A review of the best keto cookbooks on Amazon, plus which one is the best keto cookbook for beginners–perfect for anyone just starting the low-carb, high-fat lifestyle of the ketogenic diet! (This post may contain affiliate links.)

Happy February!

Well, sort of. February is always a grim month—it’s cold; it’s gray; it’s dark; it’s cold. It’s the month when I most want to hide under the covers with a novel. (I’m reading this now!) And it’s the month when I most want to pile on the comfort food, yet there’s still that pesky January healthy-eating thing going on.

Jarrett and I were flattened with the flu all of last week, and we were such sad sacks that barely anything got done. But the two bright spots in the week were this:

1. Jarrett achieved his lifelong dream of having an op-ed published in the print Wall Street Journal! (Can I go stage-mom for a second and say how bursting with pride I am!?)
2. My new cookbook column on The Kitchn debuted! My pals at The Kitchn generously invited me to write a monthly cookbook review column for them, and anyone who’s ever heard me monologue about cookbooks knows I couldn’t resist.

We’re calling the column What To Read & Cook Next, and each month, I’ll select one of the bestselling cookbooks on Amazon, investigate why everyone’s been cooking from it, and point you to that one recipe that will change your game in the kitchen.

Here’s an excerpt from this month’s column, where we talk about the best keto cookbook for beginners:

The best keto cookbook for beginners + a fat ball recipe

I still remember the first time I heard the word “ketogenic.” I was in a brainstorming meeting at a cookbook publisher several years ago, and the question was, “What’s the next Paleo?”

We tossed around all the up-and-coming eating trends and picked a few we would watch. I tucked the word “ketogenic” into my back pocket and soon forgot about it.

This New Year’s Day, I bought my first ketogenic cookbook. Because, you see, now everyone is doing it. It is the next Paleo. And since my job as a cookbook agent means I look at hundreds of cookbooks each year, you might wonder: Which is the best keto cookbook out there? Which keto cookbook did I pick?

Not the blogger cookbook with the attractive cover that clocks in at a comprehensive 336 pages (for that, I’d recommend Simply Keto: A Practical Approach to Health & Weight Loss, with 100+ Easy Low-Carb Recipes by Suzanne Ryan). And not the keto cookbook with a great promise by a bestselling author (that would be The Keto Reset Diet: Reboot Your Metabolism in 21 Days and Burn Fat Forever by Mark Sisson and Brad Kearns).

No, instead, I chose a simple, slim, unfussy paperback called The Complete Ketogenic Diet for Beginners: Your Essential Guide to Living the Keto Lifestyle by Amy Ramos.

This unassuming little book is one of the top healthy cookbooks on Amazon this January, and here’s why it’s the best keto cookbook on Amazon right now:

Click here to keep reading about the best ketogenic cookbook on The Kitchn!

For more cookbook reviews and cookbook recommendations, try:

What I’m Reading This Week

The Curse of Reading and Forgetting (Ian Crouch for The New Yorker): Do you remember most of what you read? I definitely forget most of what I read. Which I’ve always found depressing, since there’s so much to learn about the world in books, but it’s all useless if it slips right out of your brain. In fact, as I was reading this article, I realized there was a good chance I had read it when it first published in 2013. But…I can’t be sure.

Why We Forget Most of the Books We Read (Julie Beck for The Atlantic): And in case you want to read more about why we forget what we read (not that it’ll matter, because you’ll forget this, too), here’s a piece from last week’s The Atlantic.

Quiz: What Thriller Protagonist Are You? (Jamie Canaves for Book Riot): You know you can’t resist a good quiz…

A Powerful Insight for Nonfiction Writers That Makes All the Difference (Chad R. Allen): “I’ve been re-reading Stephen King’s On Writing, and as I come to the end of it one thing stands out to me above the rest. That’s significant because it’s a very good book, and many things stand out to me as helpful and wise. If you haven’t read it, you should. But this one thing stands out to me as not just helpful and wise but also really important.”

The Book Diaries: Part II (Nik Sharma of A Brown Table): Here’s my author, Nik, with a behind-the-scenes of what, exactly, happened once we’d accepted his book deal with Chronicle Books. Also, here’s a photo of his adorable cat next to the page proofs of his stunning book. I’m calling this my favorite shot of the week.

What We’re Eating This Week

Have you heard The Good News? I got an Instant Pot!! I’m trying to keep my wits about me, but I am also ridiculously in love with it and want to cook everything in it forever. I’m already testing and retesting the most delicious, juicy, easy roast chicken recipe in it for next month’s Kitchn column, from The Essential Instant Pot Cookbook by Coco Morante (jazz hands for Stonesong clients)!

So, since I am in NYC this week and eating nothing of note, let’s play the Imaginary Menu Game using recipes from Coco’s book.

Monday: Let’s start the week with that 20-minute roast chicken, shall we? Weeknight cooking is so easy when you’re just pretending.

Tuesday: Since in my imaginary cooking life I’m also very healthy, let’s have Vegan Sloppy Joes for dinner. I’ll probably serve them with sourdough rolls I baked that morning, of course.

Wednesday: Cook’s night off. Just kidding! I’ll whip up some BBQ Baby Back Ribs with a side of Winter Vegetable Mash. * hair flip* (Imaginary Me is a bit smug.)

Thursday: How about that Pomegranate Walnut Chicken on page 71, for the simple reason that it looks knee-weakening delicious and in Imaginary Cooking Land your husband never complains that you put fruit on a piece of meat. In fact, Imaginary Husband has an impeccable palate and sophisticated comportment. Imaginary Husband wears a tie to dinner. Yeah.

Friday: Since it’s Mardi Gras weekend, let’s end with a Cajun Chicken and Sausage Jamabalaya. And for dessert? Banana-Toasted Pecan Cake. So effortless! (So tired.)

Cheers!