If you've partaken before, you'll know that a traditional book club involves drinking copious amounts of wine (usually), eating a variety of mismatched and underwhelming potluck style dishes, discussing the most recent episode of The Bachelorette, and sharing feelings of guilt over the book you were supposed to read.

OK, there’s a little more to it than that, but why not provide a little more incentive to actually read a book, step up your potluck game, add focus or theme to the food, try recipes out of your comfort zone, and possibly become a better overall cook? Seems to me like it's time to try out a cookbook club with your friends.

The objective of a cookbook club is pretty straightforward: get a group of book-loving, like-minded food aficionados together, choose a cookbook, divide up the recipes in said book among the group, then get together again to share the delicious results. Oh, and still drink wine; there should always be plenty of wine too.

Here’s how a cookbook club works

Like with a book club, members meet to discuss a specific book, in this case, a cookbook. All of the prepared food comes from the cookbook being discussed. Each member should bring one dish. The bonus? You don’t even have to read a whole book - just your own recipe, which, at most, might be one to three pages. You can skim through the other recipes if you’re feeling ambitious.

A huge advantage of this compared to the traditional format is that the host is off the hook from providing the bulk of the food and drink, and therefore, all the backbreaking work (and stress); but be sure to alternate hosting duty. Although everyone is contributing by bringing a dish, the host is on pre-cleaning and post-cleaning duty. No one should be in charge of that every time.

Obviously, choose a frequency that works best for everyone. Once a month sounds like a no-brainer, but when you’re drowning in life, those four weeks and change sneak up on you pretty quickly. Once every two months gives you plenty of time to trial the recipe if desired, buy hard-to-get ingredients, and stay on top of life, or at least, stay afloat. 

My favourite aspect is the minimal effort for huge reward. You spend an hour or two making one dish and get to taste a plethora of interesting plates that you might never have tried.

Hopefully, in a large group with varying levels of cooking skill and passion, you can find someone willing to take on the more technical, complicated recipes if you’re not inclined to volunteer yourself.  

Draw new cookbooks out of a hat to avoid the natural human reaction to make excuses as to why you don’t want a particular book. Stick to the first one picked and challenge yourself.

Ultimately, the cookbook club gives you the opportunity to go in a culinary direction you might never have gone, work with unfamiliar ingredients, and visit unique ethnic grocery stores you may have never considered frequenting in the past. Oh, and you’ll have heaps of fun doing it. By being somewhat “forced” into a recipe, you might have previously skipped over, you never know what gems will become your new go-tos.

Bon Appétit!

Here are some great Canadian suggestions to add to the hat: