New Review Site: Recipe Websites

When I set out bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for my first semester of college, armed with little more than an industrial garbage bag of painfully uncollegiate clothes, a PC that weighed more than I did at age 12, a set of Iggy Pop posters and a culinary set that had been purchased on the cheap at a big-box retailer of my forgetting. Though I began the semester with an interest in feeding myself with a modicum of class, after two months I had descended into a wilderness of Ramen and peanut butter sandwiches made of bread I had "baked" using a waffle iron and, much to the chagrin of my then-fretting parents, waffle batter. Whatever palate I may have developed in my rearing was wiped clean by a penchant for overly-starched breakfast cereals (Waffle Crisp) and mysterious microwavables.



But, with the aid of a college degree and steady employment, I have been able to turn my back upon the dietary depravity of previous years and take a leap of faith into the world of preparing meals without microwaves or prefabricated cheatery. Fortunately for me, this coincided with a comprehensive review of many of the finest Online Recipe Websites available to humanity. It was a win-win situation, as the sports-euphemism-at-large goes. I had a chance to learn recipes that didn't come off the packaging of a surplus size of M&Ms and, like, learn proper culinary terms that somehow escaped my frequent collegiate profession of server/whipping boy.

With so many Online Recipe Websites available, and with so many of these being expressed in phrases or terms coming directly from the vernacular of food and desire for food ("enticing," "tasty," "rich," "succulent," "full-bodied," "satisfying," et al.), I was in for a real treat, albeit a challenging one that required me, your humble astute reviewer, to make some critical decisions.

I based the criteria on Recipe Archives and Organization, Culinary Appeal, Community, Resources and Help/Support. After earning my stripes on each respective site, dotting the t and crossing the i, the dough had risen for some and remained conspicuously flat for others. Epicurious stood out above all, with Chow and Food & Wine following closely behind. Other sites compared favorably in some areas such as recipe archive and organization, but failed to measure up to the caliber of resources, community features or culinary appeal that the top three offered in abundance.

The site is now finished, so you can check it out for yourself here. Each site comes with comprehensive reviews and oodles of screenshots to help illustrate the odds and ends of each respective site.

Bon appetit!

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