A Digital Cookbook?

While I don't think that online recipe sites will replace printed, bound cookbooks anytime soon, these Internet jewels are worth looking into if you haven't before. As with anything else online, approach internet recipe sites using discrimination and common-sense. Many recipes are user-submitted, and could possibly flop.

Online Recipe Cons
• Recipe could be untested
• Directions not professionally written; could be missing steps
• Annoying pop-ups
• You have to wade through advertising

Online Recipe Site Pros
• Searchable
• User reviews
• Scaleable
• Interactive

What online recipe sites offer that cookbooks cannot is the interactive quality of being able to submit, rate, search and comment on recipes. On a very active cooking site, members will chime in and talk about how the recipe turned out for them, what they substituted, and what they'd do differently if they made the dish again. It can be fascinating to read the string of comments attached to a particularly popular recipe.

Online recipes are infinitely more searchable than a physical cookbook. Not only can you search for recipes that have specific combinations of ingredients, but you can also specify things like a cooking method (baked, grilled, etc.) or other terms like "easy" or "low-fat." And if you don't have something specific to search, you can browse.

It's also easy to scale the recipe size, for either more or fewer portions, without doing any math! Let's say you have an oddball amount of a certain ingredient you're looking to get rid of. (Not that that's ever happened to me, mind you, because I'm such a precise planner...ha ha!) You can tinker with scaling the recipe up or down until it fits the amount of the ingredient you have on hand.

My personal favorite recipe site is allrecipes.com. They have an active membership who post very useful comments and critiques, and they have an online recipe box where you can sign up for a free membership and store your favorite recipes.

Click here for a fabulous chocolate article at allrecipes.com - 10 Best Chocolate Recipes!