I absolutely heart Rosie Mayes and her cookbook. I first came across Rosie on Youtube when searching Soul Food recipes. She has a great personality, and her videos have clear and easy instructions to follow. I was really happy to see that she came out with her own cookbook. I know a lot of Youtubers have come out with their own cookbooks in recent years. Her book was exactly the way I imagined it would be, great layout, beautiful photographs of delicious foods, clear recipe instructions. Would definitely recommend.

Anyone who loves soul food will be excited to pick up Rosie Mayes’ cookbook, I Heart Soul Food: 100 Southern Comfort Food Favorites . Mayes, whose personality is reflected in both the prose and recipes, is delightful, and makes the book fun to read as well as to choose what to make today and most likely every day from now on. Unless you are from the South and have been making soul food for years, there will be something new for you in this excellent cookbook. The recipes are so tempting that you will want to lock yourself in the kitchen and cook for a week or so. The recipes include classic soul food dishes, as well as some new twists.

The recipes are easy to follow, and are written in standard recipe form. Most are fairly easy, so even beginning cooks will be able to make them picture perfect. The photographs, which are of most of the dishes, are beautiful and make the recipes even more tempting. Another plus is that most of the ingredients can be easily obtained at any mainstream grocery store. The important thing is what Mayes does with those ingredients, and that’s what will make almost everyone love this book.

Anyone who wants to learn to make good, authentic soul food will definitely want to pick up this excellent cookbook. The recipes turn out how they are supposed to and are delicious. Highly recommended.


Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.

Amazing! These are the recipes that bring me back to my childhood -of a home filled with good food and love.

This is a wonderful cookbook. The recipes look so delicious. I will be testing some of these recipes out on my family.

couldnt open file so could not review. I would have loved to try out some of these recipes but like others I can not open it.

This book is filled with hearty, comforting, unpretentious, recipes that will make your mouth water! I loved the cookbook author's voice and the recipes are drool-inducing and clearly written so that even a novice cook can make these Soul Food classics. The photos are absolutely beautiful as well!

What a great cookbook! Fantastic photos and easy to follow directions. My mouth was watering just reading the recipes and I made several dishes that are going to be repeats in this household.

This is such a fun read and cook. The recipes are accessible. The food is SO good! I made the collard greens and OMG. Even my husband asked for seconds. The photography is helpful, recipes are well written, and these are things I actually want to cook.

Don't read this one while hungry! So many gems to save and try, and mouthwatering photography. Especially good for "cozy" season.

Outside of Mac and cheese, I don't have a lot of experience cooking or eating soul food. This book only has 100 recipes, but so many are ones I would enjoy again and again.

The book is full of so many delicious photos at every stage of the cooking process. The recipes are downright sinful (baked potato dip, anyone? YES!)

I look forward to adding a physical copy of this book to my collection.

Thank you Sasquatch Books and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book is great for a fan of Rosie's Youtube channel. Each recipe has a personal anecdote about how it relates to her life. The recipes themselves look amazing. If you don't know who Rosie is, it's still a great book to learn basics of comfort food. The recipes seem very easy for a regular home cook to be able to do.

I love cooking. But a book devoted to soul food?! Yes please. I loved this book and I would love to own it for my kitchen.

I Heart Soul Food might just be a religious experience. Mayes’ love for food and family really shines through in every recipe and picture! The book starts off, like most cookbooks, with a guide to stocking your pantry and to all the tools and equipment Mayes finds essential.

There were so many recipes that I cannot wait to try! Guys, you have no idea! Right off the bat, you start with sweet potato biscuits and blueberry cornbread waffles and GRITS! As a bonafide Northerner, I have no idea where my obsession with grits came from, but I love them so much! Then you go into things like crab and lobster grilled cheese, gumbo and shrimp po’boys.

Let’s face it, this one isn’t going to be for everybody. If you’re a vegetarian or vegan or if you’re into healthier foods, this book is not meant for you. However, if you are into hearty soul food, you are going to love checking out this book!

Everything in this book looks delicious, I cant wait to try out some recipes! The photographs are beautiful and the recipes are simple, clear and easy to follow.

What a wonderful cookbook! Great pictures and stories that went with the recipes! I wish my stomach was a bit tougher because the richness of these recipes while delicious would hurt my stomach. I have saved some recipes with plans to modify them for my stomach's sake but otherwise really liked this cookbook!
Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for providing me with an arc for an honest review.

Everything in this book looks so tasty and so comforting. The recipes are well set out and easy to follow and the pictures are beautiful.

I really wanted to dig into this cookbook, but unfortunately, the acsm file that I received was damaged and could not open. Will gladly come back and update my review if I'm able to obtain a working copy.

I Heart Soul Food is a tutorial style/cuisine guide with 100 comfort food recipes developed by Rosie Mayes. Due out 27th Oct 2020 from Sasquatch Books, it's 256 pages (print edition) and will be available in paperback and ebook formats.
I grew up in a southern family. Our comfort food was a blending of Irish traditional and pure southern soul food. Family reunions (usually extended/combined because our family was so small) were food-centric affairs, accompanied by lots of hugs and *massive* competition levels of comfort food. The tables would be groaning. There were always ribs, sweet potato pies, collard greens, gravy & biscuits, deviled eggs, cakes & pies galore, and so much more. Reading through this cookbook collection had me nodding my head on every page. These are the comfort foods I remember from my childhood.

The recipes are grouped thematically: breakfasts, snacks, staples soups salads & sandwiches, sides, supper, dessert, drinks. These are prefaced by a good introduction and background with a little bit of author bio. The introductory material includes a good overview over tools and staples for stocking the soul food pantry.

Each of the recipes includes an introductory description, ingredients listed in a bullet point sidebar (US measurements only, though there's a conversion chart in the back of the book), and step by step instructions (often accompanied by process photos). I would estimate roughly 20% of the recipes are accompanied by photographs. The photos provided are high quality and clear. Serving sizes and yields are included. None of the recipes include nutritional information.

The recipe ingredients themselves are easily sourced and will be available at most well stocked grocery stores. There are a very few ingredients which might be a little more difficult to source, but definitely nothing that is 'way out there'.

These are beautifully presented home-style comfort food, well developed, and lovingly made. I found so many favorites from my childhood. Five stars. This is a definitive and -usable- soul food cookbook. There's nothing pretentious here, just really good food, well made.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Learn to cook comfort food! Here Rosie Mayes shares all the secrets of southern classics like fried chicken, mashed potatoes, collard greens, and mac & cheese, plus soulful twists like Sweet Potato Biscuits and Fried Ribs. Authentic, approachable, and mouthwatering, these recipes use easy-to-find ingredients. Perfect for Sunday suppers and other celebrations as well as everyday favorites, these recipes are love on a plate.

This book made me hungry . Most of the recipes here would be easy to make by home cooks. Mayes has included good step-by-step instructions. Definitely a cookbook worth owning.

Food blogger Rosie Mayes dishes up a wonderful cookbook filled with plenty of soul food recipes. You will also find plenty of color photos illustrating her recipes too. At the start of her cookbook she tells about how she first started cooking and later moved onto to become a food blogger.

Mayes describes her food as soul food as she was born in Seattle, not the south, she uses the term soul food to describe her cooking style. She says her recipes are based on Baton Rouge cooking as that's where her family is from.

Some of the recipes you'll find in her cookbook include:

Sweet Potato Biscuits
Pan-Fried Pork Chops
Crab Salad Cups
Soul Food Collard Greens
Pull-Apart Yeast Rolls
Slow Cooker Beef Brisket
Dirty-Rice-Stuffed Cornish Game Hens
Seafood-Stuffed Peppers
Red Velvet Cake
Egg Custard Bars

Recommend.

Review written after downloading a galley from NetGalley.