Best Cooking Website & why you find it interesting

[cstout]

Well, we all know Chowhound is the best place to hang out, but sometimes we wander around & find a really good cooking site that interests us & so we bookmark it or subscribe to it.

I am sure this question must have been asked in the past, but new sites are popping up as we speak & this thread will kinda bring us all up to date as to what is happening out there.

[katnat]

I have to put a plug in for eatyourbooks.com. Basically a website that accesses the recipes in YOUR cooking library. That means any cookbooks you own, blogs you follow and magazines you read. Every time I search for a recipe, I find long lost recipes from cookbooks long since forgotten I own. It's a great resource.

[walker]

Everyone knows about Tastespotting, right?

I love The Tipsy Baker (it's more than baking). She lives in N. Calif and wrote the book (great!) "Bake the Bread, Buy the Butter." Hated when the book ended; can't wait for the next one. By Jennifer Reese. (It made me want to keep chickens and goats.) (Fantasy only.)

[twyst]

I forgot to add

http://www.cakewrecks.com/

So many laughs to be had if you look around.

[guilty]

Not exactly a cooking site, but Cake Wrecks is a favorite of mine too.

[chefathome]

Leite's Culinaria. Hands down.

[cleobeach]

this is probably my favorite -

http://simplyrecipes.com/

I like the way she explains why certain ingredients or techniques work (or don't work) better than alternatives, gives suggestions for substitutions, etc.

[pagesinthesun]

There are too many to list, but the top of my list is Punk Domestic. Great for pickling, preserving, charcuterie....for almost everything under the sun! I also like Food 52. Reader contest monthly, forums, good recipes and food news. Also, check out Joy the Baker for sweet and savory baked goodies. Enjoy!

[cstout]

Just found this website....you all might find something interesting out there

http://www.moms-kitchen.com/newspaper...

[calmossimo]

I most often make recipes from Smitten Kitchen's blog. I enjoy Deb's writing and photography. I find that her recipes are detailed enough to let me know how to perform each step without being overly fussy. 101 Cookbooks is much more fussy and uses more specialized ingredients but I love her recipes as well -- I don't follow her as regularly or connect as well to her writing style, although her photographs are beautiful.

I use allrecipes.com to get ideas for flavor combinations or very basic recipes that look interesting, but I haven't followed a complete recipe from there in a while. The Simply Recipes blog also has straightforward, uncomplicated food -- I tend to only follow her recipes word-for-word when I need to make something basic, quickly. If I have a little more time to search/think, I'll use her recipes as a jumping off point. tastespotting is wonderful to discover new beautiful blogs.

I frequent The Kitchn and Serious Eats for ideas and to procrastinate while I'm at work (along with Chowhound, obvs). I tend to like the user-generated discussion on those sites.

[jlhinwa]

I am a huge fan of Smitten Kitchen as well. I have not had a bad result yet from using her recipes. I was bummed when she was on her cookbook deadline and wasn't posting as often.

[deezil72]

www.foodily.com

This is like a social network, where you follow people, cooks and sites. Also, collect recipes like your own on line cookbook. Sometimes I lose track of time when looking thru all of the photos.

[mcf]

epicurious.com... some of our favorites have come from there.

[maabso]

http://allrecipes.com

I often refer to this site when I need a recipe for something as simple as scrambled eggs (for example!) or as complicated as something complicated! Most of the recipes have been tried and rated by others with detailed reviews and pictures. The recipes are usually contributed by people like you and me so you get lots of variety and fun ideas. There is also a "search by ingredient" option, so if you have lots of ingredients hanging around you can enter them into the advanced search and even omit certain ingredients in that same search. Enjoy :o)

[cstout]

Yes, Allrecipes is a great place to find down home foods. I keep forgetting I can search by ingredient, just yesterday I was rummaging through the fridge to do a little housekeeping & wondering what to do besides "soups"....too darn hot for me to think about soups these days, although a little egg drop soup is always welcome.

I have a red, yellow & green pepper that needs to go somewhere....will check out allrecipes to see what they say. Thanks for posting.

[maabso]

Yes, the ingredient function is key! Glad to help. Let us know what you make with peppers :o)

[cstout]

What to with red, yellow & green peppers. My meal has been consumed days ago, but I never forget a fellow chowhound. I just browsed through a bunch of recipes on Allrecipes & came up with the idea of stir frying pepper srips lightly, cooking some pasta, adding homemade tomato sauce, some sliced mushrooms & added an uncooked egg that was beaten up & mixed it all together at the last moment. Oh yes, one cooked crumbled piece of bacon sprinkled on top.

I find that just using the "ingredent search" in Allrecipes jogs my memory as to what I can do with just a few ingredients.

Thanks for pointing the "ingredient" thingy out there.

[maabso]

Thanks for the update! Sounds delicious :D I agree, I rarely follow the recipes to a tee, but they do inspire me and remind me of dishes I can create.

[pinehurst]

Big +

I also like that you can search by type of course in the advanced search, so if I have a bunch of eggs and am looking for a dessert idea, I don't need to wade through 800 savory recipes.

[cstout]

I just found this one that I am wanting to try the french bread on....unusual recipe. Thanks everybody for sharing!!

http://jamiecooksitup.blogspot.com/

[HillJ]

cstout, I was just sharing a version of the frozen jello dessert recipe on another thread (dirty recipes) and there it is front and center on the jamiecooksitup blog. :) Jamie uses cream cheese and whipped cream and I use frozen vanilla yogurt but it's basically the same idea. and, very refreshing on a hot day.

[cstout]

I like the idea of frozen vanilla yogurt....I want to make some tomorrow!!!!

[HillJ]

http://www.heatherchristo.com/cooks/c...

You're right cstout, that are so many sites popping up each week. This site in particular has proven to be very reliable and I enjoy her approach to recipe experimentation...and that's the #1 thing I look for in a recipe website: RIFF. What unique approach, substitution or flavor combo home cooks are working on. Great stuff.

[cstout]

heatherchristo looks very promising too....I love people who play with their food. Thanks.

[twyst]

Either Curious Cook or Ideas in food.

Mainly because Im a nerd.

http://www.curiouscook.com/ or http://blog.ideasinfood.com/

[cstout]

Curious Cook looks like some good reading there. He mentioned Ruhlman making chicken stock & leaving it out all week on the stove...is he CRAZY or what?????? Not in Texas you don't, it will sour in half a day.

PS...I am a nerdy bird too, so I will like to look around on Curious Cook - loved his garden "art" pictures. Thanks.

[Caroline1]

ummm... It wont sour if you keep it on low heat. But your fuel bill for a week will probably get your attention.

[cstout]

Did not know things would not sour if kept on low heat..I actually thought that would make it sour for sure. Thanks for teaching this pup a new trick.

Duh, people keep things in crock pots all the time.

[Caroline1]

In classic French cooking (as well as in wise kitchens around the world), both professional and home cooks each kept a stock pot on the back of the stove that perpetually stayed at a low slow simmer. There was no waste in a classic kitchen as vegetable parings, choice trimmings from meats and poultry, all went into the pot to simmer and meld and produce a rich stock that was the prime liquid for the culinary prizes of that kitchen. How many years the stock had taken to reach its present state of perfection was a point of great pride. Today we open a can of Swenson's. <sigh> Sometimes progress sucks.

Which is not to say that Rhulman keeps his stock at a low simmer. He apparently likes to bate danger. Silly man.

[cstout]

Please forgive me for not knowing about the Stock Pot simmering on the back burner...a depository for all things wonderful.

I tried saving all my scrappy bits & pieces for a week & then putting it all together to make a stock. Well, it just did not have that lovely taste I have heard so much about. Maybe it was my combination of things that made it taste "off". From then on, I pretty much stuck to a basic home made chicken stock recpe. Wish I knew the screct of doing that & coming up with a great taste.
Thanks for the little tibit about "long lived" stocks...enjoyed that!!

[Antilope]

I like to search for old recipes in the Google newspaper archive:

http://news.google.com/newspapers

[jeanmarieok]

Well, that's kind of fun!!

[Antilope]

To actually find recipes I enter a search term with the words teaspoon OR tablespoon. Not many stories have those words without a recipe.

Example:

cake teaspoon OR tablespoon

A lot of recipes use abbreviations. So I also search for tsp OR tbsp

Example:

cake tsp OR tbsp

[cstout]

Searching by tablespoon or whatever....you are a genius for thinking of that. I just keep searching the same old places & keep getting the same old results.

Better get my chores done before I try your trick....no telling where I will land up. Thanks. Looks my pooter might crank out some different stuff for a change.

[HillJ]

narrowing down a Goog news search to words like "vanilla extract" or "sugar" also leads to baking recipes (as one example) very quickly.

[shesallthat]

Why are there no New York newspapers listed..NY Times, Daily News? I remember "Ask Ella" had a column in the 80's and back I would like to look at now.

[HillJ]

http://searchengineland.com/google-sh...

[cstout]

Old newspapers....that is awsome....thanks so much...never knew that existed!

Antilope you are bestest there is for finding stuff.

[Antilope]

Google had a project a couple of years ago to digitize old newspapers from microfilm. They were halfway through the project when they decided to abandon it. What was completed they left in place, but they are not adding any new ones. The search engine is heavily flawed and won't go past 10 pages deep. A lot of newspapers are mis-filed by date, etc. Some pages are rotated sideways, up-side-down or even reversed text (film negative was probably backwards when scanned). There is no tool to rotate or flip the pages as viewed. Even so it's still a great resource as it is.

You cannot copy or print out the pages (probably due to copyright issues). I just resort to typing out the recipes I am interested in. Left-mouse click & hold and drag.

Some newspapers charge for viewing the archived pages and some of them are free. Their pay-per-view charges are much to high. They should move to a subscription model for the archived pages and I would consider subscribing. As it is I just use the free archived newspapers.

To view the newspapers, you can use the tools just above the newspaper page, the magnifying glass tools zoom in and out. Use your mouse to drag the page around to view sections of the zoomed in page.

[Caroline1]

If you don't want to type the recipe you want to save, and the whole recipe fits on your screen, you can hit th "Print Screen" key on your keyboard, then open any paint/graphics program, pull down the "Edit" menu, and click on "Paste As New Image." A picture of your screen with the recipe will appear. Save it in the graphic image format of your choice. ".jpg" is the most commonly used. It will copy whatever is on your screen. If the recipe is too big for one screen and you're familiar with manipulating images, you can copy the recpe in two or more captures, then patch them together into one. There is NOTHING on the web that can't be copied. Just don't distribute or sell it and things should be fine.

[calmossimo]

Awesome tip -- I never knew about this function. Thanks!

[othervoice]

I have many, but the ones I've actually used recipes from the most are:
The Pioneer Woman
The Kitchen Witch
Both are icredibly talented women and not only cook well, but are very entertaining. Ree is an awesome photographer and her step by step photos of each recipe can transform an amature cook into a well accomplished one. Lyndsey is a great storyteller and very entertaining in her step by step videos.Love them both!!

[sunflwrsdh]

+1 for The Pioneer Woman, and thanks for the info on The Kitchen Witch. I will check her out.

[carbonaraboy]

I think the PW can take nice pictures of cooking, whether or not she can cook, I don't know. I do know that her recipes are a mix of the derivative and the wrong-headed. For evidence of the latter, see the recent recipe for carbonara -- it's got bacon, cream, and peas. The cream gets mixed into eggs so you end up with something resembling uncooked quiche on pasta. Blech!