Hoppin’ John’s Lowcountry Cooking (first published by Bantam in 1992), is still in print. It established John as one of the foremost regional American food writers and culinary historians. The University of North Carolina Press published the 20th Anniversary Edition in 2012. It can be accessed online at ckbk.com.

The New Southern Cook: 200 Recipes from the South’s Best Chefs and Home Cooks (Bantam, 1995) is currently out of print, but it can be found online and through booksellers such as Kitchen Arts & Letters.

The Fearless Frying Cookbook was published by Workman in 1997. A comprehensive look at all things fried, it includes 125 international recipes. Long an accomplished fryer, John includes not just southern fried chicken but dishes from fried ice cream and crab cakes to Italian sfingi and Southeast Asian spring rolls. It also includes his instructions for deep-frying a turkey, a tradition that he helped popularize.

Hoppin’ John’s Charleston, Beaufort & Savannah: Dining at Home in the Lowcountry (Clarkson Potter, 1997) is John’s “coffee table” book, with 15 menus set in the beautiful, historic homes of these lowcountry port cities. With 75 recipes. Available online at ckbk.com and through bookstores specializing in culinary and/or out-of-print books, such as Rabelais Books.

Charleston to Phnom Penh: A Cook’s Journal is an anthology of John’s work from 1987-2022, with 42 essays and 30 recipes. With a Foreword by Jessica B. Harris, author of High on the Hog. As much memoir as cookbook, the collection traverses the globe as John moves from the Lowcountry to Washington, DC, and on to Bulgaria, China, and Cambodia, stopping along the way to recall his days in the Caribbean, Paris, and Genoa, Italy, as well. The book won Third Place for Food Writing in the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2022. All the royalties from the sale of the book will go to fund the Herrington-Taylor Trust, established by John and his husband, Mikel Herrington (currently the Peace Corps Country Director of Vietnam). Upon their deaths, all their assets will be transferred to the Trust to establish the Ferrell-Olsen Scholarship which will fund immersive overseas foreign language study for motivated minority high school students. The Scholarship will be administered by the American Field Service.

For 33 years John sold heirloom, whole-grain, stone-ground grits and cornmeal, freshly ground between blue granite stones, with nothing added to nor taken away from the corn. In preparation to move overseas, he sold the business in 2019. Unfortunately, the new owner was unable to keep the business going because of COVID and personal illness. The products were ground for him by LOGAN TURNPIKE MILL. Contact them if you would like to order. If you are a former customer, tell them you want John’s label.

John currently lives in Vietnam. You can contact him via Hoppin’ John’s blog.