Recipe Finders

Need a recipe for something fairly ordinary (apple pie, roast chicken, lasagna) or for something more exotic (what to do with ostrich, dukkah, vadouvan, etc.), either because you don't have one or because you want to compare several in order, perhaps, to take points from more than one source?

The online resources to find these things are dazzling: fast and comprehensive.

I always start with www.foodnetwork.com, which has recipes by chefs I often know and trust, as well as many from Gourmet and Bon Appétit.

Other sites that are very comprehensive are www.epicurious.com, which picks up Gourmet and Bon Appétit, allrecipes.com and simplyrecipes.com.

Of course, the way to get the most recipes, without any filtering by content providers, is to use Google. That will often draw from one of the other sites mentioned above, but also displays results from many more, including newspapers and sources outside the US. You just have to be more discriminating in sifting through the volume of information.

In most cases the recipes are rated by readers, and it is often worth reading the comments where possible. The negative ones sometimes signal a bad recipe, but just as often give you pitfalls to avoid in using the recipe ("There's no way this can be done in 2 hours"). Even the favorable comments contain interesting insights ("I did it with milk instead of cream and it was still great").

I am sure there are many more general sites and of course there are specialized sites for various cuisines, pastry, chocolate, etc. Please share your favorites.

Bobby Jay