James Beard Foundation Cookbook Award winners announced

The winners of the James Beard Cookbook and Media Awards were announced minutes ago at the annual JBF gala event. In addition to announcing the winners of the cookbook awards, the gala honored Jessica B. Harris, who was inducted into the Cookbook Hall of Fame. Harris is an American culinary historian, college professor, cookbook author and journalist. Her primary subjects are the culinary history, foodways and recipes of the African diaspora. At the start of her acceptance speech, Harris said: “I was in food before food was cool. I was definitely in food before it was diverse.” She said the award also belonged to all of the people who have collected, documented, and preserved African-American recipes and foodways.

One item of note is that the winner in the Beverage category, Wine Folly: The Essential Guide to Wine by Madeline Puckette and Justin Hammack, was not on the original nominees list. Apparently there was a miscount, and the book was inadvertently left off the original slate. The correction and nomination was announced on April 16.

We don’t list all of the online and televised media award nominees, but I did want to point out that Samin Nosrat’s Netflix series Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat won Best Television Program: On Location and Pati Jinich’s Mexican table took home honors in Television Program, in Studio or Fixed Location. Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown took home the award for Visual and Technical Excellence. 

Without further ado, here are highlights of the Cookbook Awards. You can view our James Beard Award 2019 page to see the complete list of nominees and winners in all categories.

• General: Milk Street: Tuesday Nights: More Than 200 Simple Weeknight Suppers that Deliver Bold Flavor, Fast by Christopher Kimball
• International: Feast: Food of the Islamic World by Anissa Helou
• Baking: SUQAR: Desserts & Sweets from the Modern Middle East by Greg Malouf and Lucy Malouf
• Restaurant and Professional: Chicken and Charcoal: Yakitori, Yardbird, Hong Kong by Matt Abergel
• Writing: Buttermilk Graffiti: A Chef’s Journey to Discover America’s New Melting-Pot Cuisine by Edward Lee
• Single Subject: Goat: Cooking and Eating by James Whetlor
• Vegetable-Focused Cooking: Saladish by Ilene Rosen
• Cookbook of the Year:  Cocktail Codex by Alex Day, Nick Fauchald, and David Kaplan