Think about how difficult cooking from a cookbook from another culture was as little as 10 years ago. Once in a while, you could get your hands on a standout, but the food you could make with it could feel like a compromise with too many substitutions and ingredients you just couldn’t find without great effort, or at all.
I noticed a shift in the past few years that crystallized a few months ago when I needed some amba for a broiled eggplant dish in Michael Solomonov’s Zahav Home. Amazon didn’t carry a quantity of the fermented mango paste at a price that seemed reasonable, but the book pointed me to Kaluystan’s, where it was reasonably priced enough that I got two jars. The sauce was the revelation I hoped it would be.
But this year there is a proliferation of books—often written by an émigré, or their children, or both—that make dishes from distinct world cultures doable in kitchens here, sometimes with a gentle North American spin. Being able to do this is largely possible thanks to developments in shipping, globalization, and the supply chain that can let these cuisines flourish.
When we can get a formerly hard-to-find item without breaking the bank or making a time-gobbling quest, it opens a door. Yotam Ottolenghi, with his sumac and barberries and dried omani limes, helped get the ball rolling. The momentum was accelerated by “pantry” books like The Modern Larder and The Global Pantry Cookbook that highlighted powerhouse ingredients from around the world and showed us ways to use them. Then the dam burst and we got Koreatown and Korean American. We saw Oaxaca and, even more on target, Asada. We feasted from Meera Sodha’s East and Vishwesh Bhatt’s Gujarat-on-the Mississippi I Am From Here. They are stunning and approachable and written or cowritten with chefs that are part of the country's diaspora.
In the past year or so, we've been treated to Third Culture Cooking (brand-new and artsy, by Zaynab Issa), the fun stunner Koreaworld and The Memory of Taste. The League of Kitchens, perhaps my favorite book of 2024, and Salt Sugar MSG, my current fave of 2025, and a mother-daughter Korean tome that hit the New York Times Bestseller List. The quantity and quality are stunning, and the authors whose culinary hearts straddle geographies are our perfect guides.
Before you fire up the range, check out our guides to the best cast iron pans and carbon steel pans. If you can't decide what to cook next, see our guide to the best meal kit delivery services.