I go through stages with food blogs and cookbooks. Sometimes I’m in a “try new things all the time” stage and sometimes I can barely muster the excitement to boil an egg. I’m happy to report that I’m in a cook everything moment, and when I’m in that head space, I spend a lot of time poking around different food blogs for ideas.
The food blogs in alphabetical order:
COOK YOUR WEEK: Amanda Gold is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer with a food column that I really love. She has healthy, simple recipes and she always educates readers about food. I recently made her Beef and Butternut Squash Stew. A great example of a “food education” article is this one on a vegetable I had never heard of called the kalette. I discovered Mandy from my very good friend in Minneapolis, Nancy Fink, who is an excellent cook in her right. AND, Mandy is married to someone I’ve known since middle school. It’s a small world, made even smaller by the internet. Find Mandy on instagram: @agold_sfchron #CookYourWeek
INA GARTEN: Ina’s recipes are staples. I have several of her books, though there’s no question that the original one, The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook
, is the best. I also grab some of Ina’s recipes from her website and from her page on The Food Network. Ones I have used many times and love include her recipes for: guacamole, greek salad, and chicken chili.
JOY OF KOSHER: I use Jamie Geller’s fantastic and helpful site whenever it’s Jewish holiday time and I want to try a new twist on a traditional dish. She has tons of great ideas for every day meals and Shabbat, too.
THE KITCHN: thekitchn.com is a really useful site and their book, The Kitchn Cookbook: Recipes, Kitchens & Tips to Inspire Your Cooking
is also extremely user friendly. The site and the book are full of practical kitchen skills in addition to recipes. Look at this seemingly basic, but new to me, tip for how to make poached eggs in the oven. I’ve made their slow cooker chicken tikka masala numerous times.
SMITTEN KITCHEN: I’ve been visiting Deb Perelman’s Smitten Kitchen site for years and have used many recipes from her blog and her book, The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook. 
I love the atmosphere of her kitchen (in the photographs) and the tone of Deb’s writing. Some favorites: Salted Chocolate Chunk Cookies, Crispy Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies, Mom’s Chocolate Chip Merengue Cookies, Mustard Roasted Potatoes (with oil rather than butter to serve with meat in my house). I love the brisket from the cookbook.
NEW TO ME CATEGORY! Pamela Salzman’s food blog is one I just added to my Bloglovin’ feed (the site I use to keep track of all the blogs I follow no matter the niche). I got the recommendation from, again, my close friend Nancy Fink, who got it from Amanda Gold. Yes! The same Amanda I mentioned above in “Cook Your Week.” I’ve printed a bunch of Pamela’s recipes and hope to make some while I’m still in a COOK ALL THE THINGS stage.
*NOW, YOU MIGHT BE ASKING, HOW DO YOU KEEP ALL OF THESE ONLINE RECIPES STRAIGHT?* I tried Pinterest where I have my pins organized on boards, but I can’t stay focused there. What I do is print out the recipes I want to try and put them in the binder (in the front without plastic sleeves). I only keep the ones I will use again at which point it goes in a sleeve and gets placed in the right section [salads/dressings/dips; meat/poultry; slow cooker; Shabbat-only; brunch; dessert; smoothie]. If too much time goes by and the recipe becomes more aspirational than a reality, I toss it in the trash. If there’s a recipe from a book I make a lot, I usually make a copy and add it the binder so everything is in one place.
Do you have a different method for organizing recipes you find online? Do you have other sites you LOVE that I must know about? Tell me in the comments!
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29 Responses
I am now going to have to spend the rest of my day A. Checking out all of these blogs, one at a time and B. Making recipe binders.
You inspire me.
Julie, you will appreciate the biggest accomplishment of all was making that graphic on top! I’m so not a graphics person, but that one came out nicer than usual.
Well, Nina, you did a great job on that graphic!
I love Smitten Kitchen as well and I love/hate that they still don’t make their images all Pinterest-friendly. Maybe they’re rebels!
I love the food blog My Name is Yeh but she is WAY above my league, times a million. Mostly, she entertains me.
I love a few baking blogs – Tastes of Lizzy T and another one.. Suzy something.
And there’s one called My Bizzy Kitchen, I think? She’s not necessarily a writer or photographer or even in the food industry. I think? I mean, she comes across great but it’s not all glossy and trying to be perfect. She’s a storyteller and a Type 2 Diabetic and she tells it like it is and I love hearing about her food.
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Those other ones are all new to me! Will check them out.
I do the binder thing, too! When someone introduced the idea to me, it seemed so fancy, but it makes it SO much easier, and the page can be wiped clean when it’s in a plastic sleeve.
Oh yeah, the plastic sleeve is KEY.
I have three boards on pinterst related to food. One for things to try which has 1000+ pins on it. One for things I’ve tried and liked and a third for those I tried and didn’t like/decided were too complicated. I found that if i deleted a pin- I might re-pin it forgetting that I already tried it. When I want to use a specific ingredient- I search my pins for that ingredient and that’s how I decide what to make.
That’s a good call on the searchable ingredient. A board with 1000 pins is exactly why I generally ignore Pinterest. 😉
Thanks, Nina! I look forward to checking out these websites. My favorite cooking website is Show Me the Curry. Great recipes for Indian food and other cuisine.
Rudri Bhatt Patel @ Being Rudri recently posted..On the Bookshelf
That’s a great name for a show!
I have a binder I started around 2000 and it’s great, but I am really bad about updating it and putting my recipes in the paper protectors. Also, my husband is the printer whisperer (we have a 20 year old laser printer) and I feel bad about bugging him to print recipes. Since I started using Pinterest, it’s pretty much all I use for recipes. I did however buy Ali Mafucci’s Inspiralized cookbook, as she gave me such great free content online, I wanted to support her. Actually, YOU are the reason I bought my life-changing spiralizer! I heard about it here first. I have loved Smitten Kitchen for a long time. One of my faves of hers is the zucchini tomato casserole. I pinned a few recipes from this post. Thanks for the ideas:) Great post.
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I’m doing spiralized zucchini tonight! And her recent video with a rutabaga made me feel like I could conquer that. I bought a HUGE one and will report back soon.
Such good ideas here! I get a lot of my recipes from Real Simple (the print version) – sometimes I tear them out and put them in a file folder. I also love Orangette, Molly Wizenberg’s site (http://orangette.net) – though I don’t end up making all her recipes.
I love looking at Real Simple at a doctor’s office or the nail salon. Beautiful, simple recipes. I will check out that site!
I love this. I have a binder too, where I put recipes I’ve tried and used (I usually don’t stick them in officially u til I’ve tried them, which means I have a pile of loose pages at the front of the binder). Then every now and then I go through and weed out recipes I think I”ll never make again. That’s hands down the reference I use most often (instead of the shelf of cookbooks!) in my own kitchen. I want to try Ina’s chicken chili, which I’ve never made! xox
What a great post! I’m writing one on my favorite cookbooks, but I hadn’t thought of featuring food bloggers – great idea! I love Ina and Smitten Kitchen, of course. I also love Jessica at How Sweet It Is blog. She cracks me up and her recipes are delicious.
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I’m so glad to find so many other people still doing the binder thing! I’d abandoned mine for a while and now have gone back to it. I love cooking blogs (especially Smitten Kitchen) but give me a good cooking magazine or cookbook in my hands and I’m a happy girl.
I also love The Bitten Word, where they test and tweak recipes from all sorts of sites and publications.
Deb and I grew up together. I used to eat her mom’s meringue cookies when we were kids. They’re a little slice of heaven!
BTW: Not sure how your son is doing with his nut challenges. Once he’s in the clear, you should make her buckeye recipe, http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2010/10/buckeyes/.
As for organizing, I print out “keeper” recipes, put them into plastic sheet covers, and then stick them in binders. I have an entree binder, a green smoothie binder, a desserts binder, and an appetizers/salad/side dish binder. It’s a little old school, but it works for me. Plus, I don’t get my iPad dirty when I’m cooking.
Ooh, great line up, Nina. I’m a fan of Smitten Kitchen and Ina Garten too.
Another food blog I enjoy is Joy the Baker. (The name is a bit of a misnomer because she cooks meals as well as dessert.) She has a fun presence much like Deb and Ina. http://joythebaker.com/
I keep a similar binder with recipes I’ve printed or torn out of magazines. My dilemma comes in when I have an ingredient and don’t know what meal to make. If there is a bounty of, say, asparagus at the market, I end up flipping through the binder hopelessly looking for asparagus recipes. I’m open to any suggestions. 🙂
Fun post!
Jackie Cangro recently posted..Nature Calls: Hummingbirds
Oh how fun!!! (I sympathize with the wild swings between Cook ALL the things! and Ugh… dinner, again?) I love the kitchn too – I make their slow cooker burrito bowls, empanada filling (we put it in tortillas), and the chicken in coconut milk (which I adapted for the crockpot) a lot!
I’ll check out the rest of these sources – some I’ve heard of – but I haven’t done much cooking blog reading in the last couple of years.
For recipes – I vary between printing for a binder and Pinterest as well. I used SayMmm a while back, and while I *really* like their service, at the time it was more difficult to import recipes. They do allow you to create a meal plan and they generate a grocery list for you though – which is awesome!
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Thanks for sharing your favorite food blogs, Nina! I am definitely going to check out some of these recipes. I also love The Kitchn and Smitten Kitchen, but I also find lots of great and family friendly recipes (and writing) in Dinner, A Love Story. I will second Jackie’s rec for Joy the Baker (which I forgot about! thanks for the reminder). I tend to search Pinterest and save pins for recipe ideas, but I do have a binder – you might pass out to see it, because it hasn’t been updated/edited in YEARS! But your idea inspires me and I may just be ready to begin again 🙂
I’ve been looking for a good vegan cookbook. Not that we’re going to make a permanent switch, but we’ve been cooking more of that. Otherwise I google everything. 🙂
Jennie Goutet recently posted..My husband told me to go to the gym
I’m also in the process of going vegan. I plan to check out Thug Kitchen and Mayiam Bialik’s book. I own Vegan before 6, but haven’t really looked through it yet and I have a vegan slowcooker book that I wish I found more exciting. I like the blogs ‘The V word’ and Happy.Healthy.Life http://kblog.lunchboxbunch.com/
I’ll be interested to hear how the transition goes!
You should check out My Name Is Yeh. Molly Yeh is a Julliard trained percussionist who lives on her husband’s family’s farm in rural North Dakota. The photos and recipes are amazing and her posts are always entertaining.
I will check it out for sure!
Great list! I find I pin a lot from damndelicious.com.