James Beard Cookbook and Media Award winners

Jane, Katie and Jenny attended the James Beard award ceremony this evening in Chicago, where the the James Beard Foundation announced the winners of its 2025 Media Awards, which includes books, broadcast media, and journalism. You can view the entire award ceremony, which was live-streamed on YouTube. Padma Lakshmi served as emcee for the event. We will focus on the cookbook awards in this article, but you can find the entire list of winners at the James Beard Foundation website.

Nicola Lamb took home top honors in the Baking category with her amazing Sift: The Elements of Great Baking. Jenny was able to meet Nicola Lamb at the event, and can report that she is as lovely as you would expect. Nicola faced stiff competition with another great baking book, The Elements of Baking: Making any Recipe Gluten-free, Dairy-free, Egg-free or Vegan by Katarina Cermelj. This year Bread was once again separated from the main baking category (the two were combined in 2024 after the Bread category was created in 2023). The winner there was Richard Hart Bread: Intuitive Sourdough Baking by Richard Hart.

In the US Foodways category, Our South: Black Food Through My Lens by Ashleigh Shanti, besting Bayou by Melissa Martin and Chinese Enough by Kristina Cho. The highly competitive General category went to newcomer Carolina Gelen for Pass the Plate: 100 Delicious, Highly Shareable, Everyday Recipes. Winning an award for a first cookbook is even more impressive when you consider that Carolina was competting against Ottolenghi Comfort by Yotam Ottolenghi, Tara Wigley. Helen Goh and Verena Lochmuller.

Joe Yonan won the Vegetable-focused category with Mastering the Art of Plant-Based Cooking: Vegan Recipes, Tips, and Techniques, while Irina Janakievska walked away with the award in the International category for The Balkan Kitchen: Recipes and Stories from the Heart of the Balkans. That cover is a stunner, and it appears that in this case, you can judge a book by its cover.

The Emerging Voice award went to Paola Velez, author of Bodega Bakes. Rose Levy Beranbaum who recently released The Cake Bible, 35th Anniversary Edition, was inducted to the Cookbook Hall of Fame. Jenny was able to chat briefly with Rose at the event. Other winners are listed below. You can find the entire slate of winners and nominees on our James Beard 2025 page. Congratulations to all, and a huge thanks to Jenny who got the winners listed in record time so I could complete this post.

• Single Subject: Jang The Soul of Korean Cooking: More than 60 Recipes Featuring Gochujang, Doenjang, and Ganjang by Mingoo Kang
• Restaurant and Professional: Convivir: Modern Mexican Cuisine in California’s Wine Country by Rogelio Garcia and Andrea Lawson Gray
• Beverages With Recipes: The Bartender’s Pantry: A Beverage Handbook for the Universal Bar by Jim Meehan and Bart Sasso with Emma Janzen
• Beverages Without Recipes: Sake: The Art and Craft of Japan’s National Drink by Yoshiko Ueno-Müller
• Reference, History and Scholarship and Visuals: McAtlas: A Global Guide to the Golden Arches by Gary He
• Food Issues and Advocacy: Ruin Their Crops on the Ground: The Politics of Food in the United States, from the Trail of Tears to School Lunch by Andrea Freeman
• Food Writing: Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves by Nicola Twilley