Recipe sites without the junk?

August 2, 2021 1:24 PM

If you look for recipes online, you know the kind of junk I’m talking about - all you want is instructions on making tomato sauce or whatever, but the site is packed with ads, photos, links, anecdotes, comments and oh, yes, somewhere in all of that, a recipe. You can always tell when you’ve landed on one because the scroll box is going to be tiny. Google loves to point you to them.

So my question is, are there any reliable recipe sites where you can get a text-only recipe (with maybe one ad and a photo or two) and none of the unnecessary padding? (Some of my friends love recipe apps, but I’d rather look at a website.)

posted by Epixonti to Food & Drink (24 answers total)

This is a big part of why I subscribe to the NYTimes Cooking site.
posted by mskyle at 1:27 PM on August 2, 2021 [15 favorites]

Allrecipes is fine if you just use the 'print' button box to look at it. Either print to pdf or print the actual paper.

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/270712/air-fryer-coconut-shrimp/?printview

It drops all the dross out of it. Also it is excellent for copying recipes to Anylist, which we use and clean up/mod/factor recipes accordingly with it's internal recipe function.
posted by Brockles at 1:29 PM on August 2, 2021 [4 favorites]

BBC Good Food is pretty good for this. It does use UK measures, though (grams, no lbs/oz/cups etc). I’m on my mobile - might be worth checking on a computer to see if they’re toggleable to imperial. Seems to have 10,000 recipes so plenty to go on.
posted by penguin pie at 1:36 PM on August 2, 2021 [5 favorites]

Serious Eats. There’s usually an associated recipe development article but it’s linked and not on the same page.
posted by supercres at 1:37 PM on August 2, 2021 [8 favorites]

Paste the URL into justtherecipe and it will automatically filter all the rest of it out.
posted by ananci at 1:38 PM on August 2, 2021 [57 favorites]

Came here to suggest what ananci already suggested. You can turn just about any cruft-filled recipe blog page into a bare-bones recipe.

It even works with the subscription-only NYT Cooking site.
posted by emelenjr at 1:52 PM on August 2, 2021 [4 favorites]

At the beginning of each recipe, Budget Bytes has a "jump to recipe" link in case you don't want to read about it, just see it.
posted by JanetLand at 1:55 PM on August 2, 2021 [4 favorites]

If you're willing to pay, NYT Cooking is excellent for this. The articles have a paragraph of intro and (usually) a link to the article where the recipe was featured, but otherwise it's just the ingredients and instructions. I do often read the articles because sometimes they'll talk about substitutions or modifications that they don't duplicate in the recipe itself. Note: If you have a print subscription to the NYT, I believe NYT Cooking is included as a benefit.

If you're a Washington Post subscriber their Voraciously subsite is searchable and also separates recipes from article text, but they don't have an app or a separate subscription option like NYT Cooking does.

And Serious Eats is usually good on the content side but they have a lot of ads and autoplay video in the sidebar, which I don't love. Again, I often end up reading their articles because I want to know how the recipe was developed, but I have to remember to pause the autoplay video in the sidebar before it becomes distracting.

(Also, Google loves to point you to those sites because that's how everybody makes money).
posted by fedward at 2:03 PM on August 2, 2021 [5 favorites]

It's not exactly what you're looking for, but Punchfork is the way that I get most of my recipes. They scrape the websites of a ton of recipe websites and display them in a grid. You can search by recipe name or ingredient. Due to copyright reasons, you do have to click through to the annoying blog page to get instructions, but for just browsing it's great.
posted by little king trashmouth at 2:17 PM on August 2, 2021

It might be helpful if you understand that Google is pointing you to those recipes because they are optimized for Google. Which is to say, if the writers didn't include all that stuff, you'd never find the recipes in the first place. Bit of a Catch-22, isn't it?

I was gifted access to NY Times Cooking, and it's really fantastic.
posted by bluedaisy at 2:51 PM on August 2, 2021 [7 favorites]

I use the Recipe Filter extension for chrome. It gives you a popup modal window with just the actual recipe, but you have the option to click out of it to see the full page. This happens automatically when you visit a page with a recipe, so it's a little easier than a site like justtherecipe where you have to paste in the URL.
posted by belladonna at 2:52 PM on August 2, 2021 [7 favorites]

I haven't tried any of the recipes yet but I've had this site bookmarked because it has zero preamble. Just the recipe.

TheSkullery.net
posted by paperback version at 3:05 PM on August 2, 2021

Blue Apron's recipes are all online. Bonus, the reviews are honest/scathing and not just a bunch of people going "Wow, that recipe looks really good! Here's a link to my blog!"
posted by wondermouse at 3:28 PM on August 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

nthing NYT Cooking and the way Serious Eats separates the writeups and the recipes.

Smitten Kitchen and SimplyRecipes (which started out as SimplyElise) have stayed pretty lean and offer "jump to recipe" links -- the write-ups are focused on tips for the specific recipe -- probably because they both have name recognition and a near-infinite amount of Google juice built up over nearly 20 years.

(I'm sympathetic towards all of those food bloggers who have to sleep in Google's procrustean bed. And I can't remember as many people complaining about Smitten Kitchen's longer writeups back in the day, and don't see many people complaining about David Lebovitz's now.)
posted by holgate at 3:53 PM on August 2, 2021 [10 favorites]

I hate to begrudge anyone trying to make a living off of providing me recipes for free. But because I too, hate all the extra crap, I prefer to pay for recipes. I love both NYtimes Cooking as well as America's Test Kitchen. Both are well-worth their fees.

For free recipes, I can usually find something on Food Network without a lot of extra bloat.

Also yes, many bloggers include a link to jump to the recipe, like Half-Baked Harvest, Smitten Kitchen, Budget Bytes, Alexandra's Kitchen, and Skinny Taste. They're usually inconspicuous, but you can find the links if you look for them. These are just some of the recipe blogs I generally like. Each one of them had a 'jump to recipe' link at the top of the page - you may find that there's a lot more that have this and it's just easy to overlook.
posted by hydra77 at 3:55 PM on August 2, 2021 [4 favorites]

Just FYI, blame Google for this. If the sites just had recipes, they wouldn't do well with Google search because Google prioritizes based on the length of time someone spends on a page. So content creators have to tell you the history of the Martini instead of just telling you to "Pour 2.75 oz of Tanqueray and .25 oz of dry Vermouth into a mixing glass filled with ice. Stir vigorously for 14 seconds. Strain into a coupe."
posted by dobbs at 5:10 PM on August 2, 2021 [4 favorites]

I know this is how many bloggers keep their sites free. Yes, a copious amount of ads, but I’ve had luck using reader view for this.
posted by Juniper Toast at 5:57 PM on August 2, 2021

Epicurious fulfills this requirement for me. I’ve been using the site for almost 10 years and the app for however long it has existed. I’ve got a pretty great collection of favorite recipes in my saved recipe collection at this point. It’s free.
posted by chuke at 6:00 PM on August 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

I use an app called AnyList. The best part of anylist is that you can import any recipe from the internet, and it filters out all the filler and gives you the instructions in plain text. Also, you can then store the recipe, and when you want to go shopping, just add the ingredients you need to the grocery list. I love this app!
posted by foxonisland at 6:52 PM on August 2, 2021

I just grab the scrollbar and scroll to the bottom. 99% of the time that solves the problem.
posted by brianogilvie at 8:04 PM on August 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

If you like historic recipes, and book format, the Internet Archive's got you covered with 43 versions of blueberry grunt.
posted by Scram at 9:03 PM on August 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

Lot's of great suggestions in this thread. I like WikiHow, a no frills website with decent recipes, and variations on recipes.
posted by oldnumberseven at 9:20 PM on August 2, 2021

I PgDn until I get to the recipe. There's never anything useful in the preamble.

I don't have a single favourite recipe source because there is no single source that I trust to have the single most correct version of a particular recipe, so I always open the top X search results and calculate the median. I compare both the ingredients and the technique -- if something appears in most recipes, it's probably necessary; if it only appears in one it's probably pointless; if it varies between them it's probably necessary but has many acceptable substitutes, etc..
posted by confluency at 2:20 AM on August 3, 2021

Response by poster: Thanks to everyone for the suggestions!
posted by Epixonti at 8:20 AM on August 3, 2021