This article is about two months late, after a lot of back-and-forth by e-mail and some follow-up cookbook orders. I’m telling you that because I want you to know how seriously I took this assignment—how much hand-wringing was involved. Twelve is not a large number. Each book on a list of just twelve essentials has to do double or even triple duty, packing as much onto one slim digital bookshelf as possible.
On top of that, major cookbook publishers have long overlooked the Midwest. When commissioning books on regional American cooking, they have clearly favored the South. It seems like every year we get half a dozen big new books about cornbread and barbecue. I get it! I live in Texas! We have great food below the Mason-Dixon!
But I grew up in Wisconsin. I went to college in Iowa. And the amazing food in those states and across the region are documented in cookbooks—just not ones published by the houses in New York. To make this list, I started sending off for them: I wrote real physical paper checks and mailed them (with stamps!) to ag extension programs, not knowing if they even had stock left. I ordered cookbooks from state fairs and historic public markets and bartenders’ guilds and university presses. And as they arrived, I began to wonder if the Midwest even needs New York publishers to wake up. We seem to be covering our bases pretty well on our own.
The result is this list: a dozen fabulous cookbooks that look at the history of Kansas City barbecue and the cutting-edge Minneapolis cocktail scene, the grand Midwestern tradition of state fair recipe contests and late Chicago chef Charlie Trotter’s era-defining way with vegetables. This list represents new ways of cooking and old, the history of this region and a little bit of its future. These books challenge preconceived notions of what Midwestern food can be while celebrating long-held traditions. And wherever possible I chose community cookbooks, to celebrate the deep Midwestern tradition of communities coming together not just over food, but through the written recipes behind each dish.
Are there gaps here? Of course. But the good news is, those big East Coast publishers seem to be waking up to the potential of Midwestern cookbook authors. As part of my job, I cover cookbook deals, and I keep seeing new deals for increasingly diverse authors from Missouri and Ohio and Chicago and Indiana. In other words, come next year, this list might look extremely different. Here’s hoping it keeps getting better and better.
Originally published to coincide with the U.S. bicentennial, “The Classic Hoosier Cookbook” is a gem from the Indiana Extension Homemakers Association. Members submitted the thousand-plus recipes in this dense volume. Most are short, efficient, and deceptively simple—optimized for budget and heartiness, in the tradition of home economics. Re-released in 2018 by the University of Indiana Press, its recipes for persimmon pudding and sugar cream pie are feeding a new generation.
I would put this book from 1996 on all kinds of Essential Cookbooks lists: Essential Chef Bookbooks, Essential Seasonal Vegetable Cookbooks, Essential Ahead-Of-Their-Time Cookbooks, Essential Fussy-As-All-Get-Out Cookbooks. But it earns a spot on the Essential Midwestern Cookbooks list for its dedication to regional produce—Black walnuts! Morels! Ramps! Persimmons! Fiddleheads! Wild watercress!—and era-defining cuisine, from a time when Chicago was better known for its steakhouses than delicate temples to fine dining. Intense mid-90s plating aside, many of these dishes would feel fresh on Midwestern menus today.
You can’t talk about Midwestern cuisine without talking about Kansas City barbecue. To my surprise, there aren’t a ton of cookbooks focusing on the history of this style of smoked meat, but Doug Worgul’s book is a good one. Full of historical photos, family anecdotes, and brief biographies of the legends of Kansas City, like Arthur Bryant, the Gates family, and Ardie Davis. The book ends with a brief-but-thorough beginners guide to backyard barbecue, complete with diagrams explaining how smoke movers through a smoker, advice on wood selection, a handful of rub and sauce recipes, and more.
This isn’t a book about Midwestern food specifically, but Beatrice Ojakangas is a Minnesotan cookbook legend with a whopping twenty-one titles to her name, several of them James Beard Award-winning. I considered her books about the dishes of her Scandinavian forebears and wild rice cooking, as well as her memoir-with-recipes, “Homemade,” for this list, but her doorstop of a casserole guide is my pick. If it can be cooked in a casserole, Ojakangas is on it, from breakfasts to side dishes to desserts to the grand Midwestern tradition of hot dish. This is the dish-to-pass bible.
When “New Midwestern Table” came out in 2013, cheffed-up American regional cookbooks were almost exclusively the province of the South. Finally, the not-your-grandma’s approach to recipes referred to Midwestern grandmas! Thielen’s delicate hand with Midwest favorites like wild rice hot dish, sour cream raisin pie, and bread-and-butter pickles didn’t so much elevate those dishes as give them long-due respect. It may be “New,” but it was an instant classic.
Historic public markets are a tradition throughout Ohio and across the Midwest. Many of these have published cookbooks. But this particular cookbook, celebrating Cincinnati’s Findlay Market, stood out for several reasons. Opened in 1855, Findlay is Ohio’s oldest continuously-operated public market, and the current roster of chefs and food purveyors who sell there represent a diverse cross-section of Cincinnati. Recipes include a Greek mezze platter, Lebanese tabbouleh, Thai chile chicken, Vietnamese pho, goetta bruschetta (!), and, of course, “Obligatory Cincinnati Chili.”
Not many states can boast a restaurant style all their own. Wisconsin isn’t the only state with supper clubs, but you won’t find authentic supper club experiences far beyond its borders. A supper club is many things: a Friday haunt, a wayside on a road trip, a vacation destination. The genre is also endangered, as previous generations retire and younger ones decline to take up the family business. That is why Mary Bergin’s book earned its spot on this list: It serves as a record of the stories and recipes behind these irreplaceable Midwestern oases. That we can recreate their fish fries, brandy old fashioneds, and grasshopper pies at home is just a bonus.
Several years ago, visiting my sister in Minneapolis, I was blown away by the city’s cocktail scene. No stranger to cutting-edge bar programs across the country, I found myself repeatedly pulling out my phone to look up ingredients and techniques listed on menus. It was truly like nothing I’d seen elsewhere. This book, by longtime Twin Cities barman Johnny Michaels and featuring recipes by bartenders throughout the area, captures that spirit (sorry!). It’s a reference for the serious basement bartender.
In championing not only his own Oglala Lakota cuisine but also that of indigenous cooks across the continent, Minneapolis’s Sean Sherman has written a groundbreaking tribute to Native American cooking. His first book is a memoir, describing a chef’s journey from South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation to a culinary career in Minneapolis. It’s a field guide to the native bounty of the Upper Midwest, including wild rice, wild berries, and maple syrup. It’s an important reference that the James Beard Foundation named the best American cookbook of 2017.
This deeply researched and thoroughly tested volume covers the entire region, making it perhaps the definitive Midwestern baking cookbook. From cider doughnuts to sour cherry pie to scotch-a-roos to poke cake, if it has graced a church potluck table or been a prize in a cake walk, Shauna Sever has it covered. And while the recipes tend towards the classic, she does take just enough creative license to keep the book from feeling stuffy and old fashioned—see the giant chocolate éclair made in a cake pan, or the double chocolate zucchini bread, or the frosted snickerdoodle bars.
Outsiders tend to think of the Midwest as a meat-and-potatoes kind of place, and not for nothing, but they might be surprised by how many Midwestern cooks revere fresh, seasonal produce—people like Abra Berens, a chef and former farmer. Her vegetable-focused book explores the relationship between food and the seasons with results both creative and delicious: a spring toast topped with creamed ramps and morels; a summery bowl of sautéed corn with soybeans, tomato, and basil; a winter salad of matchstick-cut root vegetables. As modern as the book feels, its techniques follow deep traditions: “A strongly stocked pantry of a few stalwart components ensures that whatever vegetable I have on hand that day can be assembled into a dish,” she writes, “quickly and deliciously.” That’s how Midwesterners have been cooking for generations.
Every other year since 1983, the Iowa State Fair has published ribbon-winning recipes from the two years prior. The series is everything you’d imagine it to be: full of sour cream-based dips and secret-ingredient hot wings, potluck salads, and endless, endless jams, bars, and pies. There’s a recipe for braided meatloaf featuring three (!) different kinds of loaf braided together. Since the recipes in this book all won prizes, you can have confidence that they’ll actually work. That it also celebrates the longstanding (and Midwest-wide) state fair tradition is a lovely bonus.
