11 cookbooks any home chef would find useful — from learning basic recipes to mastering French and Indian cuisine

Whether you avoid cooking whenever possible or love nothing better than preparing something tasty in your kitchen, you need a sturdy set of cookware. After all, you can't scramble an egg, flip a burger, or whip up a healthy stir-fry without something to cook on.

These best knife sets are backed by a long-term warranty, feature blades that will stay sharp, are comfortable in your hands, and come with the types of knives you will use most, including a good chef's knife.

Momofuku is the culinary brand launched by celebrity chef David Chang, whom you may recognize from the Netflix show "The Mind of a Chef."

The "Momofuku" cookbook makes many of the dishes served in Chang's award-winning restaurants accessible to people everywhere. Interspersed with advice on how to master ramen noodles and prepare mouth-watering pork are candid stories of Chang's rise to stardom. The Asian food-centric book is also full of vibrant photographs.

Julie Sahni's "Classic Indian Cooking" will help you produce delicious dishes packed with flavor right in your kitchen. The cookbook systematically teaches home chefs about basic spices and techniques before moving onto recipes for appetizers, main courses, side dishes, and desserts.

With 1,400 recipes, "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone" is perhaps the most comprehensive vegetarian cookbook you'll find. Written by Deborah Madison, the founding chef at San Francisco's famous Greens restaurant, the book explores how to choose and care for vegetables, combine ingredients, build flavor, and how to present dishes attractively.

From Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins, "The Silver Palate Cookbook" is a great addition to your repertoire if you like to host dinner parties. The book is divided up into the different courses you might serve your guests, including soups, appetizers, salads, main courses, and desserts. There are also menu suggestions for special occasions. Recipes are illustrated with a combination of drawings and full-color photos.

There's a lot to like about Dorie Greenspan's "Baking." The Beard Award-winning book has 300 recipes for all types of bakers from those who like to use the latest gadgets to those who like it slow and by hand. Many of the recipes are accompanied by beautiful, full-color photos. Greenspan also sprinkles everything with anecdotes and her engaging personality.

If Italian food is a regular part of your diet, then "Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking" deserves a place on your cookbook shelf.

Much like Julia Child is credited with bringing French cuisine to the American public, Marcella Hazan, author of "Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking," introduced Italian cooking to a whole generation of chefs in this country. First published in 1992, Essentials brings together Hazan's 1973 two-volume cookbook "The Classic Italian Cookbook: The Art of Italian Cooking and the Italian Art of Eating."

"Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking" starts with the fundamentals of where the flavor comes from in Italian dishes. Hazan goes over the pantry staples advising on how to shop for and use items like extra virgin olive oil, mozzarella di bufala, balsamic vinegar, and more.

The cookbook is over 700 pages, and though it doesn't have photos, there are drawings throughout.

"Joy of Cooking" teaches basic culinary skills to people who are tired of takeout or heating up processed foods and want to give home cooking a try.

Since Irma S. Rombauer first self-published "Joy of Cooking" in 1931, it has sold over 20 million copies. The 9th edition was released in 2019 with a huge expansion by Rombauer's great-grandson John Becker and his wife Megan Scott.

The newest edition has more than 4,000 revised and updated favorites from previous editions as well as 600 new recipes. This is the reason why the text feels too small sometimes. The book comes in at 1,200 pages and weighs about 5 pounds. Still, in my experience, "Joy of Cooking" is worth space on your cookbook shelf.

Everyone seems to have their favorite edition, and according to Bon Appétit, the hunt for vintage copies is almost a sport. I received the 1997 edition as a wedding present, and it has transformed my relationship with my kitchen. The spine is cracked and the pages are well-worn and stained, yet I continue to turn to it for chicken and dumplings, pancakes, basic bread stuffing, chicken paprikash, bread, and anything else I want to try making. There are recipes for virtually everything I'm interested in, and they're easy to understand and dishes turn out great.

If you're looking for a cookbook that has recipes for the classics that appear on tables across the country, "How to Cook Everything" is a good place to start.

The first thing you notice when you look at "How to Cook Everything" is the sheer size of the 5-pound, 960-page book. But when you pack 2,000 recipes into a book, it's going to take up some space. Author Mark Bittman built a name for himself as "The Minimalist" columnist for The New York Times, which ran for 13 years.

Here, Bittman gives easy-to-follow instructions and tips for making popular foods using basic equipment, simple techniques, and fresh ingredients, which make it easy to put your own twist on dishes once you've mastered them. The latest edition is the 10th Anniversary Edition and it's broken up into helpful categories, including appetizers, salads, meat, breakfast, desserts, and more.

"How to Cook Everything - Completely Revised Twentieth Anniversary Edition" was released at the end of 2019, and that's what we link to in this review. However, missing from the new edition are the lists of 100+ essential recipes, fast recipes, make-ahead recipes, and vegetarian recipes that come in handy when you need ideas of what to make. For this reason, it might be worth picking up the older 10th Anniversary Edition if you can find it. Bittman has also authored other specialty cookbooks in the "How to Cook Everything" series that are worth checking out.

"Plenty: Vibrant Vegetable Recipes from London's Ottolenghi" is the best-selling work of Israeli-English chef and restaurateur Yotam Ottolenghi, who owns six delis and restaurants in London. For years, Ottolenghi wrote a weekly recipe column for Guardian Weekend magazine called the New Vegetarian, and about 80% of "Plenty" comes from this column.

At first blush, "Plenty" may appear to be a vegetarian cookbook, yet it features meat accompaniment suggestions for many of the recipes. What sets the book apart is Ottolenghi's collection of herbs and spices that he uses to bring pleasantly unique flavors to vegetables. A few of the highlights are quinoa and grilled sourdough salad, burnt eggplant with tahini, and green bean salad with mustard seeds and tarragon.

The recipe descriptions are quite minimal, but they're clear and easy to follow, and the vibrant photography shows dishes in all their delicious glory. Whether you're a vegetarian or just hoping to add more vegetables to your diet, "Plenty: Vibrant Vegetable Recipes from London's Ottolenghi" is sure to give you fresh ideas.

Few cookbooks have as much historical significance as "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" written by Louisette Bertholle, Simone Beck, and most notably Julia Child. In addition to introducing Americans to French cuisine and sparking an interest in gourmet cooking, it thrust Child into the limelight.

First published in 1961, the cookbook inspired the 2005 best-selling book and 2009 movie "Julie and Julia," which chronicles author Julie Powell's struggles trying to make every recipe in Child's masterwork in a year.

"Mastering the Art of French Cooking" focuses on the main recipes that define French cuisine. There are over 500 recipes and more than 100 instructive illustrations. The authors break the dishes into essential steps and offer tips for finding and handling ingredients. The book even details the best side dishes and wine pairings for many of the recipes.

The two biggest drawbacks are that the fat content of the dishes is notoriously high and many of the recipes require advanced skills, though there are still several accessible options, such as a poached fish in white wine or an unique asparagus preparation.

We recommend Volume 1 of "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." If you find you enjoy it, we suggest also picking up Volume 2.