The Pantry Shopper: Culinary Cohorts, 2: Favorite Foodie Sites

Today is a leftover day. The refrigerator is bursting with smoked salmon, gyro meat, smoked lamb, and the beginnings of an imitation crab salad. Rather than write about the odds and ends that we are eating tonight, I continue my series on favorite cooking-related topics and today is food websites.

Recipes
Have you ever tried to make something according to someone else's recipe and, even though you followed all the steps exactly, it did not turn out quite right? My theory is that the person who originally made the food has some expertise that they may not even be aware of and that is not captured in the recipe and having (or not having) that tidbit of knowledge influences the outcome. Of course these days, a TV chef will have a team of chefs, researchers, testers, and tasters who revise and refine their recipes until they are deemed suitable for the general public to make at home. And yet, I find that recipes from even the most popular chefs are hit-or-miss.

For this reason, when I want to try something new, I always go to the following sites first:

Alton Brown on foodnetwork.com
The websites of Cooks Illustrated, which includes cooksillustrated.com, americastestkitchen.com and cookscountry.com

If you've ever seen their TV shows (AB's show, 'Good Eats,' is on The Food Network and 'America's Test Kitchen' and 'Cook's Country' are on PBS), you probably immediately noticed that they are different from most other cooking shows. These hosts go into detailed explanations about - and the science behind - each step in the cooking process. From AB I learned that vodka produces a flakier pie crust than water (alcohol does not release the gluten like water does). Christopher Kimball, the host of America's Test Kitchen, taught me that woks don't work properly in most home kitchens - I'm better off using a frying pan for stir-frys (the typical home range does not get hot enough for the wok to work efficiently).

If I can't find what I am looking for on either of those two sites, then I turn to:

foodnetwork.com (the recipes, in general) or
epicurious.com, the online home of Gourmet and bon appétit magazines

These two sites are well-established with hundreds of thousands of tested recipes but that is not why I go to them. They have millions of visitors and members who rate recipes and post comments and suggestions regularly thereby providing a tremendous service. I never make a recipe from the web without reading the comments first.

Sharing
I'll frequently post recipes from myrecipes.com, the online source for recipes from Cooking Light, Southern Living, Sunset, Real Simple, and Health magazines. I don't read any of those publications but I do collect the Cooking Light Annual Recipes cookbooks and frequently cook from them (as in the case of the Double-Caramel Turtle Cake). Going to this site is the easiest way to share these recipes.

Ethnic Cuisines
I LOVE LOVE LOVE food from other countries. Some of my favorite sources include:

Korean: Korean Cuisine Blog
Vietnamese: Andrea Nguyen's Viet World Kitchen and Asian Dumpling Tips

Japanese: Harris Salat's The Japanese Food Report
Mexican: Rick Bayless' site, rickbayless.com
Oprah: oprah.com/food.html - She's not an ethnic cuisine but she is an industry and anytime she recommends something on her show, you know it will be AMAZING.

Food Porn
Finally, there are those sites I go to just to look at the pictures. I am sure the recipes are perfectly delicious but it is their artistic creativity and as in the case of http://www.whiteonricecouple.com/, visually stunning photography that keeps me coming back.