Fellow Cooks of Metafilter, Enlighten Me!
October 29, 2024 3:24 PM

I'm looking to expand my horizons, so: What recipe sites do you follow? The ones where every recipe you've tried has been at least very good and most you've tried have made it into the regular rotation? The ones that absolutely nail the deliciousness-to-effort ratio? The ones that expose you to dishes you never knew about, or never thought you could make at home?

I have one site that meets these criteria (once upon a chef), but would love to have more. Type of cuisine doesn't matter. I'm just looking for the real winners.
posted by DrGail to Food & Drink (33 answers total) 45 users marked this as a favorite


Cookie and Kate
posted by seemoorglass at 3:29 PM on October 29


Seconding SK. She has recipes with sets of ingredients where when you look at them you think (or at least this is me) really? and then you make the recipe and it's amazing. Also great comments from the community on all kinds of aspects of the recipe and occasionally Deb chimes in.

Also BudgetBytes. Well tested recipes.
posted by bluesky43 at 3:31 PM on October 29


Yep, Smitten Kitchen and Budget Bytes. For both, I subscribe to their (free) weekly newsletter. I don't think I've ever had a bunk recipe from either.
posted by BlahLaLa at 3:32 PM on October 29


Another vote for Smitten Kitchen - always always good.
Also The Woks of Life
posted by maupuia at 3:33 PM on October 29


My husband watches a lot of YouTube cooks such as binging with babish
Lots of good tricks - sometimes it’s not the recipe it’s the technique
posted by St. Peepsburg at 3:33 PM on October 29


If I want to know that the recipe is going to be exactly right, it’s always Serious Eats, King Arthur Baking, and Cook’s Illustrated (the latter is behind a paywall). If there’s some kind of approach-to-cooking matrix I am definitely way off in one corner with J. Kenji Lopez-Alt and Christopher Kimball.

From the realm of single-writer blogs, I wouldn’t hesitate to make something from Minimalist Baker, School Night Vegan, Mississippi Vegan, Sweet Simple Vegan, or Nigella Lawson (who regularly features very well-vetted recipes from new cookbooks, which is handy; she is not resting on her laurels).
posted by bcwinters at 3:43 PM on October 29


Sally’s baking addiction (some people say her recipes are too sweet, but I actually find her use of sugar to be strategic and focused on texture/moisture, so idk)

“What to cook when you don’t feel like cooking” is a paid substack with some free recipes, and literally all of the recipes I’ve tried have been super delicious. (Caveat, personally I find the author a bit annoying even if her work products are AMAZING, but I think it’s because I’m jealous of her wealthy-coastal-elite lifestyle?)
posted by samthemander at 3:45 PM on October 29


Smitten Kitchen is always my choice. I think the biggest factor for me is that I’ve never had a dud. Trying new recipes can be exhausting so knowing that it will be successful is important for me
posted by raccoon409 at 3:47 PM on October 29


Seconding a lot of the ones here, and adding one I haven't seen - Spend with Pennies. I didn't grow up cooking much or around that much actual cooking, so I use this for lots of "basic" recipes.
posted by brilliantine at 3:49 PM on October 29


Budget Bytes. Nothing really earth shattering in here, but all affordable and approachable recipes that are pretty much all delicious.
posted by Teadog at 3:55 PM on October 29


nthing Smitten Kitchen and Budget Bytes.

For me Smitten Kitchen is more "we're going to do this thing the right way no matter what it takes" and can get fussy and complex, but everything I've tried to do has been good. The recipes I've used haven't had hard-to-source ingredients and I don't think Deb's going for that kind of thing - more like if you want to make green bean casserole for Thanksgiving without using canned soup. My first source to browse if I want to make some kind of pie or baked thing but I'm not sure what yet. I don't make them very often, but Deb's recipes for knish, apple pie, and NY cheesecake are what I use when I make those things.

Budget Bytes is some kind of sorcery using a lot of things you most likely have in your pantry already and making them into something surprisingly interesting in a half hour. I'll go here when I have some vague notion of what I want to make, like "something with chicken" or "some kind of pasta" - there's filters for those kinds of things in the search.
posted by LionIndex at 3:56 PM on October 29


nthing Serious Eats and The Woks of Life.

One I turn to repeatedly for Japanese home cooking is Just One Cookbook. Although I have to admit the recipe I've made the most often is Japanese Milk Bread. And Japanese Potato Salad.
posted by needled at 4:40 PM on October 29


The Mediterranean Dish. As you might expect, lovely dishes with a Mediterranean twist.
posted by Rivvo at 4:44 PM on October 29


Tori Avey for Jewish and Mediterranean food, with lots of kosher and holiday meal planning options. The only cooking site I read the preamble essay on.
posted by skookumsaurus rex at 5:01 PM on October 29


Chinese Cooking Demystified is on Youtube but is very good for Chinese recipes (and Just One Cookbook, mentioned above, for Japanese). I find Larousse Cocina (in Spanish) is ironically usually reliably good for Mexican recipes or reference (Mexican recipes that aren't Americanized or aimed at a very low ability level are not that easy to find). Kenji Lopez-Alt for American food and most everything else (my first step when looking for a recipe is to simply search the name of the dish + Kenji).
posted by ssg at 5:15 PM on October 29


@Joshua Weissman (try to catch his cookbooks on sale, I picked up the first one for 2.99 on Amazon ebook)
@LifebyMikeG (previousy known as "ProHomeCooks")
posted by kschang at 5:21 PM on October 29


I still pay for Epicurious, which also still gives you access to Bon Appetit recipes. It's $40 a year so it feels like a minimal expense. I would not just make a recipe at random and expect it to be good, but all the recipes I've made have been good ones and I like searching for specific things.
posted by edencosmic at 5:22 PM on October 29


Dassana's Veg Recipes is good for vegetarian recipes— primarily Indian, but not exclusively.

Korean Bapsang (link goes to delicious braised potatoes) is another favorite.

Both these and Woks of Life have nice sections on herbs/spices/seasonings/pantry items that describe what basic supplies you need for their cuisine and how they are used more generally.
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:27 PM on October 29


Rainbow Plant Life. The recipe developer, Nisha, uses her experience with Indian cooking to develop rich and deep flavors in vegan meals. She also covers fundamentals--the best way to get crispy tofu, how to make tempeh taste delicious and not bitter, how to make basic dips, sauces, and dressings to enhance your meals, etc.
posted by MagnificentVacuum at 5:56 PM on October 29


Recipe Tin Eats. A really wide variety of recipes/cuisines and I'm almost never disappointed in the results.
posted by ambulanceambiance at 6:02 PM on October 29


We've been vegetarian for maybe a year, and Cookie And Kate (R.I.P. Cookie!) hasn't failed us yet.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:39 PM on October 29


Many great sites here! A hearty second for Minimalist Baker, and I’ll add 101 Cookbooks to the list.
posted by marlys at 6:43 PM on October 29


Also seconding Just One Cookbook!
posted by marlys at 6:45 PM on October 29


For vegan recipes, Oh She Glows is great.
posted by akk2014 at 8:15 PM on October 29


If I had to pick a single source it would be smitten kitchen. Like others, have had zero duds and everything I’ve made has been excellent.
posted by Parkaboy at 8:34 PM on October 29




I've been getting a lot of vegetable-related inspiration from Justine Snacks--some of her recipes are actually too involved for me to make on a normal weeknight if I make them verbatim, but there can be a core idea about flavor combinations that I wouldn't have thought of myself, that I can pull out into a simpler version (like if I just make the base dish and not the homemade dressing or seed crackers or whatever to go with it). (When I do feel like going all-out and following one exactly, the results have 100% been worth it.) And her Instagram is also great to follow, her chatty confidence from her videos is infectious!
posted by rivenwanderer at 9:46 PM on October 29


America's Test Kitchen's recpe are wonderful. And after you find one in a video that you like, you can Google the online text recipe then input that URL into archive.is and see an unlocked version.

(Before someone complains, I went ahead and bought their online service after a while. But this is a perfectly solid way to test things.)
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:38 PM on October 29


For desserts I only use Bravetart. Some are a bit complex , but everything I’ve made from it over several years has been over the top good.
posted by waving at 11:21 PM on October 29


I love Chef Jean Pierre's channel - I think his decades of experience in working in top end restaurants and then running a cooking school show. As somebody who was never taught cooking , I have learnt a lot from his videos.
posted by rongorongo at 2:39 AM on October 30


Nth-ing SK, as well as Sally’s Baking Addiction.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:03 AM on October 30


Post Punk Kitchen (and Isa Chandra Moskowitz, specifically) got me into cooking back in the early 2000s and has been a giving tree ever since.

The first time I ever made matzoh ball soup it was because a former housemate had left behind this on VHS when moving out. I was broke, 24, in a new city, and had nothing better to do than make batch after batch after batch of matzoh ball soup. Friends from that era will still sometimes call me Motz, a shorthand for "matzy'all".
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 4:11 AM on October 30


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