Where to Find the Best Recipes on the Web

It's always fun to try out a new recipe and impress your family and friends, but with the boundless amounts of information available nowadays, it can be a challenge to locate recipes that produce quality results. While cookbooks are fun to have and usually yield amazing, well-researched results, I find myself turning more and more frequently to the internet for culinary information. My three favorite food-related websites, http://www.epicurious.com, http://www.foodnetwork.com, and http://www.marthastewart.com, consistently lead me to great recipes, and provide fabulous new ideas.

Epicurious.com is an amazing tool because it is comprised of recipes that have run in magazines like Gourmet and Shape. These recipes are, for the most part, extremely classy, and the recipes are very straightforward and easy to follow. Each recipe is rated and reviewed by ordinary people, who are very good about sharing their experiences with the recipes and about rating the overall successfulness of the recipe. The 'advanced search' feature is extremely specific, so this is the perfect website for picky eaters and those with dietary restrictions.

Foodnetwork.com is another great food site, especially for those who watch the television channel of the same name. This website has a large database of recipes to fit every genre and skill level, and is great for ideas about cooking with kids, throwing parties, and special-occasion cooking. Just like epicurious, foodnetwork has a rating and review system, which is very helpful when choosing a recipe. If you are looking to prepare a recipe you've never tried before, it's a very good idea to read through the other cooks' caveats and hints before proceeding.

Marthastewart.com never fails to deliver a successful recipe, and Martha's notes and instructions are very clear, and almost every recipe is accompanied by a photograph. Something I find comforting about Martha's recipes is that she often explains common mistakes and basic cooking concepts, so you'll rarely have a moment in the middle of cooking when you think you might have done something wrong. Her instructions are always very complete, and her ideas are extremely creative. Even novice cooks can produce amazing results by following Martha's recipes.

I've used the internet as a cooking tool for quite some time now, and these three websites have consistently been the best and most reliable I have found. I can almost always find the recipe I need on one of these websites, and sometimes I'll even compare ingredient lists between two sites to craft an even better concoction. The results I've gotten from these recipes are consistently impressive, and I've spared myself the hassle of clunky cookbooks. The best part - all of these websites are absolutely free to use, with no membership fees of any kind, and lots of helpful tools. If you've never used an online recipe before, now is the time to begin, and these are definitely the places to look.