Recipe Sites for Reluctant Chefs
I like to eat. I do not particularly enjoy cooking.
I have friends who love to cook; I have family members who try new recipes and experiment with ingredients, then post mouth-watering pictures of the results on Facebook. I am in awe of these people; I have the same admiration and respect for them as I do for the kind of person who can pick up dance moves just by watching, go skiing without significantly injuring themselves, or sit down at a piano and play any song you throw at them (with both hands! and all their fingers! and with chords and everything!). Those people are not me.
But however much a lifetime of restaurants, takeout, and cold-cereal-for-dinner might appeal to me, I concede that those options are neither healthy nor economical, and I accept cooking as a necessity. But that doesn’t mean I can’t make it as easy as possible.
I’m talking about the whole experience – I want recipes that are easy to find, easy to shop for, and easy to cook. I’ve done some research and found a few sites that work for me. Maybe they’ll work for you too:
Supercook
One thing that makes cooking a pain, as far as I’m concerned, is having to run out to the store to pick up ingredients. This is why I love this site. You can list the ingredients you already have (to guarantee the recipes you find will definitely use an item, click on it to emphasize it). The site will immediately display a list of suggested recipes, each listing the other ingredients you’ll need (which are repeated under the “Do you have?” section). If you see something that looks good to you, and you do indeed have the other items listed, you’re good to go!
But what if you’ve just entered and emphasized “jalapeno, mustard, turkey” and then you notice a lot of the recipes you’ve just found require garlic, and you’re fresh out? Just click on the Exclusions tab and list garlic as something you don’t have. Voila! Now the recipes include jalapeno, turkey, and mustard, but there’s nary a one with garlic. No excuses; start cooking.
(“Exclusions” also lets you remove entire categories of food [e.g. meat, dairy, gluten] to take into account any food restrictions you might have.)
Another nice feature of supercook is the servings calculator. Once you have a recipe up on the screen, you can change the number of servings and the recipe will automatically recalculate. So, not only can you avoid running to the supermarket; you can also avoid doing math. What could be easier?
MyRecipes
Here’s another good site. In Advanced Search, you can narrow the recipes by several different criteria, including one called “Conveniences”, which are various categories just perfect for people like me: “Quick/Easy”, “Make-Ahead”, “Meals Made Easy”, and “5 Ingredients or Less” are just a few (and yes, it should be “5 Ingredients or FEWER” and yes, I do find that annoying).
You can click on the Recipes tab and choose Advanced Recipe Search in the drop-down. There’s a screen full of options to play with; “Conveniences” is about halfway down.
Or you can stay on the home page and click on the “Ingredients Chef” tool. This is fun: just enter what you have at hand, and see what the Ingredients Chef comes up with. I tried chicken thighs and noodles, which brought up several good recipes, but I didn’t see any way to limit them by how easy they were, so I don’t think I’ll be using that link again.
Or you can simply enter something in the basic search bar and then refine your results. Here’s an example:
I thought about this. Wouldn’t Real Simple magazine have, well, lots of real simple recipes? So I tried a different search:
Hmmm. Looking at Convenience, I saw that only two were classified as Quick/Easy. So much for Real Simple having only real simple recipes. But that’s fine; two are plenty. The second one, Pork Chops With Escarole And Balsamic Onion, looked perfect. The total searching time, using the basic search and then refining it? Less than two minutes. Easy!
But the easiest way to find something easy to cook at myrecipes is simply to click the “Quick & Easy” tab in the middle of the home page. A drop-down menu displays the options of No-Cook Recipes, Make-Ahead Recipes, Slow-Cooker Recipes, 15-Minute Recipes, Dinner Tonight, and One List Five Meals (which definitely makes for easy shopping!).
Epicurious
Epicurious is one of the first recipe sites I discovered. I used to turn to it all the time, and I still go back to it fairly often. As in myrecipes, you can use either the basic or advanced search.
I searched for “chicken marsala” (in quotes) in the basic search (search bar is on the upper right), and got 40 hits. Now, I could have clicked on Quick & Easy and narrowed it down to nine, but it’s already showing me which ones on the first set of ten are Quick & Easy, with a cute little alarm clock icon. Plus, I’m also seeing little bunches of broccoli to tell me which recipes are healthy. But wait, there’s more! Little wine glasses to tell me which recipes come with wine pairings! No need to click, just look at icons! Even the searching is “quick and easy”!
All the above sites allow you to print or email recipes, generate shopping lists, share on social networking sites, and save recipes. For some of these options you will need to sign up as a member. And there are certainly a lot more recipe sites out there than the three I’ve mentioned. They’re easy to find; just google some ingredients. How will you know which are the good ones? Look for sites with clear instructions, that show photos of the finished products, and that include number of portions, calories per portion, prep and cooking times, and reviews. And if they also have some way of making sure the entire process will be EASY, you can’t go wrong!
I have friends who love to cook; I have family members who try new recipes and experiment with ingredients, then post mouth-watering pictures of the results on Facebook. I am in awe of these people; I have the same admiration and respect for them as I do for the kind of person who can pick up dance moves just by watching, go skiing without significantly injuring themselves, or sit down at a piano and play any song you throw at them (with both hands! and all their fingers! and with chords and everything!). Those people are not me.
But however much a lifetime of restaurants, takeout, and cold-cereal-for-dinner might appeal to me, I concede that those options are neither healthy nor economical, and I accept cooking as a necessity. But that doesn’t mean I can’t make it as easy as possible.
I’m talking about the whole experience – I want recipes that are easy to find, easy to shop for, and easy to cook. I’ve done some research and found a few sites that work for me. Maybe they’ll work for you too:
SupercookOne thing that makes cooking a pain, as far as I’m concerned, is having to run out to the store to pick up ingredients. This is why I love this site. You can list the ingredients you already have (to guarantee the recipes you find will definitely use an item, click on it to emphasize it). The site will immediately display a list of suggested recipes, each listing the other ingredients you’ll need (which are repeated under the “Do you have?” section). If you see something that looks good to you, and you do indeed have the other items listed, you’re good to go!
But what if you’ve just entered and emphasized “jalapeno, mustard, turkey” and then you notice a lot of the recipes you’ve just found require garlic, and you’re fresh out? Just click on the Exclusions tab and list garlic as something you don’t have. Voila! Now the recipes include jalapeno, turkey, and mustard, but there’s nary a one with garlic. No excuses; start cooking.
(“Exclusions” also lets you remove entire categories of food [e.g. meat, dairy, gluten] to take into account any food restrictions you might have.)
Another nice feature of supercook is the servings calculator. Once you have a recipe up on the screen, you can change the number of servings and the recipe will automatically recalculate. So, not only can you avoid running to the supermarket; you can also avoid doing math. What could be easier?
MyRecipesHere’s another good site. In Advanced Search, you can narrow the recipes by several different criteria, including one called “Conveniences”, which are various categories just perfect for people like me: “Quick/Easy”, “Make-Ahead”, “Meals Made Easy”, and “5 Ingredients or Less” are just a few (and yes, it should be “5 Ingredients or FEWER” and yes, I do find that annoying).
You can click on the Recipes tab and choose Advanced Recipe Search in the drop-down. There’s a screen full of options to play with; “Conveniences” is about halfway down.
Or you can stay on the home page and click on the “Ingredients Chef” tool. This is fun: just enter what you have at hand, and see what the Ingredients Chef comes up with. I tried chicken thighs and noodles, which brought up several good recipes, but I didn’t see any way to limit them by how easy they were, so I don’t think I’ll be using that link again.
Or you can simply enter something in the basic search bar and then refine your results. Here’s an example:
- I entered “chicken parmesan” as a basic search, and got 1326 results.
- I expanded the Convenience category on the left by clicking on the +, and chose “5 ingredients or less fewer”. That narrowed the results to 12.
- I clicked on “Fake It Don’t Make It” because faking it sounded like it would be easy.
- Voila! a Chicken Parmesan recipe from Real Simple magazine.
I thought about this. Wouldn’t Real Simple magazine have, well, lots of real simple recipes? So I tried a different search:
- I searched for “pork chops” as a basic search. 669 results.
- I narrowed by publication, choosing Real Simple. 21 results.
- I noticed some of these results were for sauces and sides, so I refined by course, choosing Main Dishes. 15 hits.
Hmmm. Looking at Convenience, I saw that only two were classified as Quick/Easy. So much for Real Simple having only real simple recipes. But that’s fine; two are plenty. The second one, Pork Chops With Escarole And Balsamic Onion, looked perfect. The total searching time, using the basic search and then refining it? Less than two minutes. Easy!
But the easiest way to find something easy to cook at myrecipes is simply to click the “Quick & Easy” tab in the middle of the home page. A drop-down menu displays the options of No-Cook Recipes, Make-Ahead Recipes, Slow-Cooker Recipes, 15-Minute Recipes, Dinner Tonight, and One List Five Meals (which definitely makes for easy shopping!).
Epicurious is one of the first recipe sites I discovered. I used to turn to it all the time, and I still go back to it fairly often. As in myrecipes, you can use either the basic or advanced search.
I searched for “chicken marsala” (in quotes) in the basic search (search bar is on the upper right), and got 40 hits. Now, I could have clicked on Quick & Easy and narrowed it down to nine, but it’s already showing me which ones on the first set of ten are Quick & Easy, with a cute little alarm clock icon. Plus, I’m also seeing little bunches of broccoli to tell me which recipes are healthy. But wait, there’s more! Little wine glasses to tell me which recipes come with wine pairings! No need to click, just look at icons! Even the searching is “quick and easy”!
All the above sites allow you to print or email recipes, generate shopping lists, share on social networking sites, and save recipes. For some of these options you will need to sign up as a member. And there are certainly a lot more recipe sites out there than the three I’ve mentioned. They’re easy to find; just google some ingredients. How will you know which are the good ones? Look for sites with clear instructions, that show photos of the finished products, and that include number of portions, calories per portion, prep and cooking times, and reviews. And if they also have some way of making sure the entire process will be EASY, you can’t go wrong!
- Barbara S.
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