Cover of The Best RecipeOliver Thring offers his guide to the best and worst recipe websites. Where do you turn for online culinary inspiration-----
Earlier this year Google launched a new recipe search in the UK, having guinea-pigged it in America and Japan. This proves what you've surely noticed: that more and more people are using the internet to help them decide what to cook. Blogs, aggregators of chefs' recipes and online compendiums of family cooking are snatching at the apron-tails of magazines and cookbooks.
It's an exciting but bewildering time. The quality of recipes online varies wildly and blindly: from America, de facto ruler of the English-language internet, gushes a twee slew of cupcakes, anodyne renderings of international food, and "50 ways with a jar of marinara". The situation is little better here, where literally a squillion blogs publish endless quiche recipes and where, on the same website, sensitive methods from Mike Robinson jostle with the slapdash culinary zeugmas of Ready Steady Cook. Here's my attempt to guide you through the best and worst.
Best of all, FN is the place to behold Sandra Lee and Paula Deen, who between them offer the ultimate in culinary disaster tourism. Deen is a fluorescent-toothed Georgian responsible for such irony-free wonders as the Krispy Kreme burger, ham and banana casserole and deep-fried lasagne.
Lee is a dead-eyed Stepford robot notorious for what she styles "sem-eye homemade cooking", a woman apparently terrified of slicing a mushroom. Food Network is a twisted joy to browse, but I wouldn't go near it when looking for dinner.
Christ knows what James Tanner thought he was doing when he brainspawned "baked alaska with garlic and herb cream cheese and orange", but the bulk of Saturday Kitchen recipes and those dishes from old faves Hugh and Nigel tend to be reliable, enticing and worth cooking. BBC Good Food, which has a lot of user-submitted recipes, sensibly stresses peer reviews. It has plenty of good stuff but this recipe, described no doubt with some accuracy by its owner as "breathtaking", is one of the most emetic things I've ever seen.
Some of the best blogs specialise in a particular cuisine, such as Homesick Texan, which showcases the food of the southern US in droolworthy detail, or Appetite for China. Here are some of my other favourites:
Simply Recipes. Elise Bauer began her blog in 2003, which makes the site a stately old dame in internet years. Its recipes, such as purple potatoes with caramelised onions and shiitake or barbecued ribs with Dr Pepper sauce are homely, inviting and have a sense of humour.
101 Cookbooks is another behemoth in the food blogosphere. Its well-photographed dishes are almost intimidatingly healthy, but I do find this a rather preachy blog, at best a collection of hangover cures. Some of the recipes look good but one wonders from what red hell this dish arose.
David Lebovitz is a good American living in Paris, an old-school patissier and a first-class food writer. His method for tempering chocolate is the best I've read anywhere, and his advice for would-be food bloggers is gold-dust. Deservedly one of the most famous blogs.
Tartelette: writing what is inexplicably one of the world's most popular food blogs, this woman can no doubt cook. But her prose is an exercise in soppy solipsism, and I find it singularly unreadable. Use the pictures as inspiration, and shield your eyes from the words.
Many WoM readers will have encountered Food Stories and Hollow Legs before. I place them together here because they exemplify some of the best of British food blogs (and both have fine links pages). Lizzie Mabbott of Hollow Legs is probably a more deft cook of Asian food, while Helen Graves is better with a camera, but both these blogs make me rush to the kitchen.
Internet marketeers trill that "content is king", that if only you cram your website with enough Google-friendly words you'll soon dominate your little corner of the internet. They may be right, but the advice is no help to a hungry person. The quality of recipes is always more important than their quantity: sites that boast of having hundreds of thousands of recipes only flaunt their indifference to their readers.
My advice: find a smattering of blogs you like, have a gander on Epicurious and the BBC and, once you're well-fed, gaze in mesmerised horror at Sandra Lee's Kwanzaa cake.
It's an exciting but bewildering time. The quality of recipes online varies wildly and blindly: from America, de facto ruler of the English-language internet, gushes a twee slew of cupcakes, anodyne renderings of international food, and "50 ways with a jar of marinara". The situation is little better here, where literally a squillion blogs publish endless quiche recipes and where, on the same website, sensitive methods from Mike Robinson jostle with the slapdash culinary zeugmas of Ready Steady Cook. Here's my attempt to guide you through the best and worst.
Epicurious
Epicurious is probably the best of the main American food sites, amassing recipes from Gourmet (RIP) and Bon Appétit magazines as well as those from individual chefs, while providing a forum for discerning users to upload their own. A glance at menus for St Patrick's Day reveals attractive methods for smoked haddock soup and beef and Guinness pie. Eppy claims to have over 100,000 recipes: there's plenty of diamante in the rough.AllRecipes
Another huge site, with over 100,000 "likes" on Facebook. Its food is mainly ordinary, midweek home cooking: cakes, pasta dishes, "delicious gluten-free pancakes", with an occasional good idea. The difficulty with a user-submitted recipe is that it has to stand on its own: reader reviews offer some guidance but one probably needs a basic understanding of food to predict whether a dish is going to work. For the tired or unadventurous cook, though, a well-reviewed dish AllRecipe on is often a safe bet.Food Network
This bloated website, a spin-off from the TV channel, is simply a hoot. At least half of Food Network's recipes are straightforwardly revolting. A glance at the "comfort food" section throws up "meatloaf masterpiece", "mac and cheese soup" and "red velvet bread pudding", the red coming from food colouring. The site also hosts this fine "recipe" combining pre-sliced carrots with shop-bought dressing.Best of all, FN is the place to behold Sandra Lee and Paula Deen, who between them offer the ultimate in culinary disaster tourism. Deen is a fluorescent-toothed Georgian responsible for such irony-free wonders as the Krispy Kreme burger, ham and banana casserole and deep-fried lasagne.
Lee is a dead-eyed Stepford robot notorious for what she styles "sem-eye homemade cooking", a woman apparently terrified of slicing a mushroom. Food Network is a twisted joy to browse, but I wouldn't go near it when looking for dinner.
BBC
Confusingly, the BBC has two food sites: an archive of its TV chefs' recipes and a spin-off of its Good Food magazine. I use the main BBC food site a lot: it's beautifully designed, I like its seasonal guide, and because it tells you which programme a recipe was taken from you can normally gauge how good the dish will be.Christ knows what James Tanner thought he was doing when he brainspawned "baked alaska with garlic and herb cream cheese and orange", but the bulk of Saturday Kitchen recipes and those dishes from old faves Hugh and Nigel tend to be reliable, enticing and worth cooking. BBC Good Food, which has a lot of user-submitted recipes, sensibly stresses peer reviews. It has plenty of good stuff but this recipe, described no doubt with some accuracy by its owner as "breathtaking", is one of the most emetic things I've ever seen.
Blogs
The best recipe blogs are as good as the best cookbooks – just as the best restaurant bloggers are as good as the best professional critics – and have the advantage of being free. But there are many more bad food blogs than good ones. Quality blogs, however, tend to garner readers and fame, so a blog's popularity is a rough though not indisputable guide to its worth.Some of the best blogs specialise in a particular cuisine, such as Homesick Texan, which showcases the food of the southern US in droolworthy detail, or Appetite for China. Here are some of my other favourites:
Simply Recipes. Elise Bauer began her blog in 2003, which makes the site a stately old dame in internet years. Its recipes, such as purple potatoes with caramelised onions and shiitake or barbecued ribs with Dr Pepper sauce are homely, inviting and have a sense of humour.
101 Cookbooks is another behemoth in the food blogosphere. Its well-photographed dishes are almost intimidatingly healthy, but I do find this a rather preachy blog, at best a collection of hangover cures. Some of the recipes look good but one wonders from what red hell this dish arose.
David Lebovitz is a good American living in Paris, an old-school patissier and a first-class food writer. His method for tempering chocolate is the best I've read anywhere, and his advice for would-be food bloggers is gold-dust. Deservedly one of the most famous blogs.
Tartelette: writing what is inexplicably one of the world's most popular food blogs, this woman can no doubt cook. But her prose is an exercise in soppy solipsism, and I find it singularly unreadable. Use the pictures as inspiration, and shield your eyes from the words.
Many WoM readers will have encountered Food Stories and Hollow Legs before. I place them together here because they exemplify some of the best of British food blogs (and both have fine links pages). Lizzie Mabbott of Hollow Legs is probably a more deft cook of Asian food, while Helen Graves is better with a camera, but both these blogs make me rush to the kitchen.
Internet marketeers trill that "content is king", that if only you cram your website with enough Google-friendly words you'll soon dominate your little corner of the internet. They may be right, but the advice is no help to a hungry person. The quality of recipes is always more important than their quantity: sites that boast of having hundreds of thousands of recipes only flaunt their indifference to their readers.
My advice: find a smattering of blogs you like, have a gander on Epicurious and the BBC and, once you're well-fed, gaze in mesmerised horror at Sandra Lee's Kwanzaa cake.
Taken from The Guardian, UK; source article is below:
A fruitful search: recipes on the internet
