A new cookbook can be a wonderful, personal gift, which is why we love to give and receive them, especially during the holidays. We've cooked our way through many new cookbooks this year, and have recipes bookmarked in many more to try in 2021. If you're looking for a cookbook to gift this holiday season, these are just some of the titles Food Network staffers can't get enough of. Not only to do they cover a wide range of topics like bread-baking basics to comfort food upgrades, they’re also so full of new and delicious dishes that even the littlest of chefs will be excited to find one peeking out of their stocking.

People looking for holiday gift ideas have a resource: the NPR Book Concierge. The interactive book finder has hundreds of titles selected by NPR critics and staff. David Greene says the book that transformed his home cooking is ... "Cool Beans"! Take a listen to the "Morning Edition" segment.

What would you like to read? Mix and match the filters below and the years above to explore nearly 2,500 recommendations from NPR staff and trusted critics.

2020 has been a banner year for home cooking. From the early pandemic days of stocking up on pantry staples (more dried beans, anyone?) to our collective obsession with sourdough starter and bread-making, finding comfort in our kitchens has been a reliable constant in an otherwise disorienting year. Fortunately for those of us spending more time making dinner than ever before, 2020 has also been a particularly exciting year for cookbook releases. From books that allow us to travel the world wit

I need to get something off my chest: I used to be prejudiced against beans. In all honesty, for most of my life, I’ve associated them with something to be thrown into a burrito as extra filling, or refried as part of taco night, or, I have to confess, as the main subject of a schoolyard rhyme, and that was about it. But this year, beans became my favorite food. Maybe it was because in February, I stocked my pantry full of Rancho Gordo Heirloom varietals (the best beans out there). I still had

If you're going to try your hand at a new kind of cuisine during a pandemic, it had better be chock full o’ pleasure. In all my cooking and eating as a food and travel writer, the Indian snack food known as chaat—Hindi for “to lick”—steals the show. I've been known to base whole road trips around getting my hands on some. My favorite is bhel puri, a blast of fine-chopped fresh ingredients like herbs, onion, potato, chilis, and mango with a sprinkle of spice and a drizzling of a chutney or two.

I know this feeling won’t last forever, but for now, I just can’t get enough winter squash. They’re a staple of fall, even though you can certainly get some of the more common varieties year-round. I like to scour farmers markets for the shapes, sizes and colors unique to the season, loving that some of them have such different textures and even flavors.

Do you have a desert island bean? Joe Yonan does, and it’s the chickpea. Mr. Yonan, the food editor of The Washington Post, adores all beans, so much so that he wrote an entire cookbook starring them, “Cool Beans” (Ten Speed Press, 2020). But he does play favorites, and the chickpea, with an earthy yet mild character that goes with nearly anything, comes out on top. Especially when it’s simmered with loads of garlic and cumin, like in a Tunisian lablabi.

This year is a boom time for beans. That was true before the coronavirus crisis, thanks to the Instant Pot and a heightened awareness of beans as a sustainable, cheap source of protein in a time of rapidly escalating climate change (and a growing number of plant-based eaters). And it’s particularly true now, when grocery store aisles are picked clean of the long-ignored Goya bags of chickpeas, and customers are buying heirloom beans at such a clip that heirloom bean purveyors like Rancho Gordo a

Washington Post food and dining editor Joe Yonan is a man obsessed. A man obsessed… with beans. On February 4, he published an entire cookbook, Cool Beans, focused on—you guessed it: beans. The book contains 125 different recipes including stews, dips, smoothies, and dessert, all including canned or dried beans—and before you think beans? in dessert???, trust us—it works surprisingly well, especially in Yonan's recipe for vegan chocolate mousse. But Yonan isn't the only one with beans on the br

Well look at beans now. The whole country just went and bought a lifetime’s supply. The bean shelves at the grocery store have been stripped bare. From Rancho Gordo ’s dried heirloom beans to Goya’s canned ones, bean sales have quadrupled. At Baer’s Best Beans in South Berwick, Maine, they’re normally winding down this time of year, says Carol Baer. Instead, the grower of regional heirloom beans is selling what’s left of the past harvest, which they usually wouldn’t dip into until after summer v

You may as well get to know what’s in those two dozen tins at the back of your pantry Beans are having a moment. “We’re very busy packing and shipping beans these days,” Charley Baer, a bean farmer of 34 years, tells me in his thick New England accent. Since the onset of the coronavirus in the U.S., bean farmers have been working overtime to stock the shelves in grocery stores whose bean aisles have been left bare. Goya has even stated that the sale of some beans has increased by 400 percent.

In an incredible turn of events, beans have gone from being the most boring of shelf staples to the star of the pantry. Coronavirus-related shelter-in-place and lockdowns have led people to stockpile cans of the stuff: In early March, Goya Foods reported that sales of its canned beans had risen as much as 400%. The company told the New York Times that in one week it had shipped 24 million cases of black beans, pinto beans, and similar product to stores. Beans make perfect sense when people who’re used to having unlimited options abruptly find themselves with very few. Legumes have a yearslong shelf life and can be adapted to many diets that people are trying to keep even while in quarantine, whether it’s vegan or high-protein. They’re a blank canvas for cooks, who can get creative with their limited resources.

Beans have long been a kitchen staple. We talk to a bean enthusiast who wrote a new cookbook where he calls beans the "most versatile plant-based protein." He gives us the scoop on canned versus dry beans, and tells us just how cool beans really are.

Bean Eaters Unite! “Cool Beans” Author Joe Yonan on Why He Loves Legumes This book of entirely plant-based recipes opens the door to a world of possibilities with beans.

Got a pantry full of staples and more time than usual for getting busy in the kitchen? It’s the perfect opportunity to delve into a good cookbook and try new recipes and new cuisines. Cooking, just like reading or binge-watching, can provide an easy escape from our current reality, the only difference is you’ll end up with something delicious at the end. To help you get started, Kitchn staffers are sharing the cookbooks they’re loving right now, all of which are available on Amazon. And if you’r

In times of stress, losing myself in the pages of a good cookbook is one of the most soothing forms of escapism I know. Even if I’m not up for serious cooking, a well-written recipe, accompanied by evocative narrative and a luscious-looking photo, engages all my senses in imagining a brighter future at my very own table. I wasn’t expecting a book about beans to have this kind of effect. But then, I wasn’t expecting to find myself suddenly rethinking life as I know it in the midst of a global he

In these troubled times, when home cooking has become more and more a method of survival, beans are starring in the role they were born to play. Joe Yonan is the food and dining editor of the Washington Post. It’s a big job, covering an outstanding food city, so it’s pretty remarkable that Yonan finds time in the margins to write cookbooks every couple of years. What is up, Joe! His fourth book, Cool Beans (Ten Speed Press), is a well-researched and nimble collection of recipes revolving around

Let the Music Play: Joe Yonan’s Guide to Minimizing Bean-Induced Flatulence The author of “Cool Beans” on mastering the art of the musical fruit.