Bittman has written at least ten books on food and cooking, three of which won IACP/Julia Child awards, James Beard awards, or both. Three books are related to his newspaper column:

• The Minimalist Cooks at Home
• The Minimalist Cooks Dinner
• The Minimalist Entertains (Selected recipes from these are in the collection "Mark Bittman's Simple and Easy Recipes from The New York Times".)

Bittman also wrote two books with Jean-Georges Vongerichten: Cooking at Home with a Four-Star Chef, which received the James Beard Award. In 2000 they published the Simple to Spectacular.

Bittman's book How to Cook Everything first published in 1998, was published in a revised second edition in 2008. An iOS app version was published in 2010. How to Cook Everything Vegetarian was published in 2007.

In 2009 Bittman published Food Matters discussing the topics of environmental challenges, lifestyle diseases, and the overproduction and over consumption of meat, simple carbohydrates, and junk food.

The publication of Food Matters followed a pair of articles on food production issues for The New York Times Week in Review, called “Rethinking the Meat Guzzler” and “The Future of Fish”.

Other books include Fish - The Complete Guide to Buying and Cooking (1999), The Best Recipes in the World (2005), Leafy Greens (1995), Bittman Takes On America's Chefs (2005, a companion volume to the TV series), and Kitchen Express (2009).

Television and Film

Bittman is a regular on NBC's The Today Show and has appeared on NPR's All Things Considered and dozens of other shows.

Bittman is the host of the Public Television series Bittman Takes on America's Chefs, which first aired in spring 2005, and later won the James Beard Award for the best cooking series. The second season, The Best Recipes in the World, aired a year later.

In 2008 Bittman appeared with Gwyneth Paltrow and Mario Batali, in a PBS series called Spain... on the road Again.

Bittman also created a film in 2007 entitled "What's wrong with what we eat?"

Bittman appeared as a guest judge on the Food Network competition series Chopped.

Bittman is married to New York Times graphic designer and art director Kelly Doe. They live in New York City. He has two adult daughters from his first marriage to the writer Karen Baar. Bittman is a licensed pilot and a marathon runner. Bittman's paternal grandfather was born in Romania.