Church Cookbooks in Southwestern Minnesota

Authored by Chance Tunnissen in 2023. Last updated by Iris Steiner-Manning in 2024.

Growing up in Southwestern Minnesota, the values of Jesus and Tater Tot Hotdish were instilled in me from an early age. At first, it may seem like the two have little to do with each other. Food can be seen as an accessory in Christian churches and service organizations—nice to have, but not crucial to the actual message.³ After all, you can have a church service without food and there are other ways to help those in need. If the food isn’t a major concern, then the specific recipes are probably even less important. 

But when I looked through my grandmother’s kitchen shelf, I couldn’t help but notice that an overwhelming majority of her cookbooks came from church. Because many religious communities share similar cultural backgrounds, it comes as no surprise that members will often share similar tastes and recipes, but is this all just one big coincidence? Do church cookbooks just exist as a convenient way to find recipes or a method of fundraising? Does it matter that one of the best places to find a good tater-tot hotdish recipe is in a cookbook with a cross on the cover? 

Coming together to create cookbooks is not unique to Christian churches; the practice can be traced back to different ethnic and religious communities.⁴ Publishing shared recipe books is also not unique to southwestern Minnesota. But a close look at church cookbooks in this region shows that these books contain more than recipes, and help to fill out the greater picture of religion in Minnesota. Church cookbooks are a way for women to document their history in places where their stories have not been sufficiently told, and a space for small towns like Hardwick to present their history on their own terms.