College is not only a time to prepare for a future career, it is also a time for young adults to learn how to live on their own. Often students start school a little lacking in certain household skills, such as cooking and eating healthy. If this description sounds like a college kid you have in your life, then you should check out the following list where there is an entire section on cookbooks for beginning cooks. You will also find cookbooks that will help students cook anywhere they live, even if it’s in a dorm room with no real kitchen; cookbooks for students who like healthy eating or are vegetarian or vegan; cookbooks geared just to guys or girls; cookbooks to help students cook on the cheap; and books that offer plenty of other strategies for college students in addition to recipes and cooking tips.

For Beginning Cooks

If your college student’s idea of cooking is the drive-through window at the closest fast food restaurant, then these cookbooks are the way to go for learning all the basics.

1. Cooking Outside the Pizza Box: Easy Recipes for Today’s College Student. This cookbook offers easy recipes as an alternative to relying on fast food. Find ideas for munchies and snacks, full meals, desserts, and more that are great for beginners.
2. College Cuisine. In addition to the delicious recipes, find everything from how to stock a pantry to shelf life of foods in this book.
3. Starving Students’ Cookbook. If your college student is just learning to cook, then check out this book that includes illustrations, cooking how-to tips, health and nutrition information, and more.
4. College Cooking: Feed Yourself and Your Friends. Written by two college students, this cookbook not only offers a wide range of delicious, easy, and thrifty recipes, it also includes such topics as ingredients, cooking, entertaining, and more.
5. How to Boil Water: Life Beyond Takeout. This book really does tell how to boil water, along with plenty of other tips and recipes just right for the beginning cook.
6. Help! My Apartment Has a Kitchen Cookbook: 100 + Great Recipes with Foolproof Instructions. Compiled by a college guy and his mom, this cookbook grades recipes on Very Easy, Easy, and Not So Easy, and includes Mom tips and warning. Many of the recipes are vegetarian in honor of his vegetarian girlfriend.
7. The (Reluctant , Nervous, Lazy, Broke, Busy, Confused) College Student’s Cookbook. From learning how to use an oven to preparing a full-blown meal, this book is all about teaching the beginner how to cook from scratch.
8. Look, Dude, I Can Cook!; Four Years of College Cooking Made Easy. These recipes start from the basics and move up as you go through the book to more complex recipes. This book also teaches basic techniques that will provide a solid foundation for future cooking skills.
9. Betty Crocker’s Cooking Basics: Learning to Cook with Confidence. Betty Crocker is a name trusted for decades when it comes to cooking, and this book promises to continue that tradition with its simple and delicious recipes.
10. Betty Crocker Dinner Made Easy with Rotisserie Chicken: Build a Meal Tonight!. What’s easier than picking up a whole chicken that’s already cooked? This cookbook expands on that idea with recipes for easy dishes built around store-bought rotisserie chickens.
11. I Don’t Know How to Cook Book: 300 Great Recipes You Can’t Mess Up. These basic recipes rely on a blend of some prepackaged foods and some foods from scratch and promise to help any beginner learn how to cook.
12. Best 1001 Short, Easy Recipes. This cookbook is a great resource for those just starting who need lots of ideas for easy meals.

Cooking Anywhere

Whether your college kid needs to use dorm-friendly appliances to cook or has never ventured past the microwave, these cookbooks are geared to cooking anywhere and don’t necessarily require a full kitchen.

13. The College Cookbook: An Alternative to the Meal Plan. Get 200 original recipes from college campuses across America that are adaptable to any size kitchen or dorm room.
14. The Everything College Cookbook: 300 Hassle-Free Recipes for Students on the Go. Not only does this book provide meal recipes, it also has easy substitution ideas, snacks, "date-worthy" meals, cooking tips, and ways to cook using hotplates and microwaves.
15. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the College Diet Cookbook. Using simple apartment or dorm appliances, this book teaches ways to make simple and delicious meals that provide a healthy alternative to fast food.
16. The Well-Filled Microwave Cookbook. If all you have to use is a microwave and your cook wants to prepare full meals, then this is the book to purchase.
17. Easy Livin’ Microwave Cooking: A microwave instructor shares tips, secrets, & 200 easiest recipes for fast and delicious microwave meals. While this book is a bit dated, it provides many fast and easy recipes for college students with only a microwave handy.
18. Easy Microwave Desserts in a Mug. Whether your college kid only has access to a microwave or would rather make a single-serving size than a whole batch of brownies and other desserts, this book provides a delicious and easy solution to dessert.
19. The $7 a Meal Slow Cooker Cookbook: 301 Delicious, Nutritious Recipes the Whole Family Will Love!. If a crock pot is your college kid’s version of an oven, then check out this book full of inexpensive crock pot meals.
20. Microwave Gourmet. Known by some as the Bible of microwave cooking, this book not only provides delicious full-meal recipes made in the microwave, it also explains the science behind microwave cooking and which foods work best and worse in the microwave.
21. Cheap, Fast & Easy Cookbook. If all you have is a microwave, hot plate, or blender, then this book will help you learn how to make inexpensive food with your limited appliances.
22. Dorm Dining 101: Your guide to easy, cheap and low maintenance cooking for the university student. Students with access to a small kitchen will enjoy trying out these delicious recipes.

Healthy Eating

These cookbooks are all about healthy eating and offer great suggestions and recipes customized for busy people.

23. The Healthy College Cookbook. This cookbook welcomes you to the "pizza-free zone" with nutritious recipes that are easy to make. Find recipes for vegetarians and vegans along with more traditional meat eaters.
24. The Dorm Room Diet: The 8-Step Program for Creating a Healthy Lifestyle Plan That Really Works. Written by the college-aged daughter of a cardiologist, this book provides solid advice on how to shape your eating habits to avoid gaining unhealthy weight while at school. This book is not technically a cookbook, but it provides so many specific examples and tips for what to eat and what not to eat that it is serves a similar purpose.
25. Healthy, Fast and Cheap: The Ultimate College Cookbook. Find plenty of healthy recipes that are perfect for college students’ tastes and budgets.
26. Eat Me Now!: Healthy Macrobiotic Cooking for Students and Busy People. Whether your college student follows a macrobiotic diet or not, this cookbook is full of super simple, yet fresh and healthy, recipes.
27. Cook Food. This book focuses on teaching its readers to cook simple, delicious, and healthy foods that are as good for the environment as for their bodies.

Vegetarians and Vegans

Eating a vegetarian or vegan diet while away at school can be challenging, but these books help make it easier for students to stick to their chosen diet.

28. Student’s Vegetarian Cookbook: Quick, Easy, Cheap, and Tasty Vegetarian Recipes. This cookbook provides delicious meals that can be prepared fast and on a student’s budget.
29. The Starving Students’ Vegetarian Cookbook. Great vegetarian recipes made quickly and inexpensively are the focus of this awesome cookbook.
30. College Vegetarian Cooking. These recipes provide delicious meals for vegetarians who want to make food simply and easily.
31. The Vegetarian Student Cookbook. For vegetarians who are just learning to cook, this book is an invaluable resource.
32. PETA’s Vegan College Cookbook: 275 Easy, Cheap, and Delicious Recipes to Keep You Vegan at School. Whether your student lives in a dorm room or an apartment, use this cookbook to find tons of ways to to stay vegan while at school.
33. Student’s Go Vegan Cookbook: Over 135 Quick, Easy, Cheap, and Tasty Vegan Recipes. Using basic ingredients found at most grocery stores, this cookbook offers tons of vegan recipes that can be made fairly simply.
34. Vegan a Go-Go!: A Cookbook & Survival Manual for Vegans on the Road. While actually aimed at helping vegans traveling, much of this small book can be used as a resource for vegans away at school, too.
35. Kristen Suzanne’s EASY Raw Vegan Desserts. These healthy and delicious desserts require no cooking at all in the traditional sense and make an awesome complement to a health-minded college student’s cookbook collection.

Cookbooks Based on Gender

While there is no shortage of excellent men cooks, there are definitely a few men out there who could use some help. These books are geared to those men who could use a little extra help in the cooking department, and there is also one just for women who are busy and on the go, but would still appreciate good food.

36. Man, a Can, a Plan: 50 Great Guy Meals Even You Can Make!. While these recipes may not be the most healthy for home cooked food, they are easy. The humor and the types of food featured here are a hit with the men.
37. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Cooking for Guys. From nachos to pizza to easy crock pot dishes, these recipes are simple and delicious. They also feature indications for high sodium or high cholesterol recipes and offer ways to increase the dish for hungry man portion sizes.
38. Munchies. Geared to guys with limited cooking experience, this book offers a wide range of easy and delicious recipes–including a few for an impressive date night.
39. Cheap & Easy: A Cookbook for Girls on the Go. This book offers delicious and simple recipes designed for busy single women.

Cooking on the Cheap

It’s a rare college student who isn’t living on a tight budget, so these cookbooks that are all about eating good food without paying a lot of money are perfect for students.

40. 101 Things to Do with Ramen Noodles. Inexpensive, yet delicious, recipes using ramen noodles–this sounds like it’s just made for college students.
41. 5 Meals for $5 – How to Feed 5 People 5 Meals for $5.00 – $8.00 or Less!. This book is all about cooking from scratch and for more than just a single person, but if your college student already knows how to cook, has roommates, but likes to eat healthily on a budget, then this is the perfect cookbook.
42. The 99 Cent Only Stores Cookbook: Gourmet Recipes at Discount Prices. Using only ingredients found at your local dollar store, this cookbook provides delicious meals that only cost a few dollars each.
43. The Tight Budget Cookbook: Delicious and Nutritious Recipes for the Frugal Cook. Healthy and delicious, these recipes are great for students living on a budget.
44. Dining on a Dime Cook Book: 1000 Money Saving Recipes and Tips. The recipes here rely on fresh ingredients and will help your college student make delicious and nutritious food with little money. This book also includes lots of tips on ways to save money on food.
45. 100 Meals for $5 or Less. Get recipes and money-saving tips to cook delicious meals on the cheap with this cookbook.
46. The Student Cookbook: 200 Cheap And Easy Recipes for Food, Drinks And Snacks. Written by students for students, this book includes lots of inexpensive recipes for food and drinks.

More than Just a Cookbook

These books provide recipes, tips on grocery shopping, information about nutrition, and plenty of other advice just made for college students, such as laundry tips and first aid.

47. Where’s Mom Now That I Need Her?: Surviving Away from Home. While this book isn’t strictly a cookbook, it does provide a large number of simple recipes great for beginning cooks. It also includes tons of tips on nutrition, grocery shopping, laundry, first aid, and more.
48. The Smart Student’s Guide to Healthy Living: How to Survive Stress, Late Nights, and the College Cafeteria. Tucked in this awesome book full of smart strategies for healthy college living is a section devoted to healthy dorm room recipes.
49. Cookbook for College Kids. Find recipes for all the basics as well as laundry tips and more that will come in handy for college kids just starting out on their own.
50. Going Solo in the Kitchen. This book is for singles who cook for themselves. Not only is it filled with great recipes, but it is also chock full of awesome tips and strategies for shopping and cooking for one in a world set up for families.