Recipe Wars

It's happened to all of us. We've gone surfing for one simple recipe and wound up with a million . The question is what's good and what's not. ? What reviews should we trust? That's the problem in our quick info age. There are just too many recipes and reviews to follow. How do we figure out what recipe is for us?

That was the interesting topic of the great Julia Moskin in her article in today's Dining section of The New York Times. So many of us (includng myself for this blog) use the Internet to search recipes as opposed to doing it the old fashioned way cracking open a good and well informed cookbook. Luckily the newest search engine, Bing, has a special recipe section that will take users straight to what they're looking for. However once you're there, you'll still be at sea. Type in chocolate chip cookie recipe, for example and you'll get a million recipes. Which ones are good? Is it someone's gourmet one from the Food Channel ? Or Aunt Edna's out in North Dakota? Whose croissant recipe do you trust? Jeanne Marie's in Paris or Rachel Rays'? The next question is how to decipher the many that are out there.

Many home cooks look for what's known as "rich snippets". That means the recipe should have not only an exact cooking time but also nutritional facts attached to it. There should also be yield and the author mentioned either at the beginning or the end. The numbe of stars next to it should be also considered however take into consideration that one chef's tasty is another's ick. Also it pays to check not just the first two pages of the search but subsequent ones. Sometimes the third and fourth pages weld a better or easier version .


What web recipes are good and what aren't? The best advice is to look for fully detailed ones. Also take into consideration the number of stars and even good reviews that follow it. Best of all , first make the recipe and taste it yourself. If it's a winner , then stick with it, if it's horrible, then it's back to the search engine and your quest for good recipes.