Pinch My Salt

Food, Recipes, and Photography

Use Food Blog Search to Find the Best Recipes

by 46 Comments

Since you’re reading my blog, I know for a fact that you read several other food blogs. They’re addicting, right? One food blog is never enough. What is it about food blogs that keeps us coming back for more? The photos? The writing? The recipes? Usually, it’s all of the above!

I think many people trust recipes from food blogs more than other sources because we feel like it’s been prepared right before our eyes. The blogger often shares their thoughts on what was great about the recipe and what could use some improvement. And we often leave a food blog thinking, “Hey, maybe I can do that too!”

But the truth is, we often read food blogs while we’re at work or when we’re drinking our coffee first thing in the morning. Although we ooh and ahh over the recipes, we don’t always run out and make them right away. And then when we need a specific recipe at a specific time, we can’t remember where we saw it. So what do we do?

We google it.

You know you’ve done it. And what happens when you search for a recipe using google? You often end up on crazy recipe sites that are more interested in selling advertising space than providing you with a great recipe. I am constantly amazed at how many really bad recipe sites are out there. How do you find the food blog recipes without searching through each one individually? It used to be a maddening experience.

But thankfully, three of our favorite bloggers have been working at solving this problem for quite some time now. The Food Blog Search has been around since 2006 and it just keeps getting better and better. Elise, Kalyn, and Alanna have now added over 2000 blogs to this search engine, which guarantees you’ll be able to find just about any type of recipe you can imagine…and it will come from a food blog!

The search engine is even available in other languages! French, Spanish, and Portuguese, to be exact. I don’t know why it took me so long to write about this wonderful invention, I’ve been using it almost daily for quite some time now. But recently I’ve noticed that lots of my favorite bloggers have added a Food Blog Search in their sidebars. I finally decided to figure out how to do that myself and I’ve now added it to Pinch My Salt.

So maybe the food blog search isn’t breaking news, but it’s certainly information that needs to be shared! If you haven’t tried out The Food Blog Search, give it a try right now!

And I’d like to extend a long overdue Thank You to Elise Bauer of Simply Recipes, Kalyn Denny of Kalyn’s Kitchen and Alanna Kellog of A Veggie Venture and Kitchen Parade. Not only are they three of the most talented and prolific foodbloggers around, they are also genuinely nice people who went out of their way to make me feel welcome at last year’s BlogHer conference in Chicago. Thanks so much for taking the time to create and maintain this wonderful search engine!

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Cedar says

    That is fantastic! I usually do a search through google reader, but that will be great, because I can find a thousand more food blogs to subscribe to!!
    Reply

  2. Elise says

    Hi Nicole, You are very welcome! I've been blown away by all the amazing sites I'm finding, or that are contacting me to be added to Food Blog Search. I'm constantly using the search engine for cooking inspiration too. So glad you like it too. :-) ~Elise
    Reply

  3. patsyk says

    That is so cool! I just added the search to my blog... I want to make sure I can find the recipes that work! I agree, I tend to trust bloggers since they give insight into what works and what doesn't.
    Reply

  4. Nicole says

    Cedar: I sometimes use the search in Google Reader, too. Especially if I'm looking for something that I know I've read recently. But I've been using the food blog search more and more lately! Elise: Yes, it's a great way to be introduced to some new sites! There are so many food blogs that it's impossible to visit them all! PatsyK: Cool! I knew there had to be other bloggers that would want to add the search engine, too :-)
    Reply

  5. Alanna says

    Hi Nicole - As you might guess, the real thanks goes to the generous Elise, who's both the brain and the budget behind Food Blog Search. The best news, however, is that home cooks can now so easily find solid recipes from reliable bloggers -- thanks for spotlighting the search!
    Reply

  10. Kalyn says

    Hi Nicole, You're so sweet to help get the word out about this. Alanna is right that most of the credit should go to Elise, who had the original idea and also has done most of the work. I try to add a site whenever I see one that doesn't look familiar, but quite often Elise has already found it.
    Reply

  13. Lolly says

    Thanks for this great link. I've used foodieview.com for the past few years, which links to lots of magazine recipes (Gourmet, Bon Appetit, Sunset, etc.) and the Food Network, but this is even better.
    Reply

  17. Helen says

    I love the food blog search too and I have it on my site. It must have taken a lot of work adding all those sites too. I hate the way you get such a load of rubbish through google, the poor quality of some sites never ceases to amaze me.
    Reply

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