Region, Nation or Plant? The Best Native American Cookbook

Corn, beans, squash and chiles sit at the center of a Mexican kitchen, and they were being grown in the Americas long before any of our recipes were written down. So a restaurant like ours has a real interest in these books. They come at familiar ingredients from the people who first grew and cooked them.

No single book can cover every Native nation, and these books take different routes through the problem. Some write from one nation, one region or one set of plants, and others try a survey. This guide gives eight books from named authors at established publishers, and it says which rest on a named review and which on the publisher’s details.

Julia’s earns a commission on purchases made through links on this page, at no cost to you. Recommendations are based on what a restaurant kitchen looks for in a cookbook, the Amazon listing, publisher and author information and published reviews, which we name where we use them.

Quick verdict: the best Native American cookbook to start with

The other five cover intertribal recipes from an Oakland restaurant, Navajo home cooking, eight key plants, the Upper Midwest and wild foods.

Five Indigenous cookbooks side by side

Five of the eight, one for each kind of cook. All eight are described in full below.

Cover images from Amazon. Page counts and formats are from the Amazon listings for the editions linked. Recipe counts are from the publisher’s copy or the listing title.

Our picks for the best Native American cookbook, book by book

All eight were in stock and new, and sold by Amazon, when we checked. We have not cooked from these books; where we describe a strength, we say whose view it is.

How to choose a Native American cookbook for your kitchen

Four questions will narrow this list quickly.

• One nation or many? Yazzie stays with Navajo cooking. Sherman and Bitsoie cover many communities, and Wahpepah writes intertribal food.
• Which ingredients are available to you? Corn, beans and chiles are easy. Chokecherry and bison may not be. If you want to work with whole corn, our guide to nixtamalization explains a process hominy depends on.
• Meat or plants? Frank’s book is plant-based. DeSpain and Bitsoie include meat and fish, per PW.
• How do you like your beans? Beans come up again and again in these reviews, so a clay pot for cooking beans is a natural partner.

How we chose these Indigenous cookbooks

We searched Amazon’s book listings first and kept print editions from named authors at established publishers, plain in stock with a new lead offer sold by Amazon. We report each author’s background only as the publisher or a named review gives it. Author, year, format and page count come from the Amazon listing. Recipe counts and descriptions come from the publisher’s copy unless we credit someone else.

Here is what stands behind each pick. New Native Kitchen, Rooted in Fire and Seed to Plate, Soil to Sky have Publishers Weekly reviews that we read ourselves. Turtle Island, A Feather and a Fork, The Modern Navajo Kitchen, Original Local and Native Harvests rest on the publisher’s and the author’s details. We found no PW review at those five ISBNs, which does not mean that no other review exists.

Stock ruled out some important books. The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen and Cooking the Native Way were not plainly in stock when we checked, and Lois Ellen Frank’s Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations was low in stock. We also left out a long run of anonymous or self-published titles using the same keywords.

Indigenous cooking book questions, answered

What is the best Indigenous cooking book for a beginner?

The Modern Navajo Kitchen if you want approachable home cooking, and Turtle Island if you want the wider picture first.

Is The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen on this list?

No, only because it was not plainly in stock when we checked. Sherman’s newer Turtle Island is here.

Are these recipes healthy?

We make no health claims for any book here. Some publishers do, and those claims are theirs.

Why is a Mexican restaurant writing about these books?

Corn, beans, squash and chiles are at the heart of our food too, and Rooted in Fire ties Native and Mexican cooking together directly.

Are these books written for people who are not Native?

PW describes Rooted in Fire as a resource for home cooks who want to learn about Indigenous foodways, and the others are sold to general readers. Read each author’s introduction too, since it should tell you how they hope the food will be used.

Which Native American cookbook should you buy first?

Buy Turtle Island for the widest view. Choose New Native Kitchen for modern dishes and Rooted in Fire for its Mexican link. The others cover one nation, one region or one set of plants, and each entry says who it suits. To see how these ingredients carry on in Mexican cooking, go to our best Mexican cookbooks guide. For another American regional shelf, see our Southern cookbook page.

And if you would rather let someone else cook tonight, see the menu or call to order.