Here at Simple Meal Plan, we’re all about helping other people find ways to eat healthier. We’ve found many great resources on the web that let us do just that, so today we decided we’d share some of them with you:
One of the best websites for recipes, cooking techniques, and more, Epicurious has (despite the sound of its name) more than just gourmet recipes and expensive gadgets. It’s a great place to find recipes for old standards with a slight twist. In fact, whenever we’re looking for something a little different and unusual, Epicurious is usually the first place we turn.
Cooking.com is another great site; it has recipes for everything from basic American fare to dishes from exotic, far-off cultures. They also have information on cooking techniques, equipment, information from celebrity chefs, and more!
Serious Eats has recipes too, but it has much, much more. With information on exotic ingredients, local food-based charities, cooking equipment, and great restaurants around the country, Serious Eats is a one-stop-shop for all things food-related.
The Good Eats Fan page is another great site for cooking information. If you’re unfamiliar with it, Good Eats is a show on the Food Network. It’s hosted by Alton Brown and differs from other cooking shows in that it explains, scientifically, why recipes work the way they do. If you’ve ever wondered why oil must be kept at a certain temperature when frying chicken, or whether it matters how cold your butter is when you’re making pie crust, this is the show for you. We prefer the Good Eats Fan Page over the Food Network website; the Food Network has his recipes, but the Fan Page also allows us to read t from every episode so that we don’t miss the great information he presents about the dishes he makes.
The Seasonal Ingredient Map is a page on the Epicurious website; you select your state and the month, and it gives you a list of the produce in season in your area. So if you’re like me, and can never remember when blueberries are in season, check this page out!
Another useful website (which is a good counterpart to the Epicurious Ingredient Map) is Local Harvest’s Guide to Farmer’s Markets, Farm Stands, and Family Farms. Simply enter the product you’re looking for (eggs, apples, beef, etc.) and your city or zip code, and it returns with a listing of local producers of that product. I did a quick search for strawberries, and it returned a list of 105 producers near me that have strawberries available! There’s also a map that shows you where each producer is located and lets you zoom in and out and move the search area around.
So those are our favorite food websites! Do you have a favorite website that’s not on this list? We’d love to hear about it in the comments!
