5+ Must-​​see websites for the web 2.0 chef

I have always enjoyed cook­ing and food in gen­eral. I wel­come to thought of exper­i­ment­ing with fla­vours and try­ing some­thing new and different…but not too out there. I remem­ber, many years ago, watch­ing my mother pull out all kinds of recipe books from a cup­board, and scuff­ling through them at break-​​neck speeds, try­ing to find the recipe she was look­ing for. This happened sev­eral times a year, when any old recipe just wouldn’t cut it.

In today’s world of tech­no­logy and inter-​​connectedness, I set out on a quest to find some new recipes to try out while on hol­i­day. This search, nat­ur­ally online, opened up a world I had, for some unknown reason, never con­sidered; the web 2.0 cook­ing world. After find­ing some great recipes to try out, I star­ted look­ing deeper and found a world of great social media web­sites, link­ing chefs, both pro­fes­sional and self-​​taught, from around the world, allow­ing them to share thoughts, tips and recipes with one another.

Below are a few of the web­sites I found for the bud­ding web 2.0 chef.

Cookstr.com

Cookstr is a rel­at­ively new web­site, index­ing recipes by well known chefs and cook­book authors. The recipe search is extens­ive, from budget search fil­ters all the way through to what sea­son the dish is best suited to and it’s health bene­fits. I found some great recipes here, includ­ing a lemon, lime and pep­per­mint sorbet recipe by Mr. Jamie Oliver that I’ve been itch­ing to try out.

Other fea­tures of Cookstr include pro­file pages for each chef and author, cata­loging their work, as well as myCook­str, allow­ing you to cre­ate your own pro­file, book­mark recipes, make notes and cre­ate shop­ping lists.

http://www.cookstr.com/

Food24.com

24.com’s food divi­sion. A great local (South African) net­work for food enthu­si­asts and blog­gers alike. Food24 has the social aspects, akin to the 24.com web­site net­work, and in addi­tion, boasts fea­tures such as cook­ing tutori­als and tips, food news, a res­taur­ant dir­ect­ory and blogs relat­ing to food and the devel­op­ment of the food industry. A great local resource for recipes and inform­a­tion from fel­low South Africans.

http://www.food24.com/

YuppieChef

Yuppiechef spe­cial­ises in the sale of premium kit­chen utensils. Stocking a wide range of kit­chen products, from pota­toe peal­ers to din­ner­ware and fry­ing pans, Yuppiechef has it all. Don’t settle for any­thing less than the best kit­ch­en­ware avail­able. Your cook­ing or bak­ing exper­i­ence will be greatly enhanced by the qual­ity of the utensils you use. Yuppiechefs aims at a life­style, rather than just a run of the mill buy and sell store. Create a life­style in your kit­chen with premium grade kit­ch­en­ware at an afford­able price.

And hey, if cook­ing isn’t for you, buy your chef friend a gift voucher from their store.

http://www.yuppiechef.co.za/

I’m Cooked

Are you a fan of watch­ing day-​​time cook­ing shows, or the local cook­ing chan­nel? Do you watch and think; “I wish I could do that” or “how’d they do that” ? Here’s your chance.

I’m Cooked is an online video recipe shar­ing ser­vice. Not only are you able to view video recipes by other users in the net­work, you can cre­ate your own as well. Be the cook­ing TV show start you’ve always dreamed of being. Show off your skills to the world, and learn a few new recipes and tips in the process.

A great resource for those who learn bet­ter visu­ally, or just aren’t inter­ested in cook books.

http://www.imcooked.com/

Super Cook

Right, so this doesn’t look very “unique”, does it? Wrong. Super Cook is revolu­tion­ising recipe search online.

In many cases, when search­ing for a recipe, a user will type in one or two ingredi­ents they have in their kit­chen. They will then be presen­ted with sev­eral recipes con­tain­ing those ingredi­ents, but with many addi­tional ingredi­ents as well. At this point, the user will either have to go out and pur­chase the remain­ing ingredi­ents, or will throw in the towel. Super Cook allows you to find recipes that you can make right now, with the ingredi­ents you have in your kit­chen. By using the “My Kitchen” fea­ture on Super Cook, you are able to add the ingredi­ents that you have in your actual kit­chen, to your vir­tual kit­chen. These ingredi­ents are used in the Super Cook search.

Super Cook is a search engine and is con­stantly search­ing the web for new recipes. It is also advanced enough to learn which ingredi­ents com­pli­ment one another and can, there­fore, refine your search res­ults to dis­play the best pos­sible recipe res­ults for your ingredients.

http://www.supercook.com/

Cork’d

Every great meal deserves a com­pli­ment­ing wine. The wine world is a vast land­scape of tastes, hints of scents and memor­ies. Cork’d aims to cre­ate fur­ther con­nec­tions in this world.

As a wine shar­ing and review web­site, Cork’d is, in essence, a social net­work for wine lov­ers. I’ve recently enjoyed sev­eral South African wines and learn­ing about their unique tastes and how to ana­lyse them on one’s tastebuds. Watching WineLibraryTV has cer­tainly aided me in this.

If you’re inter­ested in wine, learn­ing about wine and dis­cov­er­ing new wines to taste and excite your tastebuds with, or are just look­ing for a wine to com­pli­ment your meal, the users of Cork’d are for you.

http://www.corkd.com/

Bakespace

Bakespace is a social net­work for food lov­ers. In addi­tion to the expec­ted social fea­tures (pro­file, blog, recipe log­ging) they offer a unique “recipe swap” fea­ture, allow­ing you to swap recipes with your friends and know what everyone’s cooking.

In the spirit of learn­ing, Bakespace also hosts a unique ment­or­ing fea­tur­ing, allow­ing users to learn from other users, or allow­ing other users to be their mentors.

While Bakespace isn’t unique on the web, it’s fea­tures and goals are solid.

http://www.bakespace.com/

TasteBook

No, not Facebook. TasteBook.

TasteBook aims to recre­ate the concept of the cook­book. Allowing users to mix and match, re-​​arrange and swap recipes, users on TasteBook are able to cre­ate their own cook­books. These cook­books are ideal as gifts or as a fun way of telling your chef friend (or mother) that you like (or dis­like) their cook­ing. It also allows users to com­bine recipes that suit their per­sonal tastes, while dis­cov­er­ing new, sim­ilar recipes to learn and exper­i­ment with.

TasteBook has an eleg­ant, intu­it­ive lay­out and is a fun concept that I look for­ward to exper­i­ment­ing with from start to finish.

http://www.tastebook.com/

Found any other great cook­ing web­sites for the web 2.0 chef? Post links in the com­ments below.

Post image: stock.xchng

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