African food represents one of the most underappreciated culinary regions of them all and, by even glancing across the cuisine of each country — from north to west, to sub-Saharan Africa — you’ll find dramatically different cooking styles, traditions, and ingredients. Not to mention the huge African-American cuisine that has influenced modern cooking across the world.
African food offers foodies a wonderland of unique and delicious flavours which is sure to drive people to your kitchen in search of whatever wonderful dish smells that good.
Cookbooks for Learning Home-cooked African Food
We love African food and, in this article, we’re going to talk about some of our favourite cookbooks for making wonderful homecooked African meals. This is, by no means, a list that covers the full extent of African cuisine. It merely stands as an introduction to African food and a jumping-off point for your own African cooking adventures.
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The Taste of Egypt: Home Cooking from the Middle East
This wonderfully illustrated book is a great example of what can be written when cooking is treated as the art form that we know it can be. North African food often includes a huge and varied selection of delicious, rich stews and soups — along with truly spicy dishes.
This book promises a wonderful selection of recipes, all of which will certainly set your mouth watering. Whether you’re looking for breakfast staples like ful medames, or the carb-filled streetfood feast that is koshari, or the delicious dessert kanafeh, this cookbook of detailed Egyptian home cooking won’t disappoint.
Ethiopia: Recipes and traditions from the horn of Africa
The history of Ethiopia is one of the most interesting ones on the whole of the African continent, if not the entire world. Thankfully, Ethiopia’s wonderful and varied cuisine has been getting the attention it deserves — speaking beautifully to the rich history of the country — and, over time, it’s becoming easier and easier to find great Ethiopian restaurants in big cities.
As it has never been directly touched by Western colonialism and has, instead, developed its technology over time (while preserving wonderful ancient traditions), Ethiopian food is a stunning mix of a number of different classical techniques and flavours with excellent modern additions.
This Ethiopian cookbook has a number of fascinating and delicious recipes, and we’d definitely recommend it to anyone looking to learn more about Ethiopian cuisine.
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Hibiscus: Discover Fresh Flavours from West Africa
This beautiful cookbook is dominated by recipes and ingredients from Nigeria which, over time, have been infused into typical western dishes. Reading this Nigerian cookbook is sure to utterly transform and reinvigorate your home cooking habits.
Whether you’re hoping to put a new spin on your classic Sunday chicken, or you’d like to try something completely new, the book has plenty of Nigerian-inspired recipes as well as helpful hints and tips.
We particularly enjoy the grapefruit and guava cheesecake recipe, as it gives a wonderfully light and fruity addition to a typically heavy and dense dish. The photography in this cookbook is also stunning and will make you want to pick up this book off your shelf just to flick through it again and again.
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Afro-vegan: Farm-fresh African, Caribbean, and Southern Food Remixed
African, Caribbean, and Southern foods have longstanding legacies as being very flavour-dense and wonderfully exciting cuisines. While they also have a reputation for being mostly packed with a lot of meat and animal products, the spices in those cuisines are superb when used anywhere, and with anything.
This Afro-vegan cookbook is packed with a huge variety of delicious recipes, including a number of dishes perfect for a potluck. Some highlights include the wonderful collard greens, as well as the cabbage with lashings of garlic, a perfect pairing to jazz up an often ignore vegetable.
Truly, this book, and the recipes it contains, are wonderful for showing any chef how simple ingredients can be bought to life with unique, stunning concoctions of herbs and spices.
Throughout the book, there are over a hundred delicious recipes that draw on the author’s personal taste and styles as well as the history of food that began life on the African continent.
Casablanca: My Moroccan Food
Morocco has long been a foodie destination and Morrocan mezze and tagine have become staples in restaurants across the world in recent years.
The beautiful country at the top of Africa lies on the border with Europe and the rest of the Arab world. This unique blend of cultures leads to some amazing recipes and cuisine — if you’re looking to master those Moroccon flavours and dishes, this Moroccan cookbook doesn’t disappoint.
There are a dazzling number of recipes in the book which draw on our favourite flavour combination — umami and sweetness. It’s something typical of African cuisine, and we truly can’t get enough.
We’d love to try out the sticky ras el hanout & peach short ribs; don’t they sound delicious! Moroccan food is, admittedly, a favourite of ours, and this book sounds like a perfect entryway to that delicious world.
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Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking: A Cookbook
Traditional African-American cooking has a wonderfully comforting and savoury flavour palate. This book goes into great detail about the rich and fascinating history that African-American cuisine has, adapting the recipes within it from a number of historical texts.
This cookbook has one-hundred-and-twenty-five recipes, all of which come together to paint a rich, powerful picture of the true history behind African-American cooking. This book can singlehandedly break down the image of soul food to reveal the much more interesting and culturally rich background that African-American cuisine has.
Tunisian Cookbook: Enjoy Authentic North-African Cooking in Tunisian Style with Delicious Tunisian Recipes
Tunisian cooking is another utterly unique style of food that simply hasn’t been revealed to the rest of the world in its complete majesty. This cookbook promises to reveal a number of different and delicious recipes to you, allowing you to dine on truly excellent and authentic Tunisian cuisine.
From the tomato and egg brunch favourite of shakshuka to the hearty stewed lablabi which will surely become a winter staple. Throughout the book, particular attention is paid to cooking simply and completely uniquely — everything you try is sure to amaze you.
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Through the Eyes of an African Chef
This is a wonderful book all about an extremely skilled chef rekindling their love for African cooking. Throughout the book, the chef writes about how they love the concept of returning to the soil for the freshest of ingredients, as well as reusing more traditional techniques which are just as useful and convenient now as they ever have been.
Throughout the book, there are a number of old favourites as well as unique and exciting new ways of practising, preserving, and upholding some of the finest culinary traditions in Africa.
No matter what your skill level is, you’re sure to enjoy exploring the African recipes in this book. It is aimed at people who have a deep love of cooking and food making it a perfect gift for yourself or the food lover in your life.
Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen
Ghanian cuisine has a long history of being relaxed, informal, and always delicious. This book has a number of enchanting recipes, all of which sound utterly incredible.
This book is ideal for those that are new to Ghanian cooking, it highlights how easy it can be to make food that is in line with African cuisine, while also ensuring that it’s utterly delicious. We particularly like the look of Nkruma (okra) tempura, which sounds wonderfully crispy, savoury, and satisfying.