My Secrets for Finding the Best Recipes Online 🤫

Including Ottolenghi's Turmeric Chicken, Blueberry Lemon Cake, and Grilled Dandelion Green Mozzarella Sandwiches.

Ottolenghi’s Blueberry Lemon cake featured in the David Lebovitz Newsletter.

Hey everyone,

It’s the million dollar question for anyone who loves to cook: where do you find the best recipes for the thing you’re trying to make?

As a Founding Father Food Blogger from 2004, I used to be one of the sources that people turned to for recipes (I suppose I might still be that with my newsletter). But where do I, recipe obsessive that I am, turn when I’m looking for the best Bolognese or the zippiest lemon meringue pie? Let me walk you through my process.

First up: Targeted Google searches.

Cranberry Crumb muffins from Food and Wine.

If you Google any recipe — say, “blueberry muffin recipe” or “ fish stew recipe” — you’re likely to get results from a panoply of unverified food blogs and AI-generated recipe sources. If you see a blueberry muffin recipe on AllRecipes, run for the hills. (Okay I just Googled the AllRecipes blueberry muffin recipe to verify that what I’m saying is true: and it has vegetable oil and whole milk, which is fine, but not when there are recipes with melted butter and buttermilk.)

So when I search for a recipe, I almost always preface the recipe with the source that I want to search: either “Bon Appétit blueberry muffin recipe” (I’m a subscriber so I have access to their full database), “New York Times blueberry muffin recipe” (same), “Smitten Kitchen blueberry muffin recipe,” and so on. The results that pop up are way more curated: they’re by the sources that I trust the most.

Secondly: Consolidate multiple sources.

What do I do when these reliable sources don’t have exactly what I’m looking for?

That happened yesterday when I wanted to make a panini with fresh mozzarella and sautéed Dandelion greens (see above). Most of the reputable sources said to boil the Dandelion greens first before sautéing them, and since this was lunch, I didn’t have time for that.

So I read multiple recipes, even from places that I didn’t necessarily trust, and came to the conclusion that I could sauté garlic in olive oil, wash the greens in lots of water, chop them up, and add the wet greens to the oil (it splattered) and a splash more water and it would cook quickly and correctly. The Google search just confirmed that this process would be A-Ok.

Thirdly: Bookmark your favorite recipe sources.