6 smart, surprising food books to drag you through the summer months

Upcoming books about cooking and about food in general are on quite a travel bender. They include a YouTube star from South Texas, a British social critic and India's leading nutritionist. Ready for a jaunt?

'ArnieTex: Over 100 Recipes for Mexican-American Cooking and Texas-Style BBQ'

"No local celebrity turns heads in the Rio Grande Valley as much as cook and YouTuber Arnie Segovia," said Ryan Cantu at Texas Monthly. Segovia's more than 1 million YouTube subscribers know that this South Texas pitmaster knows his brisket from his carne guisada. Now, with the release of Segovia's book, "ArnieTex: Over 100 Recipes for Mexican-American Cooking and Texas-Style BBQ," you too can learn to cook Texas-style chili and Mexican-American dishes like fajitas at home. ($35, July 15, 2025)

'Mitahara: Food Wisdom From My Indian Kitchen'

This recipe collection's core tenet is the idea of mitahara, an "ancient Indian philosophy" that embodies the "practice of moderate, mindful eating," said The Week India. Rujuta Diwekar is one of the most famous nutritionists in India, and now her approach to homestyle cooking and how to think about what to eat, when and why will be available to American eaters with "Mitahara." ($30, July 15)

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'Jeremy Pang's Hong Kong Kitchen'

"Quite simple ingredients that can be used to make up hundreds of different dishes," said author and British TV host Jeremy Pang at The Independent about the core ingredients of the Hong Kong cuisine of his youth. Those tools — sesame oil, light and dark soy sauces, oyster sauce, ginger, garlic — are the stars of many recipes in "Jeremy Pang's Hong Kong Kitchen." A few examples: a clay pot with beef and egg yolk, celery-mushroom dumplings and ginger-spring onion crab. ($27, July 25)

'Nights and Weekends: Recipes That Make the Most of Your Time'

Alexis deBoschnek, a longtime recipe developer, divided her book into two sections according to the demands of the recipes. "Nights" are the smooth-sailing dishes, such as chile crisp salmon with quick pickle salad and pasta with brown butter wilted greens and walnuts. "Weekends" are for comparative projects, like a large-format pavlova and butternut squash-ricotta lasagna. Two smart ways to think about cooking each week. ($35, Aug. 12)

'Food You Want to Eat'

Thomas Straker has a legion of social-media followers, and with that comes the inevitable backlash. Still, by all accounts his first cookbook, "Food You Want to Eat," is a winner. Lobster, pasta, chocolate mousse, bone marrow butter: This is a collection of mostly familiar dishes from English, French and Italian repertoires. Straker "presumes no ownership over these dishes," said David Ellis at The London Standard. "Instead, it's just dozens of recipes that are all useful." ($35, Aug. 12)

'All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now'

The British thinker Ruby Tandoh scurries across a wild range of topics in "All Consuming": bubble tea, Martha Stewart, the tradwife influencer Nara Smith, TikTok and lobster. She does all this in an attempt to explicate the forces that shape the manner in which we consume food and food-related content. ($29, Sept. 9)