Top 5 Guide: Colorado Cookbooks (and Recipes!)

Hello. I’m Vicky Collins, and I am the publisher of Bucket List Community News. I have spent the majority of my career in television news and production and started as a line producer at local stations around the country. I created newscasts and programs from beginning to end, managed teams and got the shows on the air from the control room. 

I produced shows in all time periods, but the best ones in terms of perks were the morning and noon shows. The hours were difficult– you had to be up overnight or get up before dawn to produce midday shows, but everyone sent you cookbooks. Because of this, I ended up with a great collection which led me to be creative in the kitchen. 

My partner is frequently amazed at what I can make with ingredients on hand. For my guide, I have decided to share my kitchen secrets with you. I have included the best Colorado cookbooks I could find, as well as a few of my favorite recipes.  

Colorado Junior League Cookbooks 

In my humble opinion, the cream of Colorado cookbooks—in fact, the cream of state cookbooks across the country—are those created by the Junior League. Colorado has produced six of them and I have them all. The first one in 1987 was “Colorado Cache” and it was spiral-bound! The next book, “Creme de Colorado,” was hardback and in the mid-1990s they started having beautiful color pictures of seasonal food and Colorado scenery.  

The latest cookbook, “Centennial Celebrations,” is a marvel of recipes that reflect the diversity of our population and food. I could definitely see planning a cocktail party with their appetizers and beverages or bringing a side dish from their vegetarian and sides sections to someone’s home.  

The cookbook also has recipes sponsored by various organizations, like the Colorado Lamb Association for its shepherd’s pie or the Irish Nachos from the National Onion Association. In addition, there are entertainment tips, Denver highlights, stories about how the Junior League serves the community and bits of trivia like the fact that Colorado Congresswoman Pat Schroeder entered a chili made from a recipe in the “Creme de Colorado” cookbook in the Congressional Club’s annual chili cookoff and won!              

“Shalom on the Range” by the Friends of Shalom Park

In 1997, the Friends of Shalom Park, a Jewish-skilled nursing facility, put out a cookbook called “Shalom on the Range,” which is a treasure of kosher Jewish cooking. It does a deep dive into memorable food for Shabbat meals and has suggested menus for Jewish holidays like Rosh Hashanah, Passover and breaking the fast after Yom Kippur services. 

It has traditional foods like chopped liver, gefilte fish, brisket, kugel and something called herring surprise. I use this cookbook when I make potato latkes, although you need to remember to drain all the water out or they will fall apart. The cookbook also includes much more contemporary recipes for everyday meals, such as soups and salads, brunch recipes, bread, buffalo chili, traditional stuffed cabbage, tons of chicken and fish recipes and even a vegetarian section. 

This book is so thorough that it even includes an A-to-Z of desserts ranging from Telluride apple pie to Rocky Mountain Chocolate Zucchini cake, along with more traditional desserts like Hamentashen for Purim and Rugelach for Hanukkah. It really is a feast of Jewish heritage with recipes passed down through generations updated for busy, health-conscious Coloradans.    

“Black Smoke” by Adrian Miller

When Adrian Miller’s “Black Smoke” cookbook came out, we featured its release in our 5 Questions segment on Bucket List Community News. Besides having 22 barbeque recipes, he spoke to us about how barbecue historically was used to bring people together because they’d cook a whole animal and it took a lot of people to eat all that. He also spoke about the origins of Black barbecue to us and why he’s an evangelist for it.  

“I want people to know that colonizing whites and enslaved African Americans created southern barbecue by building on the foundation laid by Native American meat cooking techniques. Because barbecue was so labor-intensive, enslaved African Americans became barbecue’s go-to cooks,” Miller said. “After Emancipation, free African American cooks became barbecue’s most effective ambassadors. One can’t earnestly talk about American barbecue without recognizing African American contributions to this food that is beloved around the world.”

Miller wants to bring back lamb and bison barbecue, and his favorite sauce is Gates Barbecue Sauce from the Black-owned chain of restaurants in Kansas City, Missouri. Here’s his recipe for Old Arthur’s Pork Belly Burnt Ends. Just typing this makes my mouth water.   

Community Cookbooks

Back in the day, churches, schools and other organizations put out cookbooks. When my son was in elementary school at the Challenge School in 2006, the PTO did one as a fundraiser.  Parents were invited to contribute, and as a Hawaii native, I included my recipes for Portuguese bean soup, Macadamia Nut Cheesecake, and also Christmas chicken tamales (not Hawaiian) which we cooked during the holidays for friends and neighbors. 

Looking around at used bookstores, you can sometimes come up with these treasures. Did you know RE/MAX used to have cookbooks? I found one from 1974 at Capitol Hill Books. Carol Jackson of Englewood contributed crunchy Chinese chicken salad; Judy Jones of Fort Collins had a mud pie; and Marilyn Gierke offered her Zippy Beef Casserole, which had a cup of potato chips in it.

Another fundraising cookbook was the “Colorado Cooks for Education” cookbook from 1994, which benefited schools. The cookbook was peppered with children’s drawings and featured celebrity recipes. Oprah offered up her “classic” potato recipe, which included horseradish.  Arnold Palmer shared his take on brown sugar-coated bacon and Governor Roy Romer shared his recipe for apple pie. 

The Cookery and Foodways Collection at the University of Denver Library houses a special collection of vintage cookbooks similar to these. I found a Colorado Rockies cookbook from 1998, which was a benefit to raise money for the American Cancer Society. Manager Don Baylor and his family contributed recipes for fried catfish and seafood okra gumbo and outfielder Dante Bichette offered up his Pop’s pasta sauce and meatballs for a Mother’s Day lunch. Back then, it cost $11. 

Bonus: If you go to DU check out the special collection, ask them to pull out the cookbooks they have dating back to the 17th century. They’re not from Colorado but one is handwritten with recipes for pickled pigeon and calve head hash. Another from 1695 features recipes for syllabub (a whipped cream dessert) and eels.

 I liked the one by Susannah Carter from 1802 with recipes for every month of the year called “The Frugal Housewife or Complete Woman Cookbook,” including how to truss a rabbit. A cookbook from 1741 has ingredients you can use for various ailments like apoplexy, colic and dropsy. You can spend days going through 12,000 cookbooks in the collection. Appointments are recommended.                  

“Hello Neighbor” by KOA

When I was a noon show producer at KAKE TV in Wichita, we decided to create a cookbook for a ratings period. Back then, we referred to ratings as sweeps. Our show was called “Kaleidoscope,” so we created the “Kaleidoscope Cookbook” with recipes sent in by our viewers. There were recipes like Chicken What, Deviled Pineapple Dip, called that because it had deviled ham in it, and a dessert called Cherry Something.  

Back in the 1960s, KOA published a cookbook called “Hello Neighbor,” which was based on a radio show hosted by Merrie Lynn, KOA’s Women’s Director. These were so popular that they even had “Hello Neighbor” clubs. Kathy Walker, the news director, hung onto a few and loaned us one from 1966 sponsored by housewife’s friend, Scott’s Liquid Gold.  

The casserole section piqued my interest, and with Campbell’s Soup as a radio show sponsor, you can expect to see a lot of cream of mushroom soup and cream of chicken soup in the recipes. I’ll pass on the chipped beef, liver casseroles and a recipe called Woodchuck, but the recipe book is so nostalgic you’ll feel like you’re in grandma’s kitchen eating her home-cooked meals. 

The “Food for Thought” section at the end contains poetry, and Merrie says in the forward, “A favorite recipe is a lasting friendship.” There are not many around Denver anymore, but I did find some on Amazon, eBay and Etsy.  

I have cookbooks all over the place, including on the bookshelf, in the kitchen, and on a decorative stand where I keep the “Taste of Aloha” and other cookbooks from Hawaii. Nowadays, it is simple to look up recipes on the internet or even use artificial intelligence to get dish recommendations based on the ingredients in your fridge. 

But, from where I sit in my kitchen, there is nothing like holding and reading a physical cookbook to inspire your meals. Cookbooks make excellent gifts, and new ones are released every year. If you want some dependable Colorado cookbooks with delicious recipes, dig into the ones listed above and cook to your heart’s content.