AllRecipes.com Is My One Stop Shop for Meal Ideas!

Today I visited AllRecipes.com for the 100th time looking for something different to make for dinner tomorrow. Let's face it... we all get stuck in a rut now and then and it's easy to make something for the 200th time when you are being lazy. I use this site to help me mix it up a bit whenever I actually have the motivation to try something new. AllRecipes.com teaches you that you don't have to be a proffesional chef in order to make great meals!

I decided to browse through my recipe box to see if there was anything I had saved before that I might want to make again. I was shocked when I noticed that I saved my first recipe on AllRecipes.com back in 2001! After 6 years I still return to this site at least once a month so I thought it was time to share it with all of you. After all, if all of you join the site, you can start posting more great recipes for me to find. Before I continue, let me just point out that this site is FREE to join and FREE to use, so come down now!!

The Basics
The site can be generalized as just a place to find recipes. I remember when I visited back in 2001, it was basically just a simple search engine to find different recipes. Even though the site has evolved a lot since then, the basic premise is still the same. You can go to the site and search for recipes by name, an ingredient, or browse by category. Most of the time when I visit the site, I start by browsing the category for the type of meal I'm making (main course, soup, dessert, salad, etc). However if I have a specific ingredient in mind that I want to eat, I will search that way. This site has a whole lot going on, so let me walk you through the steps I usually follow as this will demonstrate all the features the site has to offer.

The Recipes
There is a wide range of recipes on this site ranging from recipes that were published in one of Allrecipes Cookbooks to recipes that one person just invented last night at dinner. If you search for a more popular recipe, you are bound to find a lot of matches. For example, I love lentil soup so I did a search and found 71 recipes! Every one is made a little differently with different ingredients and different methods. Reading through, I could easily find a dozen I'd want to try. Does that overwhelm you? Well it does overwhelm me at times so I use the other helpful tools on the site to choose a recipe.

Advanced Searching
Since the term lentil soup brought up more than I could bother to sort through, I would then go to an advanced search. Once again I put in lentil soup but this time I choose to search for the exact phrase and under Ingredients I don't Want I listed wine since many times lentil soup is made with wine and I don't like that. Finally I checkmarked Vegetarian under the special considerations. There are a lot of other advanced choices such as what type of meal I want, what style I want it, how long it should take, etc, but I usually don't get that specific. This time when I searched, there were only 18 results. What if every single one of those 18 recipes sounds good when you read them? How do I decide which one I want?

Ratings and Reviews
This is where Allrecipes.com excels above most other recipe sites I've visited. Almost every recipe on the site has at least one rating and/or review by another user. Users can give a recipe a rating from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest). Usually I want the recipe that EVERYONE liked, so I sort the results by rating. The site will display all the 5 star reviews sorted by # of people who rated it then the 4 star reviews and the rest in the same matter. This means the review that shows up first is the highest rated review that was rated by the most people. It doesn't mean that there isn't a 4 star review that more people rated, so I will browse the 4 star reviews too!

The way I see it, if 100s of people reviewed and rated a recipe and it still has 4-5 stars overall, it must be pretty decent. If only 1 person rated a review, it's possible that was someone's friend or relative so I don't trust that as much. Instead, I will usually choose a highly rated recipe that has been hit by at least a dozen people. The first review in my lentil soup search has a rating of 4.5 and 265 people have reviewed it. This sounds like something I want to check out.

Recipe Format
When you click the lentil soup recipe on the top, the recipe opens with the same format of all others. First if there is a picture it will show right on top with a "servings and scale" form next to it. Here you can conveniently set the number of servings you want to make. I want a lot of soup so even though it defaults to 6, I want to make enough for 12 servings. I enter in 12 and when the recipe refreshes, everything refreshes and now the ingredients are doubled. Sure you could do the math yourself but why would you want to if you can do it this easily?

The list of ingredients follows with measurements that are usually very easy to follow. You can change the measurements to metric if you are from a country that uses this. After this you will see the directions. My one problem is that many people will list multiple steps in only one step. Even though for some recipes I will see 10 distinct steps, they will put everything together into 4 steps. I get annoyed by this because it means it is easy to lose track while you cook. Even so, the recipes are usually pretty easy to follow. I never have trouble understanding what to do, I only get lost when there are too many steps in one.

Below the recipe, you will see a few reviews that were the most helpful to other users of the site. Reviews are short, simple and to the point. They will tell whether they liked the recipe or not and if they made any changes when they did the recipe. Users can rate these reviews by how helpful they were and that way you can see the most helpful reviews first. Users can also submit a photo of when they made the recipe so you can see multiple pictures of each recipe. Pictures sometimes make all the difference!

On the right, you will see the nutritional information such as the calories, fat, sodium, etc. You have to take this information with a grain of salt since sometimes it can be inaccurate. One recipe I read said there was 69 grams of fat for a sauce made of butter, some spices, and some garlic. It was obvious to me the user had entered the # of servings incorrectly (They had entered 1 serving for the entire recipe even though it made enough for a lot of people). It is still helpful when you are looking for recipes but you have to be careful if you see an outrageous number.

Shopping List
This recipe looks good to me, so I'm going to make it! If I hit Add to Shopping List, the page refreshes to tell me the recipe has been added. Since this is the only recipe I'm planning to make now, I can click the Shopping List link on the top of the page to see a nice grocery list separated by type of food (canned, pasta, produce, etc). This can be printed and taken to the store with you so you can make sure you get all the ingredients. This is especially helpful if you are making multiple recipes because it will list all ingredients for all chosen recipes on one simple page. You can save your list, but I usually don't do that since I can always run it again.

Printing or Saving the Recipe
Back at the recipe page, there are choices to print the recipe on a full page, 3x5 size or 4x6 size. I think it's easiest just to do the full page print because once I'm done cooking I usually toss the recipe paper. The 3x5 size and 4x6 size puts it into little boxes but you still would have to cut it out in order to save it in a recipe box.

Even if I wanted to save the printed recipe, I usually can't because it gets all messy while I cook. That's where this site's tool come in handy once again. I can go to the recipe and choose Save to Recipe Box. The recipe is now saved in my account and I can easily return to it at any time. As an added bonus, I can organize the recipes in my box by categories. I have quick links to review and rate each recipe. I can add notes or photos or retrieve the shopping list for it. In the past 6 years I have only saved 3 pages of recipes because I often forgot to save it. Now that I use the site more often, I save every recipe I come across that is of interest. When I'm in the mood to cook but I don't know what I want, I can start out in my recipe box to see if there is anything I saved that I would like to try again. The recipe box even allows you to add and save your own private recipes so that you can keep all of your recipes in one place.

My Review of the Recipes
Although I have only reviewed a few recipes so far, I have tried many of them. I am trying to get more into rating and reviewing the recipes I make so that I can help other members like you make decisions. I have enjoyed 90% of the recipes I have tried so far with little to no alterations. The few that I didn't enjoy I either made incorrectly or it just wasn't my cup of tea. You have to understand that what one person finds delicious, another might hate. When I look at the recipes, if I see an ingredient (such as wine) I will usually pass on the recipe and pick another. I know there is a 99% change I wouldn't like the recipe with wine, and taking out the wine may make the recipe incomplete, so I will choose another recipe. You have to know yourself and your family and choose only recipes where you like all of the ingredients. If you are "follow the recipe" cook like me, it's best to find a recipe that is 100% what you want so that you don't have to make any changes to it and risk messing it up.

My Review of the Reviews
I do have to throw this note out there for anyone who writes reviews on AllRecipes.com. I beg of you NOT to be like this entreated example. MADE UP EXAMPLE: A user reviews a recipe for chocolate chip brownies and this is what she says... "I hated this recipe, and give it 1 star. Instead of chocolate chips I used cocoa powder and I doubled the amount of flower. I also made them into cookies instead of brownies. This recipe is awful, don't try it." Do you see what I'm saying here? I have seen people rate a recipe low and then go on to say how THEY DIDN'T FOLLOW THE RECIPE AT ALL! How can you rate a recipe low if you changed more than 50% of it?

I can get lost in the reviews. A lot of people give advice "I added this, I took out that, I cooked it longer, I cooked it shorter". Instead of reading ALL the reviews, I just read a few and as soon as I am satisfied with what I want to make, I don't read anymore. It gets too confusing if you read all the reviews. Many members will alter the recipe slightly before reviewing it and I think that's fine. However I hate when someone changes many aspects of the recipe because there is a point where it becomes a completely different recipe. I wish these people would realize that and submit their changes as a new recipe if they think it's that fantastic. Other than these few little complaints, I find the overall ratings and review system to be a big help.

Thinking outside the Box
So far I have listed a lot of features, but the recipe features are still just the basics of this site. There is much more to it than that. You are able to view collections based on themes, categories, holidays or events. You can read articles and advice for different meals and tips of food. The site has endless information which will keep you busy for hours whenever you are planning your next event.

Adding your own Recipes
If you'd like to Submit a Recipe, they ask that you first make sure the recipe isn't already on the site and is not from some cookbook meaning it would be copyrighted. Recipes are not instantly published since they go through a review process. This means you shouldn't try to scam the system by submitting a ton of recipes that are already there because they will catch on. Although they accept recipes that are similar, they will try not to accept something that is exactly the same as another already on the site. I haven't submitted anything since all my recipes come from other people.

Have you joined yet?
I think I covered enough great features of this site to make you want to join now. I don't even bother going to any other site for recipes because I always find what I am looking for at AllRecipes.com. The site is user-friendly, full of information, and has enough variety to please everyone. Check it out today and try something new for dinner tonight. Enjoy!!