Introduction
Welcome to the newly designed and updated Recipe Site Review!
This site is a source for finding recipe websites classified by country of origin (for the most part) and ranked by site quality (based on my humble opinion). All recipe site links you find here are reviewed by me. If you've visited the site before, you might want to check the What's New section on the Site Info page for information on updated pages.
I put this information on the internet for two reasons: 1) it forces me to organize the sites I've found for my own use; and 2) I thought that if I find the information useful, others might feel the same.
For those of you who have previously visited the site you will notice that the navigation has changed again (I have removed the JavaScript menu and now navigate without frames) so hopefully the site loads faster and is less prone to problems. You won't find many pretty graphics or fancy pages because they tend to slow down page loading if you don't have a high speed connection. There are a few graphics on some pages just to keep things from getting too boring.
The site makes extensive of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) so it is best viewed with an up to date browser (Internet Explorer 6, Netscape 6.2 or 7.x, and Opera 6.x or 7.x, Mozilla Firefox 1.0 are ones that I've tried). You can go to the Why Use Cascading Style Sheets page for more information. The site also functions with older browsers, but some of the presentation capabilities are not available. Also, I do not have easy access to Apple hardware so I have not tested this on a Mac. Finally, if you have disabled JavaScript in your browser, everything should work although when you click the links to the recipe sites, they will not open in a new window.
About the Site
How many times have you gone to the web looking for a recipe site with something new, different, interesting, or just plain comforting to cook? If you're like me, there have been numerous searches with almost always the same result:
During my searches on the web looking for a recipe that tickles my tastebuds I found it difficult to sift through all the information and different ways to get to it. For example, if I was looking for an interesting French main course, I might have to search for "French cooking", "French cuisine", "French recipes", "France food", and so on. Even when I did manage to extract a list of sites to search, I would end up on sites that were selling cookbooks or food items and providing a recipe or two just for fun.
Occasionally I encounter a web site that has gone to the trouble of listing links to other "interesting" recipe websites. Unfortunately, in most cases, this is, at best, an alphabetical listing of links which gives no idea about the content of the site. I imagine that others feel the same frustrations , so I decided to start this site. I really don't have time to thoroughly go through all the recipes on a site or try them all so I'm doing my best to evaluate them from the standpoint of clarity of the recipes, difficulty of preparation, ease of navigating the site, and the quantity of advertising (including those irritating little popup windows). I have reviewed and classified sites to a greater or lesser degree depending on my interest in them, but in most cases have NOT tested (or tasted) the recipes. Despite my love of food and cooking, I'd be even more overweight than I already am. When I try a recipe from a site, I make a note of it.
This site is a source for the casual cook who is looking for a good recipe and cannot find it in their own set of cookbooks and "well organized" collection of recipe snippets. This is where you can find links to sites that emphasize "down home cookin'", ethnic specialties, haute cuisine, and some surprising twists on old favorites.
If you loving cooking and eating as I do, I think you will find the sites entertaining, interesting, and in some cases unusual. Have fun!