The best New Mexico cookbooks are The Rancho de Chimayó Cookbook by the James Beard Award-winning Jamisons for traditional cooking, Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations by Lois Ellen Frank and The Pueblo Food Experience Cookbook for Native and Pueblo foodways, and Mark Miller's Coyote Cafe for modern Southwestern cuisine. New Mexican food is its own cuisine, not Mexican and not Tex-Mex, built on native chile, corn, and centuries of Hispano and Pueblo cooking. These are the books that teach it honestly enough to cook from. For the collector's view, see collecting New Mexico cookbooks; for the deeper Hispano tradition, the Hispano foodways guide.
Published June 2026 · Curated by Josh Eldred, New Mexico Literacy Project
Cookbooks stained with red chile are welcome. Spiral-bound church cookbooks, splattered classics and the whole kitchen shelf go in my covered 24/7 drop box on Edith Blvd NE, free. Text 505-250-3804 for a free metro pickup.
The Rancho de Chimayó Cookbook — Cheryl Alters & Bill Jamison
The most beloved book of traditional New Mexican cooking, drawn from Rancho de Chimayó, the restaurant Arturo and Florence Jaramillo opened in 1965 in his grandparents' old home in Chimayó, north of Santa Fe. The Jamisons won four James Beard Awards together, and this is the book to learn real red and green from. Start here.
Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations — Lois Ellen Frank
The landmark cookbook of Indigenous Southwestern cuisine and, in 2003, the first Native American cuisine cookbook to win a James Beard Foundation Award. Frank, a food historian and photographer of Kiowa heritage, worked with Diné chef Walter Whitewater as culinary adviser. It restores the native ingredients (corn, beans, squash, chile, wild foods) at the foundation of all New Mexican cooking. Essential and beautiful.
The Pueblo Food Experience Cookbook · Roxanne Swentzell & Patricia M. Perea, eds.
A cookbook by, for and about the Pueblo peoples of New Mexico, from the Flowering Tree Permaculture Institute that Roxanne Swentzell founded at Santa Clara Pueblo. The recipes return to precontact Pueblo foods, from blue corn cakes to buffalo tamales and rabbit stew, alongside essays on Pueblo food history, farming and health. For Pueblo cooking in Pueblo voices, this is the book; more in the best Pueblo and Native New Mexico books.
Coyote Cafe: Foods from the Great Southwest · Mark Miller
Miller's first cookbook, from the Santa Fe restaurant he opened in 1987, and a defining book of the modern Southwestern cooking he helped pioneer. More ambitious than the traditional books, it is where New Mexican ingredients met fine-dining technique across more than 150 recipes, and it is still a reference for the chile-forward kitchen.
Tasting New Mexico — Cheryl Alters & Bill Jamison
The Jamisons' book for the 2012 state centennial: one hundred recipes from a century of New Mexico home kitchens, tracing how the state actually eats, from the village table to the modern one. It won the cookbook category of the 2012 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards, and it is the best single-volume survey of the cuisine and a fine companion to their Chimayó book.
Historic Cookery — Fabiola Cabeza de Baca Gilbert
Cabeza de Baca, a home economist with the state's Extension Service from 1929 to 1959, was publishing Spanish-language food bulletins by 1931. Historic Cookery, first issued in 1939, put traditional Hispano village recipes into print and has been reprinted many times since. Short, plain, and foundational. (See also her The Good Life, 1949, and her memoir We Fed Them Cactus, 1954.)
Mexican Cookbook · Erna Fergusson
Despite the title, this is New Mexico food. The Albuquerque writer limited her 1934 collection to dishes in common use when New Mexico was part of Mexico, from enchiladas and chile rellenos to carne adovada. First printed by the Rydal Press in Santa Fe and later reissued by UNM Press, it sits beside Historic Cookery as one of the earliest printed New Mexican cookbooks.
The Feast of Santa Fe — Huntley Dent
A thorough, much-loved guide to the cooking of Santa Fe and northern New Mexico, with the cultural context that makes the recipes make sense. A classic that many New Mexico cooks reach for when they want the why behind the how.
Simply Simpatico · Junior League of Albuquerque
The Junior League of Albuquerque's cookbook has been a fixture of Albuquerque kitchens since 1981. Its sales funded League community projects for decades, and the New Mexico Senate marked its twenty-fifth anniversary with a memorial. It also stands in for the whole shelf of church, club and utility cookbooks, such as the old power company's Cocinas de New Mexico.
A note on chile
New Mexican cooking begins and ends with chile — the state question is, after all, "red or green?" Any of these books will teach you to roast, peel, and cook with real New Mexico chile, but the culture and agriculture behind it run deep; see the guide to New Mexico chile culture and the Hatch tradition for the full story behind the ingredient.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best New Mexico cookbook?
The Rancho de Chimayó Cookbook by the James Beard–winning Jamisons is the most beloved book of traditional New Mexican cooking.
What cookbook covers Pueblo and Native Southwestern food?
Lois Ellen Frank's Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations, which won a 2003 James Beard Foundation Award, covers the wider Native Southwest. For Pueblo cooking specifically, The Pueblo Food Experience Cookbook (2016) was written by and for Pueblo people and grew out of work at Santa Clara Pueblo.
Who was the first author of New Mexican cuisine?
Fabiola Cabeza de Baca Gilbert is usually given the credit: her Extension Service food bulletins began in 1931, and Historic Cookery followed in 1939. Erna Fergusson's Mexican Cookbook (1934) and Cleofas Jaramillo's The Genuine New Mexico Tasty Recipes (1939) belong to the same first wave.
Which book by James Beard Award winners recommends Papa Felipe's in Albuquerque?
Jane and Michael Stern, the James Beard Award-winning food writers, picked Papa Felipe's green tamale pie with carne adovada for their 2009 book 500 Things to Eat Before It's Too Late. It is a national eating guide rather than a cookbook; the books on this page are the ones to cook from.
Cite This Guide
Eldred, J. (June 2026). Best New Mexico Cookbooks to Cook From. New Mexico Literacy Project.
https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/best-new-mexico-cookbooks
Original curation by Josh Eldred. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.