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Not to toot our own horn, but skiing comes with some pretty great cuisine. Aside from chicken tenders and fries, skiing, especially outside of the U.S., is often synonymous with delicious eats. Take the cuisine from the Alps, like rich and creamy Swiss fondue, the Austrian Kaiserschmarrn, a pancake-like cake, or even the Pisco Sour from Chile.
Whatever you may be dreaming up in the kitchen, a ski cookbook is there to help guide your inspiration. Plus, they make excellent housewarming gifts, and if you’re better on skis than with a whisk, they’re perfect for the coffee table too!
Alpine Cooking: Recipes and Stories from Europe’s Grand Mountaintops
Barnes And Noble: $50 Amazon: $24
At 352 pages, Alpine Cooking is a gorgeous cookbook and food writer Meredith Erickson’s travelogue. Erickson has traveled extensively through the Italian Alps, France, Austria, and Switzerland, and all the while she collected recipes and stories. The resulting book is lush with telltale dishes like schnitzel and strudel, as well as photographs and tales that bring the region to life on the page. $50, Penguin Random House
Beyond Skid: A Cookbook for Ski Bums
Amazon: $34 for paperback, $45 for hardcover Website: $45
Lily Krass is a diehard backcountry skier, regular contributor to SKI, and above all, a self-proclaimed foodie and “skid” (aka a ski bum who lives in Jackson Hole). Krass and her partner Max Ritter compiled this fun cookbook chock-full of hearty meals and adventure-ready treats for fellow skiers who need to fuel their skiing habit, but aren’t willing to live off of burritos, dehydrated meals, and protein bars. The 145-page cookbook includes ski town staples like chili, ramen, and elk burgers, as well as ski bum-friendly (read, easier on the wallet) versions of seemingly complicated dishes like paella.
After the success of their first book, the team is debuting a second this fall. Ski Snacks is 65 easy, portable snack ideas specially for skiers. Pre-order is available now, and books are expected to ship in September. Pre-order here.
High Alpine Cuisine: Inspired Dishes from Extraordinary Mountain Escapes Around the World
Telluride-based food blogger Marla Meridith knows the deep pleasure of mountain grub. “High country food is honest, bold, and completely delicious,” she says in the book’s introduction. Throughout High Alpine Cuisine, Meridith shares recipes that range from belly-filling to après-minded—all of which are pulled from, or are inspired by, her favorite ski resorts around the world.
The Ski House Cookbook
Amazon: $17 ThriftBooks: Starting at $5
Authors Tina Anderson and Sarah Pinneo know that to ski hard, you need to eat well; they just don’t want to spend all day (or night) slaving in the kitchen. They’re guessing you don’t either. Enter The Ski House Cookbook, with 125 dishes that require minimal prep and are achievable in ski condo-sized kitchens.
Après All Day
Amazon: $14 ThriftBooks: Starting at $8
Après-ski might technically mean “after ski,” but author Kelley Epstein doesn’t put a time constraint on her après. Instead she dedicates a whole cookbook to the cozy, snowy lifestyle that defines winter living and eating—and with dishes like breakfast BLTs and a kitchen sink skillet cookie, you don’t even need to ski to dig in. Plus, there’s an entire chapter dedicated to cocktails and n/a sips.
Donabe
In Japanese cooking, donabe is both a style of cooking and the clay pot in which brothy, soul-warming meals like shabu shabu are cooked. In the book, authors Naoko Takei Moore and Kyle Connaughton give one-pot Japanese cooking to a broader audience. Perhaps not expected ski vacation fare, but we can promise that you’ll want to eat any and all of the recipes after a snowy day on the slopes.
The Alpine Cookbook
We’ll be honest, author Hans Gerlach had us at the “Cheese Dishes” chapter—a full 25 pages—dedicated to the dairy queen. With recipes from Bavaria, Austria, and Switzerland, The Alpine Cookbook might be an older book, but the recipes and imagery still resonate (hello, cheese doughnuts with rhubarb-raspberry compote).
The Aspen Cookbook
During the pandemic, the Aspen restaurant community banded together to produce a cookbook, sales of which would help keep the industry afloat. It was a feelgood project, but the editor and Aspen Times Weekly food columnist Amanda Rae Busch gave the book staying power. She did more than just assemble 100+ recipes, she created a book that feels like Aspen. And who doesn’t want to feel—and eat—like that?
Swiss Fondue
Amazon: Starting at $27 ThriftBooks: $26
Fondue and skiing go together like peanut butter and jelly—they’re wonderfully inseparable. In Swiss Fondue, authors Arnaud and Jennifer Favre share 52 recipes and riffs on the dipping dish, which is far more than you could (or should!) eat in one ski season. P.S. As founders of the Compagnons du Caquelon, an association of fondue lovers in the Canton of Valais, Switzerland, the Favres have serious street cred.
The Chilean Kitchen
With mountain ranges covering 80 percent of Chile, alpine living and cooking is a pretty major thing. The Chilean Kitchen, by Pilar Hernandez, Eileen Smith, and Araceli Paz, is less a ski-themed cookbook and more a statement of Chilean culture and hospitality. Recipes are hearty and rib-sticking, and they’re guaranteed to have you leaning into the phrase quédate un poquito, which means to stay a while.
Araxi: Roots to Shoots, Farm Fresh Recipes
Amazon: $27 Araxi Website: $27 (USD)
Take a ski vacation to Whistler and chances are you’ll hear about Araxi Restaurant & Oyster Bar. The spot is beloved, as is its chef-owner James Walt. In Araxi: Roots to Shoots, Farm Fresh Recipes, Walt and co-author Andrew Morrison bring the restaurant’s magic—one that hinges on seasonality and sustainability—to the home kitchen. $30, Figure 1 Publishing