About

About A Couple Cooks

Welcome to A Couple Cooks, an award-winning food blog and one of the most popular recipe websites online! We’re Sonja and Alex Overhiser, a married team of cookbook authors and recipe developers. We love eating our veggies and creating craft cocktails at home, making simple baked goods, and whipping up seasonal dinners to enjoy with family and friends.

Whatever we’re making, we love cooking with and for people we love. This website offers thousands of original recipes, cooking tips, and meal planning ideas to make home cooking easy: all written and photographed by us.

We started acouplecooks.com in 2010 inspired by our shift from eating processed foods to cooking foods at home from scratch. The website quickly become a trusted source for recipes and eventually a full-time career for us both. Our recipes have been featured in numerous publications, including The Washington Post, The TODAY Show, and more. A Couple Cooks was named Best Food Blog in 2019 by the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP).

Together we’re authors of two cookbooks: 

Our expertise lies in Mediterranean diet recipes including vegetarian, vegan, seafood, and chicken recipes, special diets like gluten-free and plant-based, and we’re certified mixologists who are experts in both cocktails and coffee drinks.

Email Guides

Our email guides are a great place to start and learn more about the recipes we offer! Here are our recipe guides:

About our recipes

The recipes you’ll find here at A Couple Cooks maximize flavor while minimizing effort. Each recipe we share has been meticulously tested in our kitchen to make sure you can reliably recreate it in yours. Whether you’re a beginner or seasoned home cook, we’ve got something for you! On this website, you’ll find recipes to fit all kinds of eaters and occasions:

New to A Couple Cooks? Start here.

About Sonja & Alex

Alex and Sonja Overhiser are the writer and photographer behind the award-winning food blog A Couple Cooks, and authors of the cookbooks Pretty Simple Cooking (2018) and A Couple Cooks: 100 Recipes to Cook Together (September 2024). The couple has a worldwide following for their recipes, which range from healthy dinners to drinks. They are freelance contributors to The Washington Post, most notably the newsletter series Voraciously: Plant Powered on how to cook plant based and vegetarian meals. The pair are also cocktail experts, with over 300 cocktail recipes and a mixology certification (from A Bar Above).

IACP Award Winning Food Blog

A Couple Cooks was awarded the IACP Best Individual Blog award in 2019 by the International Association of Culinary Professionals, a professional association co-founded by Julia Child. Their original recipes are inspired by seasonal produce and adventures travelling the globe: expect everything from cauliflower tacos to margherita pizza.

Shortly after getting married, Sonja and Alex changed from eating fast and frozen food to cooking a from-scratch, mostly plant based diet. The positive changes they experienced prompted them to start A Couple Cooks in 2010. Today it receives millions of visitors every month and connects people all over the world to their healthy plant forward recipes. 

A Couple Cooks has been featured on the TODAY Show, and numerous national publications including Washington Post, Huffington Post, Oprah, Epicurious, and Bon Appetit. The couple works as influencers, recipe developers, food photographers, and on-screen video hosts for major national brands, and contributes to publications such as EatingWell and Parents. They hosted and produced the food podcast Small Bites featuring short-form interviews with leaders in food.

Sonja and Alex are advocates for healthy and sustainable eating to improve our health, communities, and planet. Their interests include plant based eating, sustainability, public health, and food justice.

Sonja and Alex live in Indianapolis, Indiana with their children, Larson (7) and Britta (1). Together, they seek to inspire cooking to make the world a better place one bite at a time.

Sonja is co-founder of the Food + Wellness Equity Collective, a group of food and wellness professionals committed to being change agents for equity, diversity and anti-racism. Sonja is also co-founder of the organization Indy Women in Food, an organization that champions women in the Indianapolis food industry with a focus on racial and gender equity and food justice, and has been featured as a trailblazing woman in food. 

Publicity & press

A Couple Cooks has garnered a worldwide following and has been featured in countless national publications.

Brand work

Sonja and Alex have worked with over 50 national brands to create content including recipe development, food photography, videos, blog and social media promotion, and more.

Current and past clients include ALDI, Fresh Thyme, Stonyfield, Kroger, Meijer, Bob’s Red Mill, DeLallo, Home Depot, Lundberg, Seeds of Change, POM Wonderful, Ozo Foods, Penguin Dry ice, Earthbound Farm Organic, National Mango Board, Northwest Cherries, Hellman’s, Tillamook, Dole, Shipt, Newman’s Own, Alessi, American Pecan Council, Oregon Fruit Products, California Olive Ranch, Village Farms, Muir Glen Organic, Simply Organic, One Degree Organics, Cherry Marketing Institute, Robert Mondavi, Roxbury Mountain Maple, Bolthouse Farms, Califia, Wisconsin Cheese, illy, Kettle Chips, North Carolina Sweet Potatoes, Haas Avocado Board, Hurst Beans, AncestryDNA, Simon, State Farm, Owlet, Scott’s Nature’s Care, Creo, GreenPan, Sub-Zero and Wolf, KitchenAid and Vitamix. 

Want to work with us? Click here.

Equity and anti-racism

As an online publication, A Couple Cooks supports the eradication of racism in all forms in the food and wellness industry. We commit to personal exploration and examination of implicit bias, cultural appropriation, and systemic oppression in food media and the work that we do. We commit to advocacy around dismantling system racism and ethnic oppression in our communities, both online and local.

A portion of our proceeds are dedicated to racial equity-based projects such as Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), CICF Equity Partners Fund, and more. We are actively involved in Food & Wellness Equity Collective, a group of food and wellness professionals committed to being change agents for equity, diversity and anti-racism. For food content with equity or anti-racism themes, see our Instagram.

Our authority

The A Couple Cooks website is a trusted source for recipes. Here is the advantage we bring:

  • Our recipes are developed by experts. Sonja and Alex are professional recipe developers with over a decade of experience in food writing and over 15 years in the technical writing industry. This experience has given us a strong foundation in clear and concise communication and user experience, which is evident in our recipes and cookbooks.
  • Our recipes are well-tested and reliable. We test our recipes multiple times before publishing them, to make sure that they work perfectly. We provide detailed instructions and tips to help readers achieve the best results.
  • Our recipes are trusted by readers and industry professionals alike. Our website is a popular resource for both home cooks and professional chefs, and was awarded “Best Individual Blog” from the professional culinary organization IACP. Our recipes have been featured in major publications such as The Washington Post and The TODAY Show. We have also worked with major brands to create recipes such as ALDI, Fresh Thyme, Meijer, Kroger, Bob’s Red Mill, Stonyfield, and more.

Editorial policy

Every recipe is born in our kitchen, written by Sonja and Alex Overhiser, and meticulously tested. We believe in transparency and using no AI shortcuts, just real food, real stories, and real joy. ‍️Here is an overview of our editorial policy, or read the entire Editorial Policy here:

  • Every recipe on A Couple Cooks is original, created and tested by us in our own kitchen. We do not copy recipes from other sources. Instead, we use our culinary expertise to craft each dish to make sure it is unique.
  • None of the recipes or recipe photos on A Couple Cooks are generated by AI (artificial intelligence). Every recipe is written by Sonja and Alex Overhiser, unless it is a cookbook feature used by permission from the recipe author (noted in the recipe).
  • Transparency is key. We clearly identify any inspiration or adaptations used, and always give credit where it’s due.
  • Our food photographs are all taken by Alex Overhiser in collaboration with the art direction of Sonja Overhiser. We take photos of the finished dish in all cases, with no food styling tricks, photoshopping, or AI intervention.

For more, see this Editorial Policy.

What we offer

Whether you’re new to home cooking or a seasoned chef, A Couple Cooks has something for everyone. We offer a wide variety of recipes, from easy weeknight meals to homemade pizzas to cocktails. We also have a variety of articles on cooking tips, kitchen substitutions, knife skills, meal plans, the Mediterranean diet, plant-based eating, and more.

We hope you will join us on our journey to make healthy eating easy and enjoyable for everyone. Sign up for our newsletter to receive new recipes and articles delivered straight to your inbox.

What readers love

What makes A Couple Cooks stand out to readers is our focus on simple, healthy, and flavorful recipes. Our recipes are also well-written and easy to follow, with beautiful photos and helpful tips and tricks. Specifically, our readers have provided feedback that they love that:

  • The recipes are easy to make. We understand that people are busy, so we focus on creating recipes that can be made in a reasonable amount of time, even with minimal cooking experience.
  • The recipes are made whole food ingredients (except when they’re not!). Whenever possible, we use whole, unprocessed ingredients focus on creating recipes that are balanced and nutritious. At the same time, we don’t focus on the word healthy, which is subjective and often used in diet culture to promote mindsets based on guilt and shame. Instead, we believe in balance in everything and there’s always room for a treat.
  • The recipes are flavorful. We are constantly experimenting with new flavors and ingredients to create recipes that are both unique and delicious. We believe food should be well-seasoned, and use a variety of spices and herbs to add flavor to our dishes.
  • The recipes are well-written and easy to follow. We take care to explain each step of our recipes in detail. We also include helpful tips and tricks to make the cooking process easier and more enjoyable. We write everything with our reader in mind and pride ourselves in user-friendly instructions.
  • The photos are beautiful—and realistic. Alex’s food photographs make each recipe look visually appealing. Bu at the same time, we don’t doctor our photos to represent something that is over-idealized. We make everything in our home kitchen and the photograph represents the real end product!

Readers have also told us they also appreciate the warm and inviting tone of A Couple Cooks. We are passionate about food and cooking, and we hope our enthusiasm is contagious! We make an effort to connect with their readers on a personal level, and they often share stories about our own lives in our blog posts, on Instagram, and in our newsletter.

More about Sonja

Sonja Overhiser

Sonja’s career can be summed up as a lively marriage of her two favorite things: food
and people. She runs the award-winning recipe website A Couple Cooks with her
husband, Alex. She’s author of the acclaimed cookbook Pretty Simple Cooking and the
popular Washington Post series Voraciously Plant-Powered. Her expertise in healthy
plant-forward cooking has landed her on the TODAY Show and in the pages of Bon
Appétit.

With several entrepreneurial and activism-oriented projects under her belt, Sonja is on a mission to make the world a better place one bite at the time. She’s passionate about her two children Larson and Britta, her fluffy Pomeranian, reading, traveling the world, playing the piano, historic homes, and dark chocolate.

More about Alex

Alex is acclaimed photographer and recipe writer, cookbook author, accomplished baker, and incorrigible optimist. Together with his wife Sonja, Alex co-founded the award-winning recipe website A Couple Cooks.

By day, he cooks up fresh ideas (and snaps all the pictures) for the website. By night, he can be found whipping up a sourdough starter, researching camera gear, or plotting new ways to create a healthier, more sustainable world.

Contact Us

Hi! You can reach us by email at email@acouplecooks.com

Due to the number of emails we receive, we may not be able to respond to every request. Thank you for contacting!

Photo use policy

You are free to use one image from any post on acouplecooks.com for website purposes to promote our content (such as in a recipe roundup) as long as you provide a link back to the original post for the recipe.  Please provide photo credit to “A Couple Cooks” or “Sonja and Alex Overhiser, A Couple Cooks”.

All other uses are not allowed. Please contact us at the email listed above for licensing inquiries.

Republishing of recipes from A Couple Cooks is NOT allowed without permission.

All content on acouplecooks.com is copyright A Couple Cooks, LLC.