Cooking as Therapy is an insightful and eye-opening read that brings a fresh perspective to the kitchen. Debra Borden beautifully shows how cooking can be more than just preparing food, it can be a powerful tool for healing, mindfulness, and connection. I found the ideas both thought-provoking and practical, with guidance that felt accessible and truly helpful for everyday life. What I loved most was how the book balances warmth and wisdom, making it feel not only nourishing for the mind but also delicious for the spirit. A wonderful reminder that the simple act of cooking can feed so much more than just our bodies.

Cooking as Therapy focuses on cooking as a means of stress relief through mindfulness, metaphor, and mastery. The book is used a creative outlet.

The Sections are
part 1: the methods behind the magic
Ch 1: scientific proof in the pudding
Ch 2: Lighting the cooking therapy fire
Ch 3: Cooking therapy: effective and efficient
Ch 4: A recipe for almost everything
Ch 5: How to use this book
part 2: cooking therapy your way
CH 6: creating calm
Ch 7: infusing confidence
Ch 8: radical self acceptance
Ch 9: surviving sadness
CH 10: the courage to change
Ch 11: how to hear and be heard
Ch 12: cooking for couples, groups, and families
Ch 13: create your own cooking therapy session

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Most of us will admit that we could use a bit of therapy for one reason or another. Debra Borden, a social worker who works in New York and New Jersey, has found a way to merge therapy sessions and cooking in her book Cooking as Therapy: How to Improve Mental Health Through Cooking. Many of us will enjoy a book that focus’ on self help and gives us a way to cook while healing.

The book includes recipes to use during each chapter of therapy sessions; many of those recipes are appealing, and all of them are fairly quick and easy. They call for ingredients that are easy to obtain and are available at mainstream grocery stores. They are written in the traditional manner with the ingredients first, followed by step-by-step instructions which include instructions to complete the instructions during the therapy session. There are no photographs of any of the dishes. The book is entirely prose.

There are also suggestions for certain foods and tasks that will help in therapy sessions, such as chopping or slicing to relieve stress. This can be helpful.

All told, anyone who loves self-help books and also loves to cook can find satisfaction from this book.

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

As a healthcare professional I was intrigued with the premise of this book. However, it was honestly quite difficult to get through. As some other reviews have mentioned, I didn't quite get what the purpose of the book was or who the target audience was. While I'm used to reading textbooks and research papers, it felt a bit like a lecturer who's trying to fill the time slot with repetitive information (that is also sometimes wrong, like the apparent FDA recommendations that, well, aren't). It felt a bit disjointed (which maybe could be fixed with another run of edits or re-formatting?). Overall, I was imagining a different book and this one was not at all for me.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

🍳 Introduction & Inspiration
The introduction sharing Deborah's journey to creating the 3M (Mindfulness, Metaphor, Mastery) curriculum for cooking therapy is very motivating and gives hope that this would actually be beneficial, helpful, and applicable. Cooking is in fact a sought-after activity to clear the mind and has proven benefits for both health and mood.

🧠 Integrating Therapy & Fun
The author exemplifies how cooking therapy incorporates different modalities like CBT, Solution-Focused Therapy, DBT, and Gestalt therapy. She also invites this space to be silly and a place for fun and smiles. I really enjoyed how much Deborah gave examples from her own experience to enhance the topics or explain them in a more practical format (though maybe that became a bit excessive at times…).

😅 Dishwasher Salmon?
The book almost lost me at the mention of "dishwasher salmon" (yeah, that’s somehow a thing… don’t ask, I don’t want to talk about it).

⚖️ Who Is This Book For?
I really needed in Chapter 5, “How to Use This Book”, a section on how therapy actually happens, and that therapy happens with an actual trained professional. It felt like this chapter was alluding to the idea that therapy can be done alone (yes, in reference to cooking therapy), and I needed there to be some disclaimers on what the book is and isn’t, and how it should be used by individuals vs. professionals.
The way I see it, this invitation to use cooking in the ways mentioned here is really more about coping tools and dealing with emotions rather than formal therapy.

It isn’t clearly stated who this book is addressed to nor its purpose. At times it felt like a research paper, at others like an end-of-training presentation, and at others like a guide for anyone who wants to use cooking to deal with internal issues.

📝 Structure & Sessions
In the second part of the book, it feels a bit disjointed. Calling them Session 1, 2, 3, etc.—are they all necessary? In that order? What about the specific needs of each person? Is this a set curriculum?

Chapter 13, “Create Your Own Cooking Therapy Session,” feels beneficial in detailing common cooking processes and what they could be a metaphor for or symbolize.
However, I feel these should be suggestions to prompt the person rather than tell them what it means. The whole point of mindfulness is to be present and aware of your own feelings in that moment, and what that act or process incites for you personally. Same goes for the ingredients!

✏️ Editing? Yes, please.
I will say that I found the book rather challenging to read and get through. Between the mixed target audience and the disjointed approach, I feel this book would benefit from a bit more editing and focus on specific targets and goals.

Thank you NetGalley and Alcove Press for the eARC.

The first 1/3 of the book is all build up to the actual ‘cooking therapy’ section of the book. Essentially the author applies components of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy when preparing and cooking food. She keeps it light while guiding the reader through the act of preparing food as a metaphor for various mental health issues.

The tone of the book was at times a little too light and some of the jokes fell flat with me. There was a reference to Lorena Bobbitt when talking about chopping, as an example. Also, when talking about avoiding hot topics at family meals, she jokes that we shouldn’t talk about our neighbor’s kid that identifies as a cat. In general, I could do away with jokes in a therapy-related book (unless they are funny), and I would have preferred a style that was slightly more academic and with less exclamation points.

Here’s a snippet from a recipe involving a sandwich recipe- “Now, as you layer your lettuce leaves, say out loud, “LET US” celebrate me! If you were able to get Little Gem lettuce then remind yourself that you are a little gem and think about gems like diamonds; none are flawless, all sparkle. If you’re using Iceberg then affirm that you are anything but a cold iceberg. If you’ve chosen Romaine lettuce, you’ve got long leaves. Each has a bit of a spine. You may have to “crack it” a bit to stay flat. Remind yourself that you are flexible and capable of adjusting as needed.”

Others may prefer a simplified style of explanation though, so I wouldn’t say avoid this book by any means. I can see how this method of “cooking therapy” may work, particularly when entering into a meditative state while preparing food. I think I picked up some tips from the book and it made me think a few times. My favorite recipe is the “Tune in and Talk to Me Tacos”, which is a good recipe to use with family members. Overall, I struggled to finish it because the style wasn’t for me. Additionally, as a vegetarian, I wasn’t inspired to make substations for the meat-heavy recipes. ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Thanks to Netgalley for the advanced release copy of this book.

Cool concept, but it didn’t really click with me. The metaphors felt a bit over the top, and the tone was more clinical than I expected, like being talked at instead of with. Recipes were okay, but nothing special. I get what it was going for, just not my style.

Thanks #NetGalley and #AlcovePress for the ARC.

I loved that this serves as both a guide and as a cookbook, but it is more clinical than I was expecting it to be. I felt like I was being talked at and not to, so everything just felt a little overwhelming.

Thank you for this ARC! I was super intrigued by the concept of Cooking as Therapy, and was deeply engaged with the concepts Borden presented. I will definitely be incorporating a lot of the mindfulness elements into how I prepare meals from now on - and will be giving this book as a gift to loved ones once it is published.

Cooking as Therapy goes beyond the concept that cooking is therapy; that cooking is calming. The recipes are metaphors that help us be intentional with our mindfulness- and not in a preachy way. I will never again split an egg without thinking about the things I need to remove in my life to make something amazing. Each recipe also supplies suggestions on how to get more out of the therapy after the dish is made.

Cooking as Therapy by Debra Borden is, I think, a useful book for helping people to learn to use cooking as the title suggests.  It seems to be for helping people with stress, and mild anxiety and depression, as people with more acute issues might find it challenging to try to use it without additional intervention.  The language can be clunky and the humor doesn't always hit, but since the book is about practical things people can do for themselves, that's not a failing.  Since Borden places all the information about the science and psychology underpinning Cooking as Therapy, it had a bit of a slow start for me.  Additionally, some of the language is a little bit much for a layperson to process (the word "modalities" popped up a couple of times, for example).
I think a major missed opportunity of the book is that Borden could've brought more mindfulness to the process.  There are assumed to be groceries in the kitchen, and many of them are pretty basic (there are very basic "recipes" that are more about how to get in the mindset of cooking as therapy: toast with spread and instant mac and cheese cups as well as more elaborate dishes like saltimbocca).  How did the groceries get there?  Could there be opportunities to practice mindfulness in terms of both acquiring the groceries (the mastery of going to the grocery store or the asking-for-help "modality" of having them delivered) and the vast supply chain that starts on a farm or in a factory and ends up in the kitchen.
Overall, I think this is a helpful book and I think a lot of the wrinkles I experienced will probably be ironed out as it's prepared for final publication.

Follow twenty recipes to find calm, improve self-esteem, and form daily habits—in your very own kitchen!—through mindfulness-based cooking therapy.

The idea behind this book is terrific. I’ve had an interest in experiential therapy since my days as a wee Psych major *mumbledy-cough* years ago. And cooking, as both a creative outlet and a generative activity, couldn’t be a more perfect fit. In the first part of the book, where Borden describes her modality, I couldn’t be more on board. The client stories, which were my favorite part, enliven what could have been dry and academic, giving the early stages of the book life and dimension.

Unfortunately I found part two—the meat of the book, if you will—extremely repetitive. Borden literally repeats the same pieces of advice and things to keep in mind in the beginning and end of most chapters. Is she trying to fill up space? Is she assuming no one will bother reading this book beginning to end?

More unfortunately yet, it soon became clear to me that this book never received even the most basic edit or fact check.

Let’s play a little game. See if you can spot everything wrong with the following sentence:

“If using hard-boiled eggs, each person should hold the egg up (like Mustafa in the Lion King)..."

Take your time. Continue when you’re ready.

1. ‘Mustafa?’ Try ‘Mufasa.’ You know, lion dad? Source of acute trauma and grief for children watching Disney films in the 1990s? The dude whose name was the title of the live action prequel (however much of a mess <i>that</i> was?)
2. Mufasa wasn’t the one holding up the lion cub in the iconic shot. That was Rafiki. Because Rafiki is bipedal, with legs and arms and stuff.
3. I am now forced to imagine a group of therapy clients attempting to hold eggs in their mouths. Which is how a lion would have to hold anything.
4. To be extremely petty, ‘The’ should be capitalized.
5. But really, what I’m saying here is, the errors confuse the reader and render the metaphor Borden is trying to create nonsensical.

This was the funniest error I found. It was far from the worst. Yes, folks, we’re going to talk about the infamous Chicken Washing Passage. Long story short: DO NOT wash raw chicken. It spreads contamination. The FDA very explicitly recommends you do not wash raw chicken. But wait, you say. Didn’t Borden state that the FDA recommended you <i>do</i>?

Yes. She certainly said that. Go ahead and google the actual verdict. I’ll wait.

PS: Borden also advises you wash raw fish. The FDA would likewise beg to differ.

There was also a <i>whack</i> of typos, misspellings, and grammatical errors.

But Lily, you say. Borden’s specialty is psychology, not pop culture or food safety. (Though given that she styles herself the Sous Therapist and this book is about combining <i>cooking</I> with therapy, one might argue she should make herself more of an expert on food safety. Her professional liability insurance would thank her.

My real point, however, is that <i>Cooking as Therapy</i> is an instructive non-fiction book. A category which <i>banks</i> on the professionalism and expertise of the author. What we see here instead is Borden’s unshakeable confidence in her knowledge, to the point of presenting blatantly erroneous information to her audience. It calls everything she presents into question, including her own field of study. Now, for what it’s worth, I’ve found no blatant Bad Psych here, though I freely admit my own research in this department is over a decade out of date. The damage is done nonetheless and my trust in Borden’s writing is shot.

I’m not going to spend too much time on the recipes themselves. They are as butt-basic as they come, but it’s their job to serve as metaphors rather than be gourmet. I imagine it would be pretty difficult to mess up most of them. Though I will also say: microwaving chocolate is a great way to get your chocolate to seize. Nothing you can’t fix by adding a tiny bit of water and whisking vigorously. Actually, this would have been a perfect illustration of Borden’s own idea that cooking mistakes are a great opportunity for lateral thinking and breaking out of ruts. Shame she didn’t use it.

Speaking further of metaphors, I wish that Borden spent a little time discussing that not all metaphors are universal and not all associations will hit the same for all clients. To use an example that didn’t work for me at all: in one of her recipes, Borden asks you to think of the salt being added as the imperfections in your life. As anyone into cooking (you know, one half of Borden’s ideal readership) might tell you, salt isn’t an imperfection. It’s the difference between a flavorful dish and hospital chow. Are there some metaphors so culturally ingrained the associations will be more or less the same for everyone, or at least everyone from a similar culture? Sure. But just as many won’t hit and the aspiring therapist <i>will</i> need to pivot.

When I finished part one of this book, I assumed I would be giving it four stars. This was before I read any other reviews, so the downward turn in quality took me by surprise. If I was Alcove Press, I would hold back release by however long to takes to give this book one more copy edit and for the love of god, a fact check.

Someone please make me the editor in chief of a publishing house, so I can <strike>go mad with power</strike> make executive decisions which keep books from going out in public with no pants on.

In the meantime, I’ll exercise what little power I do have by rating this two stars and hitting ‘post.’

Thank you to NetGalley and Alcove Press for the free ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions within are my own.

This book is not what I was expecting. I was thinking it would be more of a cookbook with recipes than a self-help book but again this is on me for not reading carefully. While it wasn’t what I was expecting I really enjoyed the ideas and concepts it covered. I have often used cooking as its own mini therapy—when life is feeling out of control I always find some sort of peace with a productive task like cooking. This book really breaks down the entire process making it more mindful and meaningful which are definitely practices I can see myself carrying on with especially now that it seems everyday is just bringing about more scary news and less feeling of control. The kitchen is always somewhere I can return for some control and peace and these strategies will make that even more true.

Cooking therapy was a new concept to me. I have tried quite a few different type of therapies but hadn’t tried or heard of cooking therapy before.
Overall the book was enjoyable and gave me some practices to try. I did practice one recipe before rating. I did find the intro a little long before it really dove in.

This is a nice book that helps go into details how doing something hands on, cooking, can be used as a therapy. It has some recipes and explains the therapy. Cooking therapy is a new idea to me but it totally makes sense so I thought this was an interesting read. I personally enjoy cooking and baking and can see how they could be therapeutic. I enjoyed reading the book and seeing some of the science and her ideas behind this type of therapy. My only gripe about the book was that I wished she had added some images into it.

Cooking as Therapy by Debra Borden is marketed as a self-help book focusing on practical steps of cooking with therapeutic techniques focusing on mindfulness, emotional insight, and healing.

As a therapist and home chef this book instantly intrigued me. Borden briefly discusses aspects of evidence-based therapy modalities (DBT, CBT, etc.) that she incorporated into her model of cooking therapy. While there are benefits to experiential (hands on) therapeutic techniques, I wouldn’t necessarily run to claim this as evidence-based. HOWEVER, with that being said, I think this book could be helpful for those who are interested in learning about this. The book includes “sessions,” each pairing 3 recipes with reflective prompts and insights to promote self-awareness, confidence, and healthy routine building.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and author for granting me a complimentary advanced reader copy of the ebook. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own and based off of this draft; the final publication may be different. Expected publication date is October 14, 2025

Sadly, not my cup of tea. I was imagining a whole different book.
It's way too repetitive and the whole philosophy could be summed up in about 50 or so pages.
Also, the whole thing about finding metaphors while cooking is something I don't really jibe with (e.g. noticing how hard raw pasta is and how it'll soften with cooking and how you should soften too; how the sound of cereal shaking inside the box is actually an applause to you; as the oven gets warm you think about speaking more warmly to yourself). It's not something I see myself doing.
The recipes aren't that showstopping either, but I'm guessing the whole point is in the approach, rather than in the recipe itself.

If you asked me to rate the concept of cooking therapy, I'd easily give it 5 stars. I tried out a few of the recipes in this book, and the food came out great, and the mindfulness and positive self-talk and reflection were meaningful and reflective.

However, I've been asked to rate this book as a whole. And I have some words. Primarily, I want to know who thought it was a good idea for the first third of the book to pretty much just be "Try cooking therapy; it's a good idea!" I mean, I'm already reading the book. Who is this for? On my eReader, this book has 430 pages, and 161 of those (30%) were just introduction. You know when you read an academic paper and the first few pages are the abstract? I felt like I was reading an abstract—except it was literally hours of my life. It was repetitive, read like a sales pitch, and occasionally added references to other psychologists whose work supports the message of "try cooking therapy!" as if that weren't what I was already trying to do. Was there a "If you're not a therapist, don't worry about this section and just go to part 2" that I missed?
As I mentioned, these recipes are not beginner-proof. Things like the size of the pan (the brownie recipe) or ideas for substitutions (vegan and vegetarian options were promised in the lengthy introduction somewhere) are simply omitted. The author repeatedly reminds us that even if the recipe doesn't turn out perfect, it's still tasty. However, if I use a sheet pan instead of an 8x8 and my brownies come out as blackened bricks, well, let's just say that won't do great things for my mental health.

Overall, I was delighted to find a new therapy method that is both fun and healing (not to mention includes lunch). But I found the first five chapters perilously tedious, and I think the recipes should have been more thoroughly play-tested by complete newbs before being released into the world.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC. All opinions are my own.

I went into this thinking it would be good for my husband. However this book really dives into the theory of cooking and how to use it to help your mental wellbeing. That being said I felt like it wasn't for me, but I can see there is a definite need for this book out in the world.