My hobby is cooking. I didn’t realize it until I was showing a friend how to prepare and cook Moroccan Chicken Pot Pie that it hit me. I really enjoy cooking. I will spend days in the kitchen preparing Indian, Persian or Moroccan dishes and I will invite my friends over for a feast. My husband thinks I’m crazy, my friends think I’m an amazing cook, and I have a lot of fun introducing my friends to new kitchens.

I own 52 cookbooks and depending on what I’m cooking, they are always my first source for recipes and information, especially when cooking ethnic dishes. I used to do searches online, looking for recipes and was often left totally confused with what I found. There are all kinds of sites that are dedicated to recipes. Some of the larger sites have the ability for members to leave ratings and comments. These types of sites have become very popular in recent years. There are even forums dedicated to talking about food that include links to recipes and member comments.

This is where the problems arise. Do a simple online search for “Dill Green Beans.” You will see more than 270,000 results. These recipes are found on all sorts of cooking sites, from large, established recipe sites to individual blogs. How to choose? How do you want to invest your time, energy and money? Will you choose the recipe that calls for 4 lbs. of green beans, 16 heads of fresh dill, 4 cups of vinegar, 9 cloves of garlic or the one that asks for 2 lbs. of green beans, 4 cups of vinegar (interesting since this is the same amount of vinegar used for double the amount of green beans in the other recipe), 2 cloves of garlic and 4 heads of dill. (For half the amount of beans, this recipe should call for 8 heads of dill and at least 4 cloves of garlic.) Here’s another question for you: what exactly are these dill green beans supposed to taste like? Where can you find a reliable recipe?

Red Velvet Cake is another online recipe search disaster waiting to happen. There are over 750,000 Google results for a search for “red velvet cake recipe.” Now, take a close look at these recipes. You will see Red Velvet Cake recipes that include 2 heaping teaspoons of cocoa among its ingredients, even recipes that do not contain cocoa at all. The reality is that Red Velvet Cake is, and always has been, a chocolate cake. How can you bake a chocolate cake without using cocoa? Again, how do you decide which recipe to spend your time, energy, and money on?

I stay away from food sites that offer member feedback and reviews as some of the reviews are unhelpful and actually add to the confusion. A few years ago I did an online search for Turkey Mulligatawny Soup recipes. I landed on a highly revered food forum. This site also allows member comments. I was surprised to see some of the comments that were made about this recipe. People who did not have the spices called for in the recipe chose to cook the soup without including them. Mulligatawny Turkey Soup is a curry flavored soup. If you omit the curry spices and garam masala, it doesn’t taste like a curry at all. You have no idea how the recipe is supposed to taste. They rightly did not like the result.

This food site also reviews a cookbook every month. Some of the members prepare recipes from cookbooks, changing ingredients or, again, leaving them out altogether, and then declare that their efforts were unsuccessful. This is not useful information and certainly unfair to a cookbook author.

There’s an easy way to make sure you’ll get a good result when you search for a recipe online. Focus on food sites that use recipes that come directly from cookbooks, and make sure the site has provided a link to or mentioned the cookbook or chef where the recipe originated. The next thing to look for is a site where the recipes have actually been prepared. There are many food sites online that offer recipes, but there is no indication that they actually made the dish. A valuable online food site will have prepared the recipe and offer helpful cooking tips directly related to the recipe.