Websites for Foodies

Much to the dismay of my large Italian family, my cooking skills don’t extend past grilled cheese sandwiches and canned soup. So over the years I have found myself on an eternal search for any website willing to coax me through meal preparations.

I have found that most sites give instructions as though you are already a professional chef with exotic ingredients and advanced cooking techniques. Since we’ve established that I wield a mean can opener, I really need more of the basics.

Two of my favorite user-centric sites are recipematcher.com and supercook.com. These stand out because they suggest tasty recipes based off the items you already have in your kitchen. With a virtual “pantry”, they will actually keep a record of the groceries you have so you can quickly see what you need to buy.

The recipes from these sites are aggregated from several recipe websites, including Epicurious and RecipeZaar and they seem to turn a painful chore into a culinary adventure. I found a delicious sweet and sour chicken recipe using only four ingredients. Go ahead, put it to the test. No matter how few ingredients you have it will generate some really great recipes.

If you’re looking for a site that is not only a recipe search engine but also a blog, forum and cookbook review site then check out foodieview.com. My favorite feature is the Meal Plan of the Week that sets out a 7-day meal plan and even populates a grocery list, making dinner fool proof.

Other favorites include…allrecipes.com, which I think has the largest selection, complete with ratings and reviews by home cooks to help the recipes jump off the page and onto your table.

If you’re planning to travel and need to know the best restaurants in an unfamiliar town, the Chowhound community on chow.com allows food lovers to add tips for delicious dinning worldwide.

The largest food networking sites, cookstr.com and foodbuzz.com, allow you to blog about your favorite recipes. This year, Foodbuzz is even hosting their first Blogger Festival where they will be handing out awards to the top “foodies” while Cookstr is full of recipes that have been designed by chefs and cookbook authors from around the world. If you are particularly low on inspiration you can use their “surprise me” button.

Of course you can never go wrong with staple comfort foods such as those recipes found on Delish and Martha Stewart. With these sites you can not only prepare a delicious dinner but entertain for friends and family for years to come.