Cookbook club is the new book club. Here's how to host your first gathering.
If you love to try new recipes, cookbook club just might become your new book club. While regular book club has its draws—like the motivation to read, the hanging out with friends and the drinking of wine—cookbook club has just as many. Pull out those cookbooks that have been collecting dust on your kitchen shelves, call your friends and get your grocery list ready.
Here’s how to host a cookbook club gathering that your friends will want to continue month after month. No more putting off those dog-eared recipes!
What is a cookbook club?
A cookbook club is similar to a book club in that everyone “reads” from the same book. However, instead of reading the entire book, each member chooses one or two recipes to prepare for everyone to try together in a potluck-style setting. This way, you can divide and conquer the cookbook and taste more recipes from it than you would have been able to tackle on your own—at least, in a single day.
While it’s more conventional to have members mostly prepare their recipes at home and bring them to the gathering like a potluck, you could also have everyone bring the ingredients for their dish and prepare the recipes together in one afternoon or evening. This will feel like Thanksgiving morning, where you have so many loved ones in the kitchen at once preparing for a holiday meal.
Just like book club, you’ll have a lot to chat about—whether it’s the difficulty of each member’s assigned recipe, the author’s writing style, the images in the book, a new skill you learned, any new tools you picked up … all while you enjoy the delicious food.
How to Host Cookbook Club
With a little bit of planning, it’s easy to host a cookbook club gathering. Here’s our complete step-by-step guide.
Step 1: Pick a cookbook
Well before the gathering, pick a cookbook that everyone agrees on. You can choose a book that focuses on a cuisine you want to familiarize yourself with, a specific appliance or tool such as an Instant Pot, or even a category of food, like appetizers or sides. The sky is the limit!
Just like in book club, some members may choose to purchase every book for themselves, while others may choose to find it at the library. As long as one person has the cookbook, you can take photos or make scans of all the recipes and distribute them, which allows people to see if they like enough of the recipes to make purchasing the cookbook worth it.
Editor’s Tip: Create a running shared note or document that allows the members to keep track of cookbooks they’d like to consider for the future gatherings.
Step 2: Assign or choose recipes
As the host, it’s typically expected that you’ll make the main dish. After all, it will be easiest for you to prepare, since you don’t have to transport the food to someone else’s home.
After you choose your main dish, let your friends decide which sides, desserts or appetizers they’d like to prepare, based on the recipes in the cookbook that excite them the most. You can oversee the choices and ensure that you have a well-rounded meal—for instance, ensuring there are no duplicate dishes, such as two salads or two potato sides. Or simply let it go and forgo worrying about duplicates if your group doesn’t mind.
You can do this in person, use a spreadsheet or via the group chat.
Step 3: Pick up groceries and last-minute items (a few days before)
- Plan your beverage recipes: In the days leading up to the gathering, select one alcoholic and one nonalcoholic beverage to serve. It’s always nice to have exciting drink options that make everyone feel included. The cookbook club gathering I attended was a brunch, and the host offered mimosas as well as iced Thai tea, which was incredibly fun.
- Go grocery shopping: Grab all the grocery items you need. If you forget anything, you’ll still have a day or two to go back and pick it up.
- Pick up takeout boxes: It’s always nice to have containers so guests can take leftovers home. That way nobody is stuck with just the leftovers of the dish they prepared, and everyone can have a well-rounded meal or two of leftovers.
- Purchase last-minute table decor: If you have specifics in mind for styling your dining table, like flowers, votives or even mini pumpkins for fall, grab those now.
- Make any last-minute communications: Double-check with your friends to make sure they’re bringing a serving spoon for their own dish.
Step 4: Set up the dining table and make your recipe (the day of)
- Set and style the table: If you’re using disposable plates, feel free to leave them out by the food buffet. If not, set your beautiful ceramic plates out to make the tablescape look stunning when your friends walk in. A regular-sized plate plus a salad and a dessert plate is not a bad idea. One, two or even three glasses is smart too: One for water, one for an alcoholic drink or mocktail, and a third if you want guests to have the choice to try both the cocktail and mocktail. Have fun with it; the focus of the gathering is food, so don’t be afraid to go big with the table decorations.
- Make or reheat your own dish and drinks: Don’t forget to prepare the dish that you signed up for! It would be smart to pick a recipe that you can prepare in advance, since you’ll likely be running around at the last minute to get all your other hosting duties done.
- Set out place cards for the name of each dish: Use erasable cards so you don’t have to buy new ones for every club gathering. You could also ask each member to label the allergens that are in each dish, in case you have guests with dietary restrictions.
5. Welcome your guests and help others finish their recipes
Your friends may show up and need to warm up their dishes again, or maybe they only need to prepare the garnish. Have the oven preheated just in case, and have a few clean cutting boards and knives ready for last-minute prep.
6. Enjoy the spread
Talk about the process of making your assigned recipe and which dishes are your favorites. And most importantly, have fun!
Tips for Hosting Cookbook Club
How many people should you ask to join your cookbook club?
You can base the size of your cookbook club around the number of seats you have at your kitchen table, or go in the opposite direction and try to host as many people as possible in order to truly cook your way through the book. A magic number seems to be about six to eight people. This way, you’ll have the time to connect with everyone before the end of the evening.
Select members wisely. It might be easy for you to just invite everyone in your friend group, but you could also take this as an opportunity to meet new friends. Ask the friends you know who love to cook to invite a friend you haven’t met who shares the same passion. Don’t forget name tags if you do it this way!
Can you host a themed cookbook club?
Absolutely! Depending on the cookbook you choose, you can also host a themed cookbook club. For example, you could use a cookbook that features Christmas cookies or a cookbook centered around a certain season or ingredient.
What are some other things to keep in mind when hosting a cookbook club?
- Don’t be embarrassed if you make a mistake: Since there are so many other dishes to try, it’s OK if your recipe didn’t go perfectly. Nobody is going to starve, and now you know better for the next time. Plus, the others may not have even looked at your recipe—so they might not know the difference.
- Consider having a secondary activity: While discussing the food and the cookbook is the main draw, you may not be able to talk about it for as long as you would discuss a novel for a book club. It’d be fun to extend the festivities with a seasonal craft or something to work on after you’re done eating.
- Don’t forget to pick a date for the next cookbook club: It’s easiest to find a shared date that works for everyone when you’re together, not via group text later on.
