How to Find a Reliable Online Recipe & Free Online Tools to Help You In The Kitchen
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When you need the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe, do you pull out your grandmother’s tattered recipe binder, or do you whip out your phone and Google “chocolate chip cookie recipe?” Many modern cooks find recipes online or through apps like Pinterest and Instagram. But how do you know if the online recipe you found will create tasty food or a messy Pinterest fail? Find out how to know if an online recipe is reliable in a few easy steps here!
Finding an Online Recipe That Works
When you know what to look for, you can quickly analyze an online recipe by considering its structure, safety elements, and source. Using specific search terms and comparing and contrasting several similar online recipes will also help you find a winning recipe every time.
The Science in Structure
One of the first things to consider as you choose an online recipe is the structure, or format, of the recipe itself.
A good recipe will include a list of ingredients with precise measurements. The ingredients should be listed in the order you will use them as you prepare the dish.
A good recipe should also feature detailed instructions describing each step of the process. For example, if the recipe says “Put the cookies in the oven” but does not provide a temperature or a bake time, it does not have precise directions.
Most good recipes will also include information about the size of dishes you need, such as an 8-inch vs a 10-inch cake pan.
Safety First
Another key element to consider when you look at an online recipe is whether or not the recipe uses safe cooking practices. If the recipe tells you to cook rice, does it tell you how to store it safely? If the recipe involves thawing frozen food, does it tell you how to thaw the product without risk of exposure to bacteria?
When in doubt, you can find excellent resources for best food safety practices from the USDA website as well as food safety tips from the Cooperative Extension.
Go to the Source
Another way to decide if a recipe is a dud or not before actually cooking it is to consider the source of the recipe. Trusted, reliable sources for an online recipe include organizations that run test kitchens to trial recipes before posting them online. America’s Test Kitchen famously tests out every product and recipe they promote, for example.
Other online recipe sites are run by popular magazines such as Better Homes and Gardens or Taste of Home. These organizations have their reputation on the line and will try to avoid publishing no-good recipes.
If you need recipes that support your medical needs or lifestyle, you may want to look for recipes promoted by health experts, such as the American Heart Association’s collection of free recipes.
Keep in mind that out of the millions or billions of recipes posted online, many come from home cooks or food bloggers, rather than from a professional chef or an organization with the luxury of access to a professional test kitchen. This does not necessarily mean that a recipe you find on a blog is no good. Many food bloggers have launched careers as influencers and even cookbook authors based on the quality of their recipes.
That said, you should do a little research and read the reviews on the recipes before investing your time and ingredients in a recipe from a food blog. Not all blogs are created equal. Some bloggers simply want clickbait content or to convince readers to purchase affiliate products, so they have not put a lot of thought into the actual recipe. Others may be AI-generated and not created by a cook at all!
Get Specific
Sometimes the huge amount of recipes available online can seem daunting. How do you narrow your search down to just the right recipe for you? One of the best ways to do this is to use specific keywords in your search.
Instead of searching for “chocolate cake,” search for “three-layer chocolate cake with white chocolate ganache” or “gluten-free chocolate cake with raspberries.”
If you need a recipe that meets specific dietary needs, try searching for a “heart-healthy chocolate cake recipe” or “high-protein single-serve chocolate mug cake.”
The more specific your search terms, the more likely you are to get precisely what you want in the search results.
Compare and Contrast
Finally, another great way to assess an online recipe is to read two or three versions of similar recipes online. Compare the ingredients used and the amounts listed for each one. Check out the cook times and temperatures.
If three or four reputable-seeming online cooks recommend recipes that all look fairly similar, there is a good chance you have found a standard recipe that should turn out pretty well for you.
If you are an experienced cook, you can also estimate if the recipe uses the correct proportions based on your experience cooking similar food items in the past.
Popular Free Online Recipe Tools
Some of the most popular ways to find, save, and organize online recipes include Allrecipes.com, Pinterest, YouTube, and Instagram. Take a look at how these free popular tools work!
All Recipes
Allrecipes.com has been around for a remarkable 27 years and features over 20 billion recipes today. Allrecipes is both a way to access and save recipes and a social hub where cooks comment on recipes and leave reviews, interacting with each other as well as with the recipes.
Anyone can post recipes to Allrecipes, and the recipes do not always go through any type of testing or verification process. (If you want a vetted recipe, look for recipes sporting a green star indicating that they were tested by the Allrecipes Test Kitchen).
However, you can often judge the quality of a recipe based on its ratings and the comments left by other cooks.
Many Allrecipes posts also include helpful information like nutrition facts.
Allrecipes does not currently offer an app, but you can create an account and save recipes you like while using the website.
Pinterest is a social media website that allows you to collect and organize images that link to websites such as food blogs. It is like having a corkboard you pin photos to, but each photo is a digital image that you save and organize within the Pinterest website or app.
Many home cooks enjoy using Pinterest because it is a fun, visual way to search for recipes. It is also easy to save recipes and organize them by creating “boards,” within your account. For example, you could save a board of breakfast food ideas, and another of lunch food ideas, making it easy to find the recipe you want later on.
Keep in mind, though, that searching Pinterest for a recipe is like searching with Google–you will get lots of random food blogs and home cooks, so you need to do some verification checks before you use a recipe you find on Pinterest.
YouTube
YouTube is another social media platform, this one for sharing videos. It is a fantastic resource to learn a kitchen skill such as how to slice an avocado, or the best way to make homemade butter.
On YouTube, you can search for videos of someone else creating the recipe you want to make. Of course, you will find everyone from professional chefs to celebrities to average home cooks posting their own food prep videos, so you will still want to consider the source before you commit to one of these video recipes.
Instagram & TikTok
Instagram and TikTok are also social media apps. They focus on brief video and photo content and have a huge range of food-focused content that makes for fun browsing. Many Instagram and TikTok food content creators will share their recipes by providing a link to a website in their profile, or by listing it for an easy screenshot.
If you want more food content on a specific topic such as low-carb diets or patisserie, you can follow content creators that you like and the algorithms running your feed in-app will show you lots of similar content.
Online Recipes
What is your favorite tool or resource for finding online recipes? Leave a comment to let us know. If you have questions, reach out to Randolph County Cooperative Extension at 336-318-6000.