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Samin Nosrat taught a lot of us how to think about salt and acid. Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love (Random House, September 16, 2025; photographs by Aya Brackett) is what comes after the framework: more than 125 recipes she actually wants to cook for people, including the versions of comfort that show up when a friend is having a rough week.
Cover: Good Things by Samin Nosrat (Random House). Publisher cover art via BookSense.
Why busy women still need this book
Good Things is not a 15-minute gimmick book. It is a reminder that dinner can be a ritual without being a performance. You will find crowd-feeding energy (roast chicken, sky-high focaccia) next to quieter moves (a tomato soup worth texting someone about, pancakes that feel like a Saturday even on a Wednesday remote morning).
If Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat was the class, this is the potluck you throw with what you learned.
Moments it earns its shelf space
- Sunday reset: bake something bread-adjacent so weekday lunches feel less sad
- Friend care: soup or cake you can deliver without a speech
- Dinner for more people than chairs: recipes written with real hosting friction in mind
Along the way Nosrat still sneaks in teacher notes, olive oil harvest dates, when to splurge on dressing ingredients, without turning dinner into homework.
Shop it
- Amazon
- Bookshop.org
- Penguin Random House
- Barnes & Noble (ISBN 9781984857781)
- Target (search “Good Things Samin Nosrat”)
If you only own one Nosrat
Keep Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat for the method. Add Good Things when you want the playlist of meals that make a house feel less like a logistics hub and more like a place people get fed on purpose.
Feature photo: Wikimedia Commons, homemade focaccia-style bread by JonaSali29. Good Things cover and text © Random House / Samin Nosrat; Aya Brackett photographs the book.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Fokace shtepie... by JonaSali29
Photo credits: Cover: Good Things via Random House / BookSense.
