Here are 20 of our favorite resources for home chefs in the recession, listed alphabetically:
1. AllRecipes.com
All Recipes has been on the block for years and includes amazing
tools, such as their Ingredients
tab, which matches the items you have/want and none of the
one's you don't (think: end of week and the cupboards are
bare) with rated and reviewed recipes. We (and many of our
hardworking, multi-tasking friends) also couldn't live without
the All
Recipes Dinner Spinner application for the iPhone.
Simply select the Dish Type (main dish, dessert, beverage, etc.),
Ingredients (beef, cheese, vegetables, etc.) and Ready In (for the
amount of time/energy you have to spend cooking), and Dinner
Spinner serves up dozens of relevant recipe matches. Create a free
account online to save and retrieve favorites in your Recipe Box or
create and save printable Shopping Lists.
2.
America's Test Kitchen / Cook's
Illustrated
Shoestringers grew up reading and cooking from Cook's
Illustrated with family, and even though it — gasp! — is in black
and white and has hardly any photography, its issues are collected
and coveted by serious cooks and chefs. The website includes these
tried, proven, test-driven recipes plus colorful and more
contemporary equipment reviews, technical tips, product
comparisons, and other contemporary content from the producers of
America's Test Kitchen (ATK). The Tasting
Lab ingredient reviews from ATK have long guided
staffers to the best beef broth or aluminum pans on the market,
allowing us to get the most bang for our gourmet budget. Also
includes videos from the ATK television show on PBS.
3. Behind the
Burner
Behind the Burner "offers access to the glamorous, exotic and
sometimes chaotic culinary world." The video-driven site takes
readers behind the scenes with founder Divya
Gugnani as she interviews the chefs, restaurant
owners, and other gourmets shaping contemporary cooking — including
their tips for the best tools, techniques, recipes and ingredients.
Shoestring staffers love the Behind the
Burner Giveaways, where readers can enter to win the
cookbooks, cook's tools, and other cool stuff highlighted in
videos, articles, recipes,
and blog posts from Gugnani and her team.
4. BravoTV.com : Top
Chef
For any fan of the smash hit reality cooking show, Bravo's Top
Chef official website is the source for free recipes, contestant
blogs, behind the scenes videos and other insider info. Use the
Top Chef Recipe
Finder to try your hand at dishes made by your
favorite "cheftestants" from a particular season, or
search by Cost, Skill Level, Cuisine, Mood (seriously!) to narrow
down the hundreds of recipes from all six seasons of the show.
5. Chef on a Shoestring at CBS
All the recipes, grocery lists, and budgets from the popular,
weekly Saturday morning TV segment on CBS's The Early
Show. The best chefs from around the U.S. are invited to
take $20 to purchase their ingredients, then they demonstrate how
to make a three-course meal for four with what they've bought.
The companion website includes a
Recipe Finder, complete video archives, and a
Food Savvy Quiz to find out just how much of a
frugal foodie you really are.
