Blogs
Still one more week before culinary school begins. So this week I wanted to briefly address sources of culinary information online, and how to adjust and break bad habits.
Raise your hand if this sounds familiar…
You’re in the kitchen and have a quick cooking question that needs a quick answer (say… the optimal ratio of potato to flour in gnocchi). Or maybe you need a quick idea for what to do with kale, and leftover pasta. What’s the first place we turn to when we have a question?
Google. And what does Google provide us? A list of food blogs with quippy titles and good SEO practices. But when we click through to most of those blogs, what we get is a long-winded essay on the author’s emotional connection to broccoli. What’s more, there’s a barrage of ads — pop ups, videos, and so on — interfering with the ability to scroll past it all to get to the information we need.
It’s frustrating. Every. Time. Yet we still do it, over and over again, like trained mice clicking at the feed button. Google is no longer a source of information, but rather a vehicle for content marketing… sales in the guise of answering questions. There’s just too much noise and too little signal.
The fact is we can’t change the SEO algorithm. So the only solution is to not play the game.
I’m trying to stop turning to Google instinctively, and instead saving reliable sources of information and searching on those individual sites instead. These are professional publications with editors, test kitchens, and at least a hint of editing checks and balances before publishing. And the best ones don’t just offer recipes, but also instruction on technique and foundational elements of cooking as well.
Here are a few I use regularly, in order of frequency and preference.
(Note: I don’t get any compensation for any of these suggestions.)
This site is a powerhouse of information from real experts. Think professional chefs, cookbook authors, Pulitzer Prize winning journalists and more. Contributors include the likes of Mark Bittman (“How To Cook Everything”), J. Kenji Lopez Alt (“The Food Lab”), Yotam Ottolenghi (chef/owner of several restaurants) and many others.
It features daily recipes, weekly meal plans, the ability to browse or search by ingredient or meal type, as well as recipes by occasion and even by equipment type. There are recommendations based on your search/browsing history or what you’ve saved to a personalized “recipe box” for later access. And it has a series of cooking guides on mastering basics like gravy, pasta, salad, and much more.
Finally, there are a number of newsletters to choose from that will push meal ideas and inspiration to your inbox, from weekly meal planners, to vegetarian-only focus, and others. You can access it online, or via an app that works on all platforms.
An annual subscription runs $50, or you can choose $1.50 a week. It’s totally worth it.
Serious Eats leans more to the food nerd like me. Their motto is “Good Cooks Know How. Great Cooks Know Why.” It’s free, with minimally intrusive ads.
Recipes are listed by ingredient, course, cuisine, diet, method, and occasion, with a heavy bend toward world cuisines. The site contains How-To guides that can only be described as… meticulous. Most recipes contain long, technique-driven deep dives into what they tested and why, which often bury the lede, but you’ll walk away better-informed for it.
Sometimes it’s a bit much, and a bit too off-tradition seemingly for the sake of being different (fish sauce in a bolognese ragu Kenji? Really?). But if you want to really geek out, then this is the place for you, including a really great equipment review section that won’t steer you wrong.
Overall, if you need more detail what other sources are offering, then Serious Eats will provide it. Just be ready for what you wish for.
The content can be a little milquetoast and there’s too much focus on quick hacks and shortcuts (like using jarred tomato sauce!), but the vast volume of recipes and guides are just too powerful to pass up. Plus, it’s all backed by a well-established testing program (hence the name) with highly detailed information behind the results. In short, it’s a fantastic resource for foundational cooking skills and knowledge.
The recipe database is robust, with the ability to filter searching or browsing by ingredient, cuisine, diet, equipment, and more, making it great for finding good ideas in a pinch based on what you have on hand. All recipes are tested by a community of over 40,000 volunteer home cooks who provide feedback before they’re published (I know because I’m one of them).
The app has a slick feature which allows you to transfer all ingredients in a recipe to the built-in shopping list (which I’ve never used). And their equipment reviews offer recommendations based on an overall winner, plus a bargain winner for those not looking to break the bank on gear.
But perhaps the standout feature of the site is its series of in-depth and highly specific cooking guides, which includes a fantastic list of 100 Essential Techniques listed in order from Beginner (1-40), to Intermediate (41 - 74), to Advanced (74-100), complete with step-by-step instructions, photos, and videos.
For an annual membership of $80, you will get full access to not only the full America’s Test Kitchen site, but also its sister publications Cook’s Illustrated and Cooks Country. Print magazine subscriptions are separate, as are the company’s range of cookbooks for almost every niche imaginable. The newsletters are free, and offer helpful weekday ideas/inspiration.
I fully endorse both the website and the print magazine. The site is free. The magazine is $8/year for 12 issues.
The recipe database is a bit more limited, but it’s more chef-driven, which means more creative recipes (although it caters a bit to the douchie-foodie crowd). It also has informative wine features that often includes a short range of suggested wine pairings for select recipes, along with other spirits and other drinks-related information.
Unlike the previous recommendations, there’s no saved recipe box, and the search capability is highly sporadic in results (but it does have product recommendations). However Food & Wine makes up for it with the addition of restaurant and chef rankings, a travel section, and a decent food-news component.
It’s a serviceable resource if the options in the above sources aren’t blowing your skirt up. At the very least, get the magazine.
For many years, Saveur was hands down my go-to food resource, both the magazine and the site. If I read five different recipes for the same dish from five different outlets, I would choose the Saveur version nearly every time. The writing and photography were the most realistic and truthful representation of cooking culture across the globe (not the sterile-clean staged shots you see in Food & Wine).
And then it all fell apart after a clueless VC-backed media company took it over in 2020, canceled the print publication, laid off most of the staff, and buried the online archives in a poorly-designed, ill-executed, and greed-driven mess of a platform.
So I was very excited to see that it was recently bought back by the publication’s long-time editor and a group of other employees and investors. I’ve already signed up for the reborn print edition.
The site is still pretty poor, with janky formatting, blurry photos, and missing text. But the recipes are solid, and I’m hopeful the new ownership will address the entire platform as they get their footing. It still has the ability to browse/search by ingredient, course, cuisine, and season/occasion, as well as a good list of useful techniques. There’s really no filtering to speak of, so it’s a hunt-and-peck experience. The newsletters still need a little work too.
In short, Saveur is not so much a cooking resource as it is a heartfelt source of inspiration… a love letter to food and cooking that fills the soul the way the options above fill the mind.
I also of course use cookbooks and follow various chefs on social/Substack, but will save those lists for another time. The point this time around is to focus on the websites to use instead of wishful Googling for recipe ideas or technique details.
Got any suggestions/recommendations for additional online resources worth including? Leave in the comments.