Need some meal inspo? Dietitian and Health-Ade advisor Maggie Moon serves up 9 inspiring cookbooks for weeknight meals and beyond

“This is a great beginner-friendly book,” says Moon. “It also comes in a vegetarian edition, and it is super-quick and easy.”

It’s basically a go-to reference book for any ingredient in your kitchen — and what to do with it. 

For basil, for example, “it will tell you the season is summer. The taste is sweet. The weight is light-soft,” says Moon. “The volume is mild to moderate. Tips: Add just before serving; used to add a note of freshness to a dish. And then it tells you all the things it goes with based on the chef's knowledge: so apricots, Asian cuisine, beans, green and white, bell peppers, especially red roasted bell peppers, cheese, especially feta and goat cheese, mozzarella. So, you get the idea. 

“And then there's even some flavor affinities to suggest: so, basil, garlic, olive oil, and salt. Basil, hamachi, tuni, tuna, tomatoes, and watermelon. Basil, mozzarella cheese, and tomatoes. Like things that go really well together.”

Written by Samin Nosrat, the James Beard Award–winning, New York Times-bestselling cookbook Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, “is a great one for beginners,” says Moon. “It feels like you're getting a friendly TED-talk-level expert to help you in the kitchen.” 

The book takes cooks through balancing these four elements perfectly in a dish, from salt to enhance flavor and fat to deliver flavor to balancing acid and texture-determining heat — and includes more than 100 of Nosrat’s amazing recipes to try out before experimenting on your own.

From J. Kenji López-Alt, an American chef who uses science and the scientific method to drive his recipe development and process, comes The Food Lab, which is all about getting super-nerdy with food. 

“This one is a little bit more in-depth,” says Moon. “This is for when you want to dive deep. If you want to dive deep, it dives deep.” 

The Series Eats writer includes hundreds of recipes you don’t need a science degree to make, including a recipe for great-every-time Hollandaise in two minutes.

Moon says she updated the 2024 edition of her best-selling cookbook with eight years’ worth of research, more than 250 new scientific papers, and every single question a reader had ever asked her. 

“These recipes are culinary nutrition,” says Moon — though with a grounding in evidence-based science. 

“The main focus is really the why and then, of course, the how of eating for brain health,” says Moon. “My process was really about setting up some basics about the brain. This is meant for anyone to read — anyone with a brain or anyone who wants to support their brain health. So it’s a very, very high-level overview: Here's your brain; here's why it needs nutrients; then let's talk about what the research actually says. So everything has to be evidence-based.” 

Her favorite recipe? A turkey sweet potato chili that’s a one-pot meal. Beyond turkey, it’s basically packed with health. “It has a bunch of different kinds of beans in it, so you're getting protein diversity, fiber diversity; you've got carotenoids and more antioxidants in those sweet potatoes and the tomatoes that are used in it,” she says. “And it's also just really comforting and yummy. Everybody has enjoyed it that has tried it.”

This book, Moon says, was “written by a married couple that I was fortunate to meet a handful of years ago and work with.” It breaks down ingredients by their chemistry so chefs looking to get a little creative can see what flavors work well together — without being too prescriptive. 

“So here's an example: Here's the ginger flavor wheel,” says Moon. “This is based on the chemistry of the ingredient, and you can see what kind of flavors it has an affinity with. And this way you can actually, from a science perspective, come up with maybe some creative combinations that you might not immediately think of. So like ginger and caramel is on here, or ginger and rum. So you could experiment knowing that there's some affinity. This is really great for getting creative and thinking outside the box.” 

“I'm Korean American and grew up eating my mom's home cooking, and it's just been really so great in the last handful of years that so many cookbooks have come out to demystify this process that used to only be the home cook's knowledge,” says Moon. “Every single household made something differently, a little bit differently. So it's been nice to have this doorway into traditional Korean cooking. 

“For me, the recipes are closer to what Korean restaurant food might taste like, but I know they'll always taste good. They might just be a little rich every once in a while for my preference and how I grew up. [But] I love that. And I also love what she's done just to raise awareness of Korean food and make it really accessible. I know a lot of people have found Korean food through her. So I really appreciate that. She's very adorable.”

It might look playful, but this cookbook has more than 60 delicious recipes inside, from easy kimchi (mak kimchi) to super-comforting soy garlic beef over rice (bulgogi dupbap). It’s perfect for beginners to Korean cooking wanting a fun approach to the cuisine. The author tucks in cultural tidbits and anecdotes along the way, too. 

“This one is so fun because it's a comic book,” says Moon. “I feel seen when I look at these illustrations. It just feels like home, and it's a nice way to kind of cook. It’s a fun way to understand Korean cooking as well.”

“Both of these address the classics as well as some modern takes on them,” says Moon. “I like these because they're often a little bit fresher; some of the recipes are just using some different ingredients that we have access to more commonly, and [they’re] maybe bringing in some ingredients that aren't traditionally in Korean cuisine but work really well. So, these are really great for that.” 

“Both of these address the classics as well as some modern takes on them,” says Moon. “I like these because they're often a little bit fresher; some of the recipes are just using some different ingredients that we have access to more commonly, and [they’re] maybe bringing in some ingredients that aren't traditionally in Korean cuisine but work really well. So, these are really great for that.”