Hi, I am Chef Zara. In this post, I will guide you through Guam Cookbooks.
I love discovering new food and cooking with friends and family. One of the most common questions that I often get is for cookbook recommendations. I have created this guide for friends, family, and new friends alike. I hope that you enjoy our site.
- 1. Guam Super Cookbook
- 2. A Taste of Guam
- 3. Remember Guam
- 4. Guam Super Cookbook 4th Edition
- 5. Exotic Little Island Recipes
- 6. Real Guamanian Recipes
- 7. More! Real Guamanian Recipes
- 8. Chamoru Cuisine: A Marianas Cultural Legacy
- 9. Guam Super Cookbook Dessert Edition
- 10. Guam Super Cookbook – Healthy Children’s Recipes
Western Pacific Food! 🏝️
If you’re about to experiment with Guamanian cooking, you’re probably looking for the best Guam cookbook. This way, you can create authentic dishes and spoil your taste buds in the best way. What you need to understand is that food is a significant part of Guam’s cultural economy, as people share food in a reciprocal interpersonal obligation. Those include feast day celebrations and funerals, so this food is made with love.
Aside from Spain, other countries have influenced Guam, including America, Malaysia, Portugal, and Micronesia. The result is a truly cosmopolitan cuisine in its recipes, ingredients, and preparation methods. With this in mind, don’t you want to dive head-fast into the Guam and Chamorro culture with recipes from generations ago? You can experience the richness that is this cuisine with any of the excellent Guam cookbook selections we have for you today!
This is our Top 10 Guam Cookbooks List! 👇
1. Guam Super Cookbook
Review 📖
Delivering on taste and nutritional value, Guam Super Cookbook is full of classic local recipes and other recipes that were shared by countless residents and passed down from generation to generation. If you’re looking for healthy Guam food, several institutions put together these recipes to help reduce health risks relating to diabetes.
The book’s easy-to-follow recipes give you a surreal culinary experience with key Guam ingredients. Think shrimp kelaguen with fresh coconut island, an awesome greek salad, a scrumptious black magic cake that melts in your mouth, a mouth-watering oyster and chicken served with broccoli, and a creamy eggplant in coconut milk.
About the Author ✍️
Milestone Pacific is the publisher of this and other Guam cookbooks with the serial name.
2. A Taste of Guam
Review 📖
A Taste of Guam is what happens when you combine Guamanian, American, and Chamoru cultures in what can only be called unique cosmopolitan recipes. Discover the wonders of Chamoru BBQ, Guam desserts, red rice, chicken kelaguen, finden, and other incredibly tasty dishes.
If you aren’t solely interested in Guam’s recipes, this book will quench your Guamanian thirst with Guamanian history, restaurants, and other travel-related information.
About the Author ✍️
Paula Quinene is a pastry chef who was born and raised in Guam and moved to North Carolina.
3. Remember Guam
Review 📖
If you’re homesick or you’ve never been to Guam and want to know what it’s like, Remember Guam might be what you need. You’ll get 20 all-time favorite local recipes with corresponding videos on the author’s website, paulaq.com.
However, what truly makes this book’s content special is its stories. Half of it is the recollections of Guam natives, those who have lived there a few years, WWII veterans, and more. Another unique touch is a guide to setting a Chamorro fiesta table!
About the Author ✍️
Paula Quinene is a pastry chef who wrote books to express her nostalgia for Guam after moving to North Carolina.
4. Guam Super Cookbook 4th Edition
Review 📖
The more updated version of our first pick, Guam Super Cookbook 4th Edition, has a collection of priceless recipes. The book features easy and accessible recipes from generations ago and tempting recipes shared by many residents of the island.
These dishes combine all the flavors that your taste buds will love. They were also created to reduce health risks related to diabetes.
About the Author ✍️
All Micronesia Media is the publisher of Guam Super Cookbook 4th Edition.
5. Exotic Little Island Recipes
Review 📖
Exotic Little Island Recipes: The Island of Guam features the little island’s ultimate BBQ marinade, Guam topping, Guam dipping sauce, chicken turnover, flatbread, potato salad, local lip-smacking favorite, eggplant in coconut milk and lemon, and more.
Also, do you want to support a good cause? When you buy this wonderful Guamanian cookbook, part of the sales proceeds is donated to a charitable organization.
About the Author ✍️
Mr. Randy A. Anders has written other books in this series, including Exotic Little Islands Recipes Volume 4: The Islands of Okinawa, Exotic Little Islands Recipe Book: Philippines Part 1, and Exotic Little Islands Recipes Volume 3: Philippines Part 2.
6. Real Guamanian Recipes
Review 📖
You might want to check out Real Guamanian Recipes for a collection of easy-to-follow recipes and more advanced authentic ones. Then, if you like them, you can take it a step further and get its sequel, which we’ll discuss in a second.
Former Guam island residents wanting a piece of their past will fall in love with the coconut ice cream, coconut custard pie, bananas baked in orange juice, breadfruit chowder, and chicken with fresh turmeric.
About the Author ✍️
The food critic, Dorothy Horn, moved to Guam in the 1960s and wrote a weekly column about local food.
7. More! Real Guamanian Recipes
Review 📖
With More! Real Guamanian Recipes, you can now recreate the island’s Fiesta table! The cookbook covers tempting recipes for special occasions and other authentic and almost Guamanian food. You and your loved ones can taste and relish Guam’s rice, seafood, sweet corn and chicken, dried beef, pork, taro, tamales, vegetables, desserts, and more.
Aside from the all-time favorite local recipes, you can discover many interesting facts about Guamanian food. Just imagine the exciting adventure that awaits you when you delve deeper into Guam’s culture, Fiesta, Fandango, Wake, Christening, and more.
About the Author ✍️
The food critic, Dorothy Horn, moved to Guam in the 1960s and wrote a weekly column about local food.
8. Chamoru Cuisine: A Marianas Cultural Legacy
Review 📖
The award-winning Chamoru Cuisine: A Marianas Cultural Legacy lets you discover island-inspired and authentic recipes from the Chamorro culture and the Mariana Islands, including Guam, Saipan, Rota, and Tinian. This diversity is where this book differs from other picks, rendering it a great pick for anyone interested in international cuisines and cultures.
You get 80+ pages covering Chamoru culinary art and a dozen pages highlighting its culture. That includes a brief history of the cuisine, Chamoru ingredients, and cooking-related phrases with their English translations, stories and narratives about many island residents and how they preserve their culture, photos, maps, and more.
About the Author ✍️
Gerard and Mary Aflague are the authors of Chamoru Cuisine. Originally from Guam, the couple has crafted books to carry on the family legacy of World War II survivors Lorenzo and Julia Aflague.
9. Guam Super Cookbook Dessert Edition
Review 📖
Look no further than Guam Super Cookbook Dessert Edition if you want to satisfy your sweet tooth. Enjoy all the sugary flavors of Guamanian desserts, pies, cakes, sweets, and pastries! We’re talking Chamorro cake, guyuria, latiya, rosketti, potu, banana donuts, and buñelos aga’.
The irresistible and priceless recipes come with images that’ll have you drooling all over the pages. They’re the ones Chamoru locals invite their families over to eat, so why not bring such joy to your family and friends?
About the Author ✍️
Milestone Pacific published Guam Super Cookbook Dessert Edition as part of a series of Guam cookbooks.
10. Guam Super Cookbook – Healthy Children’s Recipes
Review 📖
Guam Super Cookbook – Healthy Children’s Recipes can bring Guam to your dining table and introduce its cooking to your children who grew up away from it.
If you’re a busy parent, this book nails it with its fun, simple, healthy, and quick recipes for children. You’ll also get to spend some quality time with your little ones because the book is made so that they’d help with the preparation process.
About the Author ✍️
Milestone Pacific published Guam Super Cookbook – Healthy Children’s Recipes as part of its Guam cookbook series.
Final Thoughts
If you’re a former Guam resident, cooking cultural food is an excellent way to reconnect with your roots and introduce your culture to friends and loved ones. And a good cookbook should be your trusted guide, reminding you of these timeless recipes.
For one, there’s the Guam Super Cookbook series. You have the original Guam Super Cookbook and its fourth edition with all the staple Chamorro dishes, which are easy to make and healthy.
Then, there’s the Dessert Edition of the same series; its sugary treats will satisfy your sweet tooth and transport you to Guam. As for kids, they can connect with their roots with yummy, quick, and simple Guam recipe ideas, which you’ll find in the Healthy Children’s Recipes book.
By any chance, are you planning on visiting Guam anytime soon? A Taste of Guam will serve as your cookbook and travel guide. Remember Guam, its companion book, combines recipe instructions with touching Guam resident narratives.
But if you want a percentage of the book’s sales to go to a charitable organization, Exotic Little Island Recipes: The Island of Guam might be your pick.
We can’t forget Dorothy Horn’s books: Real Guamanian Recipes and More! Real Guamanian Recipes. They feature authentic dishes and interesting facts. Finally, you can cook recipes from not only Guam but also Saipan, Rota, and Tinian with the award-winning Chamoru Cuisine: A Marianas Cultural Legacy.
With such diverse picks, you can consider what you need in a cookbook and start your Guamanian journey!
Mariana Islands Food
Guam food seems to harness the spice factor. Using the right amount of spices is key to the taste and color of the island’s cultural food. For instance, Kelaguen is a group of spicy dishes with lemon juice marinade, hot peppers, island fresh coconut (grated), and more. It’s added to beef, chicken, seafood, shrimp, and even Spam.
We can’t forget Finadenne, an all-purpose salty, sour, and spicy sauce used as a condiment or dip. Meaning hot chili pepper in the Chamorro language, the sauce adds flavor to rice, meat, and fish. Again, it requires lemon juice and hot peppers with soy sauce as its main ingredient.
Other irresistible foods are barbecue chicken and short ribs. A Guam family is usually protective of its BBQ recipe, but you’ll get incredibly tasty dishes with the basics.
A staple of Chamorro food is rice (which can be made on an Instant Pot). This makes sense when you consider that only the Chamorros of the Marianas cultivated rice in the tropics during ancient times.
During party feasts, you’ll see red rice. The dish is reminiscent of Spanish red rice. After all, the Spanish did introduce the Mexican achiote seeds to the Chamoru people, which gave the rice its orange or red color.
Red rice is sometimes served with Kadon pika, meaning spicy stew in the Chamoru language. The dish is the perfect blend of flavors, with the tenderness of the chicken, the spiciness of hot peppers, and the creaminess of coconut milk.
The process starts a day before, giving the chicken or beef ample time to marinate. Combine that preparation method with the native tangan-tangan wood, and you’ll have this unique smoky flavor.
As you’ve noticed, Chamoru cuisine has numerous rice and meat recipes. We also love its coconut candies and baked bread.
And we can see a bit of Spain again in its dish, Latiya. Introduced to the Marianas between the 17th and 19th centuries, the vanilla custard cake is essentially a variation of natillas, and it’s the traditional way of ending a big celebration.
