The best foodie websites

Some have described the 2000s as the "decade of the foodie," delighting in the culinary swell of cooking personalities, shows, websites and apps that continue to hit our palates daily. While others say that if they hear another word about some bizarre East-West gastro-mash up, disguising itself as fusion, they’ll throw up their bacon-herb cupcakes.

Regardless of how you feel about the word "foodie," or the questionable edible trends that find their way on to menus, you’ve got to admit that good food is always worth sharing.

Social media has created a digital dining table that seats the globe. Anyone, anywhere, can sit down and break bread 2.0 style, dishing on where the best pork xiao long bao can be devoured. Whether you’re a gourmand, gourmet or just a regular person who loves to chow down, sans Frenchy title, there are a million ways to share what’s for dinner. Here are just a handful of places...

Search engine

Google Recipe View
It’s received some flak for the quality of its search findings. One cassoulet recipe claimed to pack only 77 calories per serving, even though the serving included a lamb shank and an entire sausage; while another cassoulet recipe declared a cooking time of one minute. But, Google treats Recipe View the same as all of its searches and churns up results based on popularity—the number of times the recipe has been linked to, reviewed and clicked. Suffice it to say, you’ll find what you’re looking for.

Websites

Tastecooking
Recipe search. Check. Social networking tool. Check. Cookbook publisher. Check-check. TasteBook gives members an easy, affordable way to make their own cookbooks that can be shared digitally with friends and family as well as published in hard copy form. Is your compendium of congealed-salad recipes, handed down from your Great-aunt Eleanor, looking for a proper home? Create your "Gellin’ with Aunt Ellen" TasteBook and you’re good to go.

Videos

Rouxbe
Rouxbe takes newbs who’ve yet to master the art of boiling water and turns them into proper chefs. Culinary instructors created this online cooking school, which is free if you don’t mind limited accessibility to the site. If you want the full experience, for a monthly subscription of $29.95 or a yearly fee of $239.95, there are over one thousand instructional videos to choose from and the opportunity to receive personalized feedback from Rouxbe chefs.

Crash Test Kitchen
Laid back and low budget, these videos are created by refreshingly human cooks who make mistakes like everyone else. Crash Test Kitchen is a "vlog and podcast rolled into one," and it is its real-life depiction of what happens behind closed kitchen doors that makes it so accessible. No pre-packaged quantities or choreographed camera shots here; they rummage around in their chaotic-mid-sized-utensil-catchall drawer for a spatula, just like the rest of us.