Banda

Wakanda forever! Celebrate the flavors of Africa with this cookbook inspired by over fifty years of Black Panther comics.

Create meals fit for a king with this cookbook featuring over seventy delicious recipes from Wakanda and the African continent. Whether you’re welcoming Wakandan envoys, or simply hosting a watch party with friends, the 70+ African cuisine-inspired recipes in Marvel’s Black Panther: The Official Wakanda Cookbook make it a must-have volume for any kitchen.

Eat like King T’Challa himself: Featuring classic cuisines such as Roasted Chambo, Braised Oxtail and Dumplings, and Glazed Road Runner Wings, this cookbook is a tribute to culinary traditions from all over the African continent.

Over 70 incredible recipes: From street food and entrees to desserts and drinks, you will have recipes for every occasion. For all skill levels: Marvel’s Black Panther: The Official Wakanda Cookbook can be enjoyed by people of all ages. The book features accessible, fun recipes for seasoned chefs and beginners alike.

Black Rican Vegan: Fire Plant-Based Recipes from a Bronx Kitchen by Lyana Blount

Growing up in a Puerto Rican and Black household, Lyana Blount knew from a young age that food was a love language, and it was one she intended to master.

After going vegan, she set out to capture the flavor, vibrancy and love in her family’s recipes with lighter plant-based ingredients. And with that, her NYC pop-up Black Rican Vegan was born!

In this personal collection of recipes, Lyana shares the secrets behind the vegan, Latin soul food she’s famous for, so you can make her incredible meals right in your own kitchen and enjoy healthier versions of beloved classics.

These 60 dishes combine crowd-pleasing favorites from the Black Rican Vegan menu, OG meals from the five boroughs and passed down family recipes. Make Puerto Rican fare like Holiday Vernil, Chicharron sin Carne, Mofonguitos con Vegan Camarones and Sopa de Salchicon.

Celebrate the diverse NYC food scene with recipes like Moxtails, NYC Bacun Eggin Cheeze, Succulent Birria Tacos, Titi’s Lasagna for Dad and Bronx Fried Oyster Mushrooms. Lyana’s ingenious plant-based swaps will have you wowing your friends and family with ridiculously good meals no one will believe are vegan. Because after all, food is love, and nothing helps you share that more than the incredible plant-based recipes in Black Rican Vegan.

Fix Me a Plate: Traditional and New School Soul Food Recipes from Scotty Scott of Cook Drank Eat by Scotty Scott

Get ready to shake up your home cooking with the most soul-satisfying dishes you’ve ever encountered. From hilarious and beloved chef Scotty Scott comes a deep dive into the delicious world of soul food, showcasing traditional recipes as well as awe-inspiring remixes on the classics.

Learn the history behind how these iconic dishes came to be so embedded in soulful southern culture and follow along as Scotty tells the heartwarming, sometimes side-splitting stories of how they were interwoven into his family history and childhood.

Capturing the very essence of family, history and hearty goodness, Fix Me A Plate delivers the best of down-home cooking with the funkiest of mouthwatering funky fusions.

So dig right in, and you’ll soon be creating crowd-pleasing meals that will have your friends and family asking, “Can you Fix Me a Plate?”

Cooking for the Culture: Recipes and Stories from the New Orleans Streets to the Table by Toya Boudy

Toya Boudy’s father grew up in the Magnolia projects of New Orleans; her mother shared a tight space with five siblings uptown. They worked hard, rotated shifts, and found time to make meals from scratch for the family.

In Cooking for the Culture, Boudy shares these recipes, many of which are deeply rooted in the proud Black traditions that shaped her hometown. Driving the cookbook are her personal stories: from struggling in school to having a baby at sixteen, from her growing confidence in the kitchen to her appearances on Food Network.

The cookbook opens with Sweet Cream Farina, prepared at the crack of dawn for girls in freshly ironed clothes―being neat and pressed was important. Boudy recounts making cookies from her commodity box peanut butter; explains the know-how behind Smothered Chicken, Jambalaya, and Red Gravy; and shares her original television competition recipes.

The result is a deeply personal and unique cookbook.

Snoop Dogg Presents Goon with the Spoon by Snoop Dogg and Earl “E-40” Stevens

Drawing inspiration from both rappers’ musical catalogs, their favorite meals to cook and eat together, and E-40’s Filipino food business, Lumpia, here are 65+ crowd-pleasing dishes that range from drinks to main courses to desserts. Seriously entertaining, this soulful cookbook is the follow-up fans are hungry for.

GOOD EATS FROM SNOOP & E-40: The bestseller success of From Crook to Cook is all thanks to Snoop’s irresistible persona, highly entertaining writing style, and accessible, tasty recipes. Now the door to Tha Boss Dogg’s kitchen is open again, with added spice from collaboration with Earl “E-40” Stevens (the “Goon with the Spoon”), upping the ante with more crowd-pleasing recipes and more photography of Snoop at home and in the kitchen.

Bonus

Black Mixcellence: A Comprehensive Guide to Black Mixology (A Cocktail Recipe Book, Classic Cocktails, and Mixed Drinks) by Tamika Hall & Colin Asare-Appiah

Black Mixcellence: A Comprehensive Guide to Black Mixology is a tribute to the contributions of Black and Brown mixologists to the spirits and mixology industries.

Many pivotal events in the history of mixology have been ushered in by the contributions of African-American men and women. These moments have opened doors and laid the foundation for brands and companies to flourish.

This book features stories about some of the industry’s most notable trailblazers. Whether it was entrepreneurship, education or a “famous first,” the featured mixologists have all contributed to the industry to make an impact in their own ways.

This collective of mixologists and their signature cocktails represent different parts of the globe.

Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs, and Juice: A Cocktail Recipe Book: Cocktails from Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks by Toni Tipton-Martin

Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs, and Juice spotlights the creativity, hospitality, and excellence of Black drinking culture, with classic and modern recipes inspired by formulas found in two centuries’ worth of Black cookbooks.

From traditional tipples, such as the Absinthe Frappe or the Clover Leaf Cocktail, to new favorites, like the Jerk-Spiced Bloody Mary and the Gin and Juice 3.0, Toni Tipton-Martin shares a variety of recipes that shine a light on her influences, including underheralded early-twentieth-century icons, like Tom Bullock, Julian Anderson, and Atholene Peyton, and modern superstars, such as Snoop Dogg and T-Pain.

Drawing on her expertise, research in historic cookbooks, and personal collection of texts and letters, Toni Tipton-Martin shows how these drinks have evolved over time and shares the stories of how Black mixology came to be—a culmination of generations of practice, skill, intelligence, and taste.

Sistah Girls, if you try any of the recipes from these cookbooks be sure to let us know how they came out.

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