Back by request, round two of Five on Friday, wherein I occasionally post five links on a certain theme. This week’s theme is recipe sites.
The sad fact is that I’m severely lacking in kitchen skills, which means that while I have collected many beautiful recipes from a variety of cookbooks and websites, I rarely have the time, talent, or courage to follow through. I’m an optimist, however, so if a recipe website exists, I’ve probably visited it. Even when I don’t collect any promising recipes, I can feel as if I’ve gotten something accomplished, merely by ruling out possibilities and thinking about cooking for a while.
My shiny array of kitchen appliances adds to this delusion. (Three cheers for wedding showers!) If I can’t cook it (and I probably can’t) it’s not for lack of machinery. Have waffles to iron? Food to process? Need to whip, blend, juice, chop, steam, or mix? I’m your gal — or, rather, my kitchen is; you’ll probably want to do the actual cooking yourself. And you can find the recipes to do so at the following sites. If you have an RSS reader, you can even stay up-to-date on new recipes, as many of them offer feeds.
1) Recipe*zaar gets top billing because it is my all-time favorite recipe site (although All Recipes, a similar site, deserves an honorable mention). Search their database of thousands of recipes by ingredient, course, required appliances, and almost any other criterion you can come up with. Compile an online cookbook, add your own recipes, and visit the forums to ask a pressing question or just browse the questions and answers already posed.
2) Sometimes directions alone just aren’t enough, which is where a site like Visual Recipes can be helpful. As the name implies, each step in the recipes is illustrated with a photograph.
3) For me, it’s never enough to know that something is a particular way. I want to know why. Which is why I so totally dig The Science of Cooking. For more information, watch the webcasts or visit their forums.
4) Cooking by Numbers is for those desperate moments when you’re down to a can of tomatoes, a bottle of vinegar, and three eggs. Fill in the ingredients you want to use, and it will spit out cooking suggestions.
5) Ahhh. Bread. One of my favorite things in all the world. I’ve long admired those who can make the perfect loaf of bread. I have yet to reach that point, but The Fresh Loaf, a site entirely dedicated to bread-making techniques, has given me some hope.
What about you? How are your cooking skills? Have any favorite recipe sites or cookbooks?
Robin, I’m like that, too! Unfortunately — or, rather, fortunately — my husband is not a big fan of sweets, which means that I rarely make desserts unless we have people over. (I do, however, have a stash of chocolate that I go to when I want dessert and he doesn’t, which is always.)
Conda, hope you enjoy looking at those new sites! 🙂 I’m still trying to get better at figuring out which recipes will be quick and which ones will take time. But then, I’m just not great at estimating time in general.
How funny, Carly! Just last night I, too, made pizza! In fact, I showed my SIL how to make my super-special pizza crust (one of the only things I make regularly because pizza is my favorite thing). And the whole time I was thinking, I’m teaching someone else how to cook? How strange!
Joanne, my husband actually *does* eat rice and beans almost every day! Or, he did when we first met. So he would be totally with you on this. Me? I’m so sick of the smell, I couldn’t stomach actually eating them. And thanks for the site recommendation. I’ll go check it out this afternoon.
What a find these sites are! I hate to cook, and in fact my man cooks most of the everyday meals because he hates to do the dishes worse than he hates to cook. (I’m the opposite.) But we do like to have people over. Trouble is, he’s a meat and potatoes kinda guy, and a lot of our friends are vegetarians.
So I’m on a constant search for the perfect vegetarian recipe that satisfies everyone. Thanks for the additional fodder, Caryn! I’m especially fond of the cook by numbers site, for those moments when people drop by and all you have in the house is spinach, tunafish and an overripe melon.
I find myself at allrecipes.com a lot. Readers rate and review their submitted recipes and I’ve found quite a few good ones there:)
My cooking skillz are nonexistent. So thank you, thank you for these links!
Caryn, my s.o. also doesn’t like sweets, which is frustrating for me as I love to bake too. So I take any opportunity to bake: parties, little treats for family and friends when I see them. Because if I ate all that I baked, well…
I just wanted to give another ‘shout out’ to recipezaar.com. This is my favorite, and it’s SUPER easy to use. Thanks, Caryn for the Five on Friday!
Ellen, you’re so lucky to have someone who loves to cook! Hubs does some, but he usually does the clean-up instead–and I can’t argue with that, since I’d still rather cook than clean up!
Bookbabie, I like Allrecipes, too. I think I prefer Recipe*zaar because I found it first, so I’m more familiar with it, but on those rare instances when it doesn’t have what I’m looking for, I often go to Allrecipes next.
Hope they help, Slouching Mom!
Conda, I do the same thing! Of course, I have a friend who doesn’t like chocolate so I save the chocolatey stuff for when she’s not able to come over. It gives me an excuse to experiment.
Thanks for the additional shout out, Katie! I saw that your mom has a link to it on her blog, too! And I have a feeling she’s a great cook. 😉
epicurious.com 🙂
Caryn, just checking out your blog and – yum yum!!
I hate cooking and so does hubby! But the kids need to eat so I do most of it. In Australia we have a series of books by a mum, called Simply Too Good Too Be True. Really simple, tasty, low fat recipes with ordinary ingredients. It works for me.
Gail
My sister has a fantastic cooking blog. You can find it by Googling High Heels and Grills.
Ooh! I just found it. Looks really good! I’m a sucker for good recipe sites, and I love the photos that go along with each post, too. Everything looks delicious!