Kowbird: Amazing Chicken Recipes from Chef Matt Horn's Restaurant and Home Kitchen

In Kowbird, Michelin and James Beard–honored chef Matt Horn reveals the secrets to the amazing chicken dishes he cooks at the restaurant—and for his family at home.

If you are like most people, you eat a lot of chicken. But chances are you haven’t had chicken like Matt Horn’s chicken. Now you can! Learn how to make the best chicken on the planet, from a true master of the art, in this fun and inspiring book.

Celebrated chef Matt Horn spent years perfecting his chicken recipes before he opened his widely acclaimed mecca for chicken cookery, Kowbird, in Oakland, California. Even to this day, he continues to experiment with different cuts of chicken, with a host of sauces and spice mixtures that bring out the best flavors in chicken, and with all sorts of cooking techniques that make this popular food explode with flavor on the palate. In the richly photographed pages of Kowbird, he shares his hard-won wisdom and his brilliantly creative culinary wizardry, elevating the humble bird to its rightful place at the center of the plate—and as the star of the meal.

Matt gives you 65 recipes packed with flavor and creativity for everything from comforting weekday dinners to spectacular weekend feasts. It’s time to set aside the tired old chicken spaghetti, chicken parmesan, and unadorned chicken cutlets and dig into:

  Zingy Chile-Crisp-Rubbed Grilled Chicken Breasts Chicken-Fried Chicken, Matt’s signature Southern-inflected riff on chicken-fried steak California Wings, which you dip in a zesty mash of garlic, avocado, onion, and lemon Matt’s best-in-class version of Nashville Hot Chicken And much more deliciousness

With recipes for grilling, smoking, sautéing, brazing, baking, broiling, pan-frying, deep-frying, and more, this is a book that takes chicken to delectable places you’ve never dreamed of before.

About the Author

Matt Horn is the chef and creative force behind Horn Hospitality, whose first two restaurants were Horn Barbecue and chicken-centered Kowbird in Oakland, California, expanding thereafter to include a second outpost of Horn Barbecue in Napa, California, Matty’s Burgers in downtown San Francisco, and a second outpost of Kowbird in Las Vegas. He was honored in 2021 as one of Food & Wine magazine’s ten “Best New Chefs in America.” In addition, Horn Barbecue earned the Michelin “Bib Gourmand” and “New Discovery” designations in 2021 and was renewed as a Bib Gourmand for 2022 and 2023. It also was named to Esquire’s 2021 list of the “Best New Restaurants in America.” Matt has earned hundreds of accolades from the New York Times, Sunset magazine, Forbes, the San Francisco Chronicle, and other outlets. His first book, Horn Barbecue, is a finalist for an International Association of Culinary Professional (IACP) Cookbook Award. Matt’s charitable arm, the Horn Initiative, has provided thousands of free meals to needy people in and around Oakland. He lives with his wife, daughter, and son in the San Francisco Bay area.