Cooking
Whether you're a dedicated foodie or just trying to get a weeknight dinner on the table, the Cooking Web Guide takes care of all your cooking needs. Not only does the guide help you find recipes and cooking tips suited to your skills and kitchen ambitions, it also helps make cooking easy, fun and healthy. Find recipes and specialty food items, watch video demonstrations to learn new dishes and techniques, and get ethnic food recipes and more.
Expand All Guide SectionsRecipes
Recipes litter the Web and a Google search may yield hundreds or more, so how do you choose? Luckily, there are a number of dedicated and highly respected cooking and recipe Web sites that deliver recipes that are tried and true.
Insights for Recipes
- Printing recipes from your computer makes it easy to add notes, and a three-ring binder is a good place to start building your own recipe collection.
- Some recipe Web sites let you enter how many servings you want to make and adjusts the quantities accordingly. Entering any number can lead to some strange quantities, though—who wants to measure 7/53 cups of flour? It's best to try and round to a multiple if you can.
Top Sites for Recipes
To find recipes ...
Epicurious
features well-tested food recipes and a thorough search feature. Register to create a personal online food recipe file, including your own notes about the dish.
Allrecipes
is an online community-based site that serves up food recipes at every skill level, tested—and often submitted—by its members. The site is loaded with extras, including video tutorials, healthy eating advice, an online "Cooking School" with how-tos, and more.
Simply Recipes
combines food recipes passed down through author Elise Bauer's family with new discoveries, all tested and retested before being posted online.
Chow
is for people who don't consider themselves "foodies" but rather, those who "spurn established opinion to sniff out their own secret deliciousness," or better yet, Chowhounds. This site includes food recipes by its own writers, and discussion boards where its members share their own kitchen secrets.
RecipeSource
has been gathering and posting recipes since 1995. The site is a clearinghouse of online food recipes culled from submissions and arranged by ethnic region and type of dish.
To help you copy some restaurant favorites ...
Top Secret Recipes
includes replicas of dishes from restaurants like Applebee’s and White Castle. Many recipes are free but some cost $0.79—not too much to pay if you must know how to recreate your favorite Olive Garden dish.
The Secret Recipe Blog
creates and shares copycat versions of popular supermarket and restaurant favorites. Shhh!
Ethnic Recipes
With the help of the Web, the dizzying world of good eats and ethnic recipes are now easier to find than ever before. Read about the ingredients, tools and techniques of ethnic cuisine.
Insights for Ethnic Recipes
- When faced with an unfamiliar ingredient, enter the name into your favorite search engine to find out more about it. Some ingredients, particularly vegetables and some spices, have different names in different cultures and ethnic cuisines.
- The importance of fresh ingredients can't be overstated. Don't be afraid to ask your local butcher, fishmonger or produce person for advice on how to pick the best of the best. For advice on choosing fresh produce, take a look at this guide to buying fruits and vegetables.
Top Sites for Ethnic Recipes
Asian Online Recipes
includes recipes from almost all of the countries in the massive continent. From Indian tandoori chicken to Filipino Sour Beef Soup, it's listed here.
French Food and Cook
is a good place to begin learning about French cuisine, including recipes, techniques and French cooking vocabulary. The manageable site even includes advice on French table setting.
Jewish Recipes
has instructions for various types of Jewish cuisine, as well as information for the kosher kitchen. The "Jewish Holidays" section lists menu ideas by holiday and includes recipes.
Chef Rick Bayless
is famous for his knowledge of and desire to share the secrets of authentic Mexican cooking. Access a wealth of recipes, as well as information about his show, books and restaurants.
Gourmet Food
Thanks to the Web, you don't have to be Indiana Jones to hunt down the right ingredients. Use the following sites to locate and purchase gourmet food. Buy gourmet products online or find out where to go for new cooking ingredients.
Insights for Gourmet Food
- Some of the best mail-order catalogs have become the best online outlets for gourmet food items, including spices, bulk recipe staples and equipment.
- If you're serious about cooking, consider making the investment in quality pantry staples. Gourmet foods such as oils, spices and ethnic seasonings may seem like a splurge but they often have a long shelf life, so they'll be on hand for plenty of uses.
- Don't be put off by recipes that require you to try out your local ethnic grocer for gourmet food. Usually the most authentic taste is gained by using the most authentic ingredients.
Top Sites for Gourmet Food
Penzeys Spices
is a longtime purveyor of more than 250 spices and seasonings. This Wisconsin-based retailer's Web site is straightforward and easy to navigate.
Di Bruno Bros.
is known nationwide for gourmet food items like cheese, meats and Italian specialties. Thanks to their online catalog, you don't have to travel to get an authentic taste of the Italian-American flavor.
EthnicGrocer
organizes categories by country, making it easy to track down even obscure regional delicacies for the most authentic taste. If you don't know your ghee from your Gorgonzola, fear not—you won't get lost on this site.
Zabar's
has inspired fierce loyalty among New Yorkers for more than 70 years. In addition to their arsenal of gourmet food items and foodstuffs, the store is also famous for its cheeses and smoked fish.
Local Harvest
lets you embrace the organic food movement and its ethos of fresh local food by helping you find farmers markets and family farms nationwide with its clickable map. Some gourmet food items are also available online.
Shamra.com
brings you gourmet and staple ingredients from the Mediterranean. If your grandmother just won't make her specialty without that specific olive oil she knew as a kid, this could be the site for you.
La Tienda
has a great selection of premium Spanish foods, including entire sections for jamon (Spanish ham) and paella. Read the food features to get acquainted with traditional Spanish food culture and the specialty food items used in Spanish recipes.
AsiaMex.com
has more than 1,300 products including gourmet food items gathered from six continents but focuses on Asian and Mexican cooking. Browse through categories like bouillon and chili peppers to sushi and wine.
Ingredient Substitutions
Maybe you don’t have a particular ingredient, or you're looking for low-fat, low-carb or low-cal alternatives to make your favorite dishes healthier. Not to worry: There are plenty of sites to help you find appropriate ingredient substitutions.
Insights for Ingredient Substitutions
- It doesn't hurt to print out a copy of a list of common ingredient substitutions and keep it in a kitchen drawer or a recipe box.
Top Sites for Ingredient Substitutions
For general ingredient substitutions ...
The Cook's Thesaurus
is an exhaustive online cooking encyclopedia that includes descriptions, pronunciation guides and pictures, all arranged into useful categories.
GourmetSleuth
is a well-researched and compiled cooking dictionary of ingredients and culinary terms. Use the site’s easy search feature to find ingredient substitutions for almost anything.
JoyofBaking.com
has this practical and trusty ingredient substitution table for ingredients commonly used in baked goods. Scroll through the alphabetical list to find your magic ingredient.
For healthy alternatives ...
Mayo Clinic
has compiled a list of some common healthy alternatives. These are the kind of everyday ingredient substitutions you can sneak into your kitchen without really altering the way you cook.
How to Cook
With the help of a few well-chosen Web sites, you can start from scratch and learn how to cook using basic cooking techniques. And for more advanced cooks, plenty of sites offer further tips from fellow home cooks and the pros.
Insights on How to Cook
- If you're a busy cook trying to make weeknight meals nutritious and easy, online menu planners can be a lifesaver. This article from USAweekend.com explains some of the more popular online menu planners.
- There are lots of blogs devoted to cooking and guides on how to cook. Check out the findingDulcinea Food Web Guide for some of the top ones.
Top Sites on How to Cook
For online cooking tutorials ...
The Reluctant Gourmet
is a self-taught home cook whose well-written instructions not only teach you how to sauté and what mise en place means, but why you need to know.
Expert Village
has an "Easy Cooking Tips" series that includes instructional videos by Chef Louis Ortiz. They're short, concise and nicely produced, and his unassuming manner doesn't get in the way of the lesson.
The eGullet Society
for Culinary Arts and Letters offers online tutorials for every aspect of cooking on their forum site. The courses, such as the excellent "Basic Knife Skills" and "The Truth About Braising," are comprehensive, incorporating lab assignments and Q&A sessions.
The New York Times
writer Mark Bittman brings an unpretentious old school New York attitude to cooking. His articles are accompanied by video features on how to cook such dishes as risotto, falafel and how to make your own chili paste.
For cooking specific foods ...
The Cattlemen's Beef Board and National Cattlemen's Beef Association
show you how to identify basic cuts and what to do with leftover strip steak. This is the site of an industry trade organization so don't rely on it for unbiased health information.
The National Pork Board
has a "Pork Cooking Basics" section that walks you through different pork cuts, how long to cook them and how to create "the well-equipped pork kitchen." Like the Beef Board, this organization is not unbiased.
The USDA
Food Safety and Inspection Service presents a fact sheet on preparing poultry, an authoritative guide to safely buying, storing and cooking poultry.
HowStuffWorks
has a chart detailing how long to cook vegetables by different cooking methods (for example, steam, microwave, blanch, boil and more).
Kitchen Tools
Kitchen tools and cookware don't make the cook, but they sure do help the cook shine. Use these sites to find all the kitchen tools and gadgets you'll need to be a culinary success.
Insights for Kitchen Tools
- Like anything else, a cook's choice of kitchen tools is a matter of personal taste. But the wealth of customer reviews available online can help you make an educated purchase.
- When it comes to cookware and other kitchen tools, it really does pay to shop around. Sites like Amazon.com and Overstock.com are good places to start but don't be afraid to check other retailers. And don't forget eBay!
Top Sites for Kitchen Tools
Epinions
is the mother of all consumer feedback sites, and tells it like it is. If a pricey piece of cookware (or virtually any other product you can think of) is worth the money, they'll say so.
Kitchen Contraptions
helps you find the coolest, newest kitchen tools and gadgets around. Pretty straightforward, without a lot of in-depth review, this "look what I found!" site is for the gadget-heavy cook.
GadgetBargains.com
provides a "Kitchen Gadgets & Kitchenware" section, full of everything from mini-choppers to chest freezers. High-tech gizmos and cooking tool accessories rule here.
iKitchen
has everything from the latest "as seen on TV" kitchen doodad to a no-frills frying pan. Visit the "Bargain Bin" for incredible deals on ordinary and unusual cooking tools.
America's Test Kitchen
is one of the few sites where the free registration really feels like you're getting a steal. The companion Web site to the popular PBS series, this site is a kitchen geek's paradise, filled with meticulous recipe testing and unbiased product reviews.
Fante's Kitchen Wares Shop
was established in 1906, long before anyone had heard the name Williams Sonoma. The site has an encyclopedic catalog of kitchenware for almost any culinary task.
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