This year has seen the triumph of the 30-minute meal: Rachael Ray’s name now sells magazines, in addition to piles of cookbooks. But despite the popularity of the quick and the easy, this year has also seen a terrific crop of renegade food books that move beyond the issue of convenience and broaden our views about food.

“El Bulli” (Ecco, $220), the enormous book by Spain’s famous culinary impresario Ferran Adria, is the most dramatic example. The English edition is enormous, expensive, and avant-garde, complete with wild recipies, a compact disc, and a user’s guide. The books below may not be quite as outrageous, but they’re just as fascinating to delve into.

“Bones” (Morrow, $34.95) If you want to make your butcher happy, buy him this book. If you don’t have a butcher, you’ll want one after you read this.This long overdue cookbook challenges our love for boneless skinless chicken breasts and fish fillets. Author Jennifer McLagan argues that the obsession with convenience cooking has deprived us of all of the joys of cooking with bones. Gnawing on bones is a visceral pleasure, of course, but bones also give body and flavor to soups and stews, and moisture to the meat they cook with. The same is true for fish bones. Ms. McLagan is deeply pragmatic in her mission to bring bones back to the table, offering thoughtful, enticing recipes for the novice that may tempt you to stew some lamb shank, or even savor some marrowbones this winter.

“Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing” (Norton, $35) Pork is another food that has been unfairly maligned, or worse, bred for leanness and slapped with that lame label, “the other white meat.” But properly raised pork makes for terrific eating, and as food writer Michael Ruhlman and chef Brian Polcyn point out, it is the only meat that has an entire branch of cooking devoted to it. In “Charcuterie,” they explore the world of salted, smoked, and cured pork (and other meats, too). If you love good sausage, quality salami, and honest bacon, you’ll find this fascinating reading even if you only make the simpler recipes, like the herb-brined chicken or the home-cured sauerkraut. Ambitious weekend cooks, however, might just find themselves hanging duck prosciutto in their kitchen to ripen.

“Sunday Suppers at Lucques” (Knopf, $35) Every Sunday night at the renowned Los Angeles restaurant, Lucques, chef Suzanne Goin sets her more elaborate recipes aside and offers a simple set menu: appetizer, main course, and dessert. She brings the same format to her first book, offering menus that are organized seasonally, as many chefs’ cookbooks are. But “Sunday Suppers at Lucques” manages to pull ahead of the pack by virtue of Ms. Goin’s unpretentious, inspired recipes. Ms. Goin knows how to balance salty and sweet, creamy and crunchy, to create recipes like roasted beet salad with fried chickpeas, olives, and ricotta salata – and her menus are just as thoughtfully composed. A beautiful book for entertaining, everyday cooking, or culinary daydreaming.

“Recipes: A Collection for the Modern Cook” (Morrow, $34.95) One might expect intimidating recipes from the founding food editor at Martha Stewart Living, but Susan Spungen’s new book instead emphasizes how satisfying simple, careful cooking can be. No shortcuts here: Just classic home cooking with a bit of a twist, like ricotta meatballs or roast chicken with couscous stuffing, foods that entice you to expand your repertoire. Of course, a bit of proper technique is essential, so Ms. Spungen organizes the book according to cooking method so that she can include plenty of pointers.That makes “Recipes” an especially good book for home cooks who don’t want to become chef-caliber – just better cooks, with better recipes under their belts.

“Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America” (Clarkson Potter, $35) If “El Bulli” was the coffee table Spanish cookbook this year, “Tapas” is the one you’ll actually take into the kitchen. Award-winning chef Jose Andres focuses on the simplest pillar of Spanish food: the addictive little dishes called tapas. Mr. Andres is a bit of a culinary cowboy, too, redefining tapas to include not only traditional, super-simple recipes (Castilian Garlic Soup and Potato Omelet) but also more unusual, complex cre ations (Lobster with Clementines and Grapefruit in Saffron Oil). These little dishes can fit in anywhere – for lunch, an appetizer, main course, or cocktail snack – and cooking a few of them is a terrific way to learn about the past, and the future, of Spanish cooking.

“Some Like It Hot” (Harvard Common Press, $18.95) Plenty of Americans love spicy food – after all, we’re the nation that coined the term “chilihead” – but there’s a whole lot more to the world of spicy food than Texas chili and Suicide Sauce. Clifford A. Wright’s book gathers fearlessly spicy recipes from the 14 hottest cuisines of the world, including Mexico, Thailand, India, and West Africa. These recipes aren’t merely spicy – the chili merely intensifies the vibrant flavors of each dish, adding spark to Peruvian pork adobo, tang to Cajun catfish stew, and heat to Indian cabbage in coconut milk. With such far-ranging recipes, a fair number of specialty ingredients are required, so Mr. Wright includes an incredibly thorough resource guide, too. The chili-heat level for each recipe is listed, too, so you can gradually work yourself up to the impressive level of chili-tolerance needed to eat Thai Crying Tiger. And with more than 300 recipes for such a low price, the book’s value can make one tear up a bit, too.