The high fat, low carb ketogenic diet can be hard to stick to. With restrictions on what you can and cannot eat, you may find your meal and snack options limited. However, a great cookbook can help to further educate you on what you can eat, offer delicious recipes to excite your taste buds, and encourage you to maintain a ketogenic lifestyle. Keto cookbooks provide a large variety of tools to help you succeed, including meal plans, practical tips, scientific explanations of ketosis, and much more.
Our nutritionist consulted with a well-known keto recipe developer and chef to recommend the best of the best keto cookbooks.
Here, the best keto cookbooks:
Best Overall: The Keto Reset Diet Cookbook
With 150 low-carb, high-fat, ketogenic recipes, Mark Sisson’s The Keto Reset Diet Cookbook promises to boost weight loss while helping you do keto “the right way”. The resource—a cookbook counterpart to the best-selling The Keto Reset Diet—is great for newbies and experienced keto followers alike, offering tons of information about the hows and whys of keto, practical tips, and myth busters.
Keto followers will refer to this compilation of easy, delicious recipes again and again. Founder of Primal Kitchen, the popular pantry staple brand, and writer of the Mark’s Daily Apple blog, Mark Sisson lives and breathes the keto lifestyle and has become the poster child for a science-backed, disease prevention, and weight loss strategy.
In this cookbook, he offers helpful lists of keto pantry staples as well as healthy keto-approved ingredient swaps for grains and sweeteners. Popular recipes include Crème Fraîche Spatchcocked Chicken with Creamy Brussels Sprouts and Bigass Breakfast Salad with Bacon Dressing.
“This is so much more than a cookbook. Mark Sisson, the author, and godfather of the keto movement starts with a 21-day ramp-up program for beginners, so you ease into keto. This makes transitioning to a keto diet less of a shock, helps you avoid the “keto flu,” and has you feeling great right away.” —Beth Lipton, keto recipe developer and chef
Best Meal Plans: The Keto Diet The Complete Guide to a High-Fat Diet
Recipes can be help inspire delicious, filling meals. However, meal plans are a fantastic tool for planning out how to enjoy and cook them throughout the week. If you’re looking for a keto cookbook with recipes and extensive meal plans, Leanne Vogel’s The Keto Diet: The Complete Guide to a High-Fat Diet is a great choice.
The Keto Diet includes an impressive five 28-day meal plans to get you through your first month of keto eating. Plus, it offers over 125 delectable recipes for a high-fat, low-carb lifestyle, including Avocado Breakfast Muffins, Salmon Salad Cups, and Zucchini Lasagna, so you can mix and match based on your individual preferences.
What’s great about Vogel’s approach is her acknowledgment that eating styles—including keto—are not one-size-fits-all. She offers a variety of resources, including clearly outlined yes/no food lists, a daily food journal template with thought-provoking prompts, and food sensitivity replacements.
One tool that stands out is her three-pronged approach to meal planning with full visuals. No cookie-cutter meal planning here—you build your meal plan based on your needs, whether that is by calorie intake goals, by prepping what you need when you need it, or by specific ingredients you have on hand.
Best for Beginners: Ketogenic Diet The Step by Step Guide For Beginners
If you’re brand new to a ketogenic diet concept, you need a book that goes into detail about the dos and don’ts of this high-fat eating plan. Ketogenic Diet: The Step by Step Guide For Beginners by Jamie Ken Moore breaks down the basics of keto in a beginner-friendly guidebook.
The text-heavy book offers several easy low carb, high-fat recipes, and a 28-day meal plan; however, it is more of a beginner’s keto resource than a recipe-heavy cookbook. In the well-researched text, you’ll find an in-depth explanation of ketosis and basic weight loss principles, and meal planning guides, and grocery lists. Specifically, the book walks you through the health benefits of the keto diet, how and why it works, and outlines structured steps to get started and maintain ketosis.
Best Comfort Foods: Rocco’s Keto Comfort Food Diet
When you think of keto-friendly meals, you might imagine avocado, bacon, and meat on repeat. While that may appeal to some, the luster is sure to wear off when you see your family favorites. However, with the right ingredients and recipes, you can recreate some of your favorite comfort foods within the ketogenic diet guidelines. Rocco’s Keto Comfort Food Diet, by the best-selling author and chef Rocco DiSpirito, is all about honoring your love of food while adhering to keto restrictions.
The gorgeous cookbook makes even the biggest carb lover consider going keto. Mouth-watering images of keto-friendly recipes—such as Avocado Chocolate Mousse, Meat Lovers’ Cauliflower Pizza, and Parmesan Herbed Zucchini Fries— jump off the glossy pages. Rocco transforms the hearty flavors and delicious tastes of classic meals into keto-friendly dishes by using low-carb substitutions for typical carb-rich foods.
The three-tiered diet guides you through a 3-day ‘cleanse’ followed by a low-calorie, low-carb 21-day plan, and eventually a maintenance phase to carry the principles over into a more permanent lifestyle change.
“The principles of healthy eating are the same for keto as they are for other dietary approaches, keto just has fewer carbs. In general, look for keto cookbooks with real food, plenty of vegetables, and limited processed food, because keto junk food is still junk food.”— Beth Lipton, keto recipe developer and chef
Best with Practical Tips: Simply Keto
Many people choose a ketogenic diet because they believe it will help with weight loss. However, this type of diet can be challenging to stick with, especially if it’s a huge departure from how you usually eat. Choosing a cookbook that guides you through the basics of keto and provides recipes is great, but practical tips on how to actually integrate the diet into your lifestyle in a real, approachable way are key. For a cookbook that’s equally motivational and practical as it is educational, check out Simply Keto by Suzanne Ryan.
In Simply Keto, Ryan details her own journey with the diet, explaining how she lost more than 100 pounds and 40 percent of her body weight by adopting a ketogenic lifestyle. Throughout the cookbook, she offers firsthand tips on how to thrive on a ketogenic diet, including personal advice and FAQs.
With 100 easy recipes, shopping tips, and a 30-day meal plan, Simply Keto lives up to its name and sets you up to succeed on a clear, straightforward path with tons of useful tools.
“Simply Keto is a great pick for beginners and experienced keto dieters alike. Her tips on what to order when eating out in all different kinds of restaurants is really useful.” —Beth Lipton, keto recipe developer and chef
