If you want to fail less in the kitchen, reading can help. Actually, the best way to get better is just to cook a lot more and see your failures as learning opportunities- But too much failure is discouraging, so that’s where reading comes in.

This list of my favorite books on cooking goes beyond picturesque recipe books, which typically offer only the aspirational “what” (to make) but not the “how,” or “why.” Sure, recipe books include written instructions, but without a deeper understanding of what is actually going on in that pan, it’s hard to succeed and know what went wrong. The cooking resource section can help with that.