Bittman is a journalist, food writer, and author of 30 books, including the bestselling
How to Cook Everything, and a number of other books in the same series (How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, How to Cook Everything - The Basics, etc.) and the NYT bestseller
VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00. He has been the recipient of numerous
International Association of Culinary Professionals,
Julia Child, and
James Beard awards for his writing. Bittman was an Opinion columnist for
The New York Times, a food columnist for the paper's Dining section, and the lead food writer for
The New York Times Magazine. His column, "The Minimalist," ran in
The New York Times for more than 13 years; the final column was published on January 26, 2011. He also hosted a weekly "Minimalist" cooking video on the
New York Times website. Bittman is a regular guest on
NBC's
The Today Show and the
NPR shows
All Things Considered and ''
Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. He appeared as a guest judge on the Food Network competition series Chopped and was featured alongside Gwyneth Paltrow and Mario Batali in a PBS series called Spain... on the Road Again in 2008. In 2014, Bittman appeared as a correspondent for the climate change documentary show Years of Living Dangerously''. In 2015, Bittman announced he would be leaving the
New York Times to join
Purple Carrot (which subsequently received press for its partnership with
Tom Brady) as its chief innovation officer. Bittman spent less than a year with Purple Carrot. In 2019, Bittman started a food magazine with
Medium.
Books Bittman has written and co-written 16 books and cookbooks. Bittman's most recent cookbook,
How to Cook Everything Fast, was released October 7, 2014. In 2005 he published the books
The Best Recipes in the World and ''Bittman Takes on America's Chefs
, and hosted the Public Television series Bittman Takes on America's Chefs'', which won the
James Beard Award for best cooking series. In 2009 he published the book
Food Matters, which covers food-related topics such as environmental challenges, lifestyle diseases, overproduction and over-consumption of meat and simple carbohydrates. He also began the TV series
Kitchen Express. Bittman has written the books
The Minimalist Cooks at Home,
The Minimalist Cooks Dinner and
The Minimalist Entertains. In 2010 Bittman created
The Food Matters Cookbook, an expansion of the principles and recipes in his prior book. In 2021, he published
Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal, in which he argues that
free market capitalism and
corporate farming contribute to the major public health and environmental issues in modern agriculture.
VB6 Bittman has authored
VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00 (2013) and
The VB6 Cookbook (2014), where he recommends a
flexitarian diet. The idea behind VB6 is to eat
vegan food before 6pm and any food afterwards while limiting processed foods. It was nominated for a James Beard Award (Focus on Health) in 2014. == Personal life ==