This year, I will cook my way through my 67 cook­books. You might think 67 cook­books is a lot to own. Some part of me appar­ent­ly thinks it’s not near­ly enough. My col­lec­tion has over­grown its shelf space repeat­ed­ly, and if some­thing isn’t done, could take over the apart­ment entirely. 

So now, each book must prove its worth — earn its keep. Will I cook every recipe in every book? Hilar­i­ous idea. I will, how­ev­er, cook from each book until I find at least one thing I love. If that does­n’t hap­pen, the book goes, and I regain a bit of shelf space.

The line-up, orga­nized as I have them on my shelves:

Desserts

• Chez Panisse Fruit by Alice Waters
• Chez Panisse Desserts by Lind­sey Shere
• Bou­chon Bak­ery by Thomas Keller
• The New Arti­san Bread in Five Min­utes a Day by Jeff Herzberg and Zoe Francois
• Sweet by Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh
• Dessert Per­son by Claire Saffitz
• What’s for Dessert by Claire Saffitz
• Snack­ing Cakes by Yossy Arefi
• Pale­tas by Fany Gerson
• The Per­fect Scoop by David Leibovitz

The­o­ry and technique

• Mark Bittman’s Kitchen Matrix by Mark Bittman
• Mod­ern Sauces by Martha Holm­berg and Ellen Silverman
• Sauces: Savoury and Sweet by Michel Roux
• The Mod­ern Larder by Michelle McKenzie
• Culi­nary Artistry by Andrew Dor­nen­burg and Karen Page
• The Pro­fes­sion­al Chef by The Culi­nary Insti­tute of America
• New Com­plete Tech­niques by Jacques Pepin
• Basics: Foun­da­tions of Mod­ern Cook­ing by Fil­ip Verheyden
• Fer­ment­ed Veg­eta­bles by Kirsten Shock­ey and Christo­pher Shockey
• Begin­ner’s Guide to Pre­serv­ing by Delilah Snell

Gen­er­al

• I Dream of Din­ner (so you don’t have to) by Ali Slagle
• More is More by Mol­ly Baz
• Cook This Book by Mol­ly Baz
• Where Cook­ing Begins by Car­la Lal­li Music
• That Sounds So Good by Car­la Lal­li Music
• A Man and His Kitchen by Matt Hranek
• Cook­ing at Home by David Chang and Priya Krishna
• The Art of Sim­ple Food by Alice Waters
• Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat
• The Food Lab by J. Ken­ji Lopez-Alt
• Taste and Tech­nique by Nan­cy Pomeroy
• Chef’s Fridges by Car­rie Solomon
• Bou­chon by Thomas Keller
• Ad Hoc at Home by Thomas Keller
• The Gourmet Cook­book by Ruth Reichl
• Gourmet Today by Ruth Reichl
• Sim­ple & Clas­sic by Jane Hornby

Ingre­di­ent Specific

• Veg­etable Lit­er­a­cy by Deb­o­rah Madison
• Ruffage by Abra Berens
• Chez Panisse Veg­eta­bles by Alice Waters
• Six Sea­sons by Josh McFadden
• The Per­fect Egg by Teri Lyn Fish­er and Jen­ny Park
• The Bean Book by Steve Sando
• Cool Beans by Joe Yonan
• Grains for Every Sea­son by Josh McFadden

Cui­sine Specific

• Sim­ple French Food by Richard Olney
• The Ulti­mate Mediter­ranean Cook­book by Amy Riolo
• The Slow Mediter­ranean Kitchen by Paula Woolfert
• The Foods and Wines of Spain by Pene­lope Casas
• Tapas by Pene­lope Casas
• Essen­tials of Clas­sic Ital­ian Cook­ing by Mar­cel­la Hazan
• Fla­vor by Yotam Ottolenghi
• Zahav by Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook
• Clas­sic Indi­an Cook­ing by Julie Sahni
• To Asia, With Love by Het­ty McKinnon
• The Wok by J. Ken­ji Lopez-Alt
• Indian(-ish) by Priya Krishna
• My Mex­i­co City Kitchen by Gabriela Camara
• Mi Coci­na by Rick Martinez
• Let’s Make Dumplings by Hugh Amano and Sara Becan
• Mas­ter­ing Pas­ta by Mark Vetri and David Joachim
• The Ele­ments of Piz­za by Ken Forkish
• Shake Shack: Recipes and Sto­ries by Randy Garut­ti and Mark Rosati
• The Break­fast Book by Mar­i­on Cunningham
• The Art of Cook­ing Omelettes by Madame Romaine de Lyon
• Whole Food Cook­ing Every Day by Amy Chaplin
• The Sprout­ed Kitchen Bowl and Spoon by Sara Forte

Cook­ing is an invest­ment of your time, effort and ingre­di­ents. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, if you’re work­ing off a bad recipe, you may be doomed from the start. It only takes one or two tru­ly bad expe­ri­ences to real­ize that unless you know and trust the source, all bets are off. Tried and true recipes from trust­wor­thy sources are key.

But find­ing good recipes online can be sur­pris­ing­ly hard. One of the main prob­lems is the sheer vol­ume of infor­ma­tion avail­able. With so many web­sites, blogs, and recipe data­bas­es to choose from, it can be overwhelming.

And then there’s qual­i­ty con­trol. Any­one can post a recipe online, regard­less of their cook­ing expe­ri­ence or knowl­edge. You may — scratch that — you will come across recipes that are poor­ly writ­ten, inac­cu­rate, or just don’t work.

I want­ed to cut out the garbage and the noise, so I got a lit­tle bit nerdy and built a recipe find­er using a Google cus­tom search engine. It search­es only the trust­ed sources list­ed below. (Although I may add to it as I find new sources I like.)

• Amer­i­ca’s Test Kitchen
• Bön Appetit
• Cooks Illus­trat­ed
• David Lebovitz
• Epi­cu­ri­ous
• Food52
• New York Times Cooking
• Seat­tle Times
• Seri­ous Eats
• The Spruce Eats

Note that I have no finan­cial inter­est in any­one using this tool — it’s sim­ply some­thing I made that I found use­ful, and I’m shar­ing it in case it’s help­ful to any­one else.

Tip: On most of these sites, an author is list­ed for each recipe. If you make a recipe and you like how it turns out, take note of who the author is! That same per­son could have recipes list­ed across sev­er­al oth­er web­sites, or they may have pub­lished a cook­book or have a YouTube chan­nel, Patre­on page or Sub­stack newslet­ter that you can sub­scribe to.

Good luck on the hunt!