OblivionStar713: Don’t forget the scrolling ad that blocks “the recipe” part unless you sign up for emails from tastyyummychewysweetcrispyflaky.com
Edit: My first gold! I feel so warm and fuzzy inside!!
PrincessIce: You must call your husband ‘hubbs’ and your children either ‘kiddos’ or ‘littles.’ God that irritates me for some reason.
bitetheface: You’re missing the “5 pictures of the same finished product taken from slightly different angles”
foxybadgerington: don’t forget the people asking “can i replace the maple syrup with honey?” or “will it still work if i use half a tsp of cumin instead of one?” because all recipes are an exact science that can not be messed with.
edit: thanks for the gold kind stranger! Will it work in the recipe?
tmt1993: So accurate.
elliott823: I replaced the flour with gluten free wheat grass, cheese with bean paste, and pepperoni with tofu…. worst pizza ever, will never make again
bakedtoperfection: You mentioned a photo of the finished product, but you left out the irritating photos of each preparation stage. I was using an online recipe last night and got so frustrated I was yelling, “Why can’t you just show me the fucking recipe, for god’s sake?!”
Regarding substitutions, I’ve noticed that on sites like Allrecipes and Food Network, lots of reviewers have started complaining about people who change the recipe and still rate the original version. It’s especially ridiculous when they give it a low rating after making multiple substitutions.
ekaceerf: Then if you reverse image search the pictures you see the exact same thing on a dozen other food blogs with their own story but an identical or almost identical recipe
BluShine: You forgot the page-blocking popups for “join our mailing list”, “enable notifications”, “take our survey”, “I agree to the use of cookies”, and “please disable your adblocker”.
alucardus: One of the reasons I really like serious eats, is for every article there’s a “get the recipe” link right at the top and on the recipe page there’s a “read the whole story” link. I love their articles but I hate scrolling for infinity on my phone when I’m in the kitchen trying to get to the recipe. I wish every recipe site was organized as well as serious eats.
notreallyswiss: You forgot the 103 people who are all, “Notice me Senpai! Notice me!” by fawning over how “delicious it looks” and how attractive the tablecloth/plate/silverware/butterdish, or all of the above is. Of course they never make the recipe, they just exclaim how they are going to make it sometime soon! They use lots and lots of exclamations marks too!!!!
Then there are the two reviews by people who actually made the recipe and accurately describe it as either unbearably bland or just generally unpleasant. If there are two reviews that say it’s decent without claiming it can cause world peace and cure cancer then you know it can safely be made and probably won’t offend your senses.
myinnervoice: Found in /r/instantpot https://twitter.com/reidparker_/status/867636421850300416
alexy87: If use your phone or tablet to view recipes, download the app ChefTap! The free version stores 100 recipes and it automatically cuts the bullcrappery in the recipes and shows only the ingredients and the steps when you save it.
Wokebackmountain: This is the exact reason I made a Recipe library hooked up to a raspberry pi. I hated these websites that would fluff the content so much so I made a place to store all my recipes and it’s displayed on a monitor in my kitchen!!
alannah_rose: I was one a website like this yesterday, except right at the top it had a little button that said Take me to the recipe and when you click it, it skips all the writing and just goes right there! So much easier!
hornytoad69: What about the stupid ads? And the dumb interstitial asking you to sign up for their email thing?
pattymayonnaise: All the people who leave a 5 star review because it looks good but havent even made it yet.
catchlight22: Wow. I never thought a joke could be made about something so… commonplace yet modern.
OutofH2G2references: This is why I miss cooking for engineers.
shakemyspeare: My personal favorite is the comments from twelve other bloggers saying “that looks so good!!!” How is that in any way a useful thing to leave? What a waste of space.
INiFoX: I was expecting a different outcome when I saw the thumbnail and the cutoff was “A long winded story about how you first came”
Jillette12: Preach it.
bulkeats: It has to get them more traffic somehow. I don’t tell stories, or allow comments (though I do put the image at the top) and I honestly think it hurts my SEO and results in less traffic. Target demographics for many recipe sites have to like this because it’s clearly working for them.
Isimagen: As long as the recipes are clear and put somewhere on the main page, I’m fine with the stories involved. If people are sharing a *good* recipe with me I like knowing how it came about in many cases.
What I despise are the comments that are rife with substitutions. They are often absolutely insane. “I don’t really like chicken so I substituted pork. I don’t like maple so I used agave nectar. I don’t tolerate gluten, so I used rice flour. Citrus isn’t my bag so I used apple cider vinegar. All in all this is a horrible recipe, it doesn’t taste like it should. I’ll never use this site again.” Why can’t a house fall on these types of people?
klaproth: Recipe websites are just terrible in general. I’ll give an exception to serious eats. But way too often it’s a recipe from an amateur cook who eyeballed the ingredients and really it’s just a bastardized verison of a classic dish, and they just HAVE to have THEIR version of chicken tikka out there on the internet too, on their super special food blog, with five paragraphs of text loosely connected to the food itself preceding the recipe.
Most people would be so much better served by a set of good, reputable hardback cookbooks that cover technique and proper cookware and knife skills as well as recipes.
MyCatNeedsShoes: Don’t forget click here to read the recipe
imoldfashioned: Hahah hilarious and accurate, 10/10.
misslady04: Don’t forget the random ads between the story and ingredients
DokuHimora: It’s cause you can’t copyright just an ingredient list with instructions, but adding that nonsense at the beginning makes it so you can profit off it.
Source, I saw this posted by someone else on Reddit.
Camdor5: “I replaced the pinch of salt in the cookie dough with a 1/2 pound of raw sawdust, and the cookies were terrible. Don’t ever make this. 1/10.”
Pedropeller: I have a monitor in my kitchen and I just skip to ingredients unless the technique requires frequent referral. When I ‘save’ the recipe, it will be a concise list of ingredients and techniques.
julian3: well how else am I going to fit 10 ads on one page?
YEAHitsEMILY: aw I like the stories. I like connecting with someone’s life/experience like that
wildozure: Truest truth
IlliterateJedi: You can thank Yoast for that. You need text for search engine optimization.
MainPoptart: I thought I was the only person who was bothered by longwinded blogger narrative before the recipe. They all have seem to have them so I figured it was accepted amongst the “real” cooking community and I was just an impatient outsider. It’s good to know no one else enjoys them either. Can we now somehow notify The Huns?
timeup: Don’t forget the unnecessary high definition photos throughout the recipe of a cut onion placed *just so* on a cutting board.
hotdogoctopus: nope. http://hotdogoctopus.com
give me money.
Drag0nV3n0m231: Ill be the one to say it, I actually like recipe stories a bit. Sure if they’re dumb and long, it’s stupid, but if it explains how they came across it concisely, I like it
FleshlightModel: I actually just made this comment yesterday about most fucking websites, however Budget Bytes seems to have most of their recipes near the top, thank Christ.
Fizzbit: This is why I love the “My Cookbook” app for my phone and web browser. Enter the URL and it parses through all the bullshit to give you what you came to the webpage for in the first place.
arkaneinc: You’re forgetting each ingredient on a new page for mobile phone annoyance.
mingstaHK: I was just lamenting this last night when quickly trying to source a recipe. I don’t care about your take or story. I just want the recipe. You blogger wannabe
Trollolociraptor: Me: looks up “simple recipe for students”
Cooking page: “simple recipe for students”
Also cooking page: 174 ingredients and counting…
Me: has toast
MisterGergg: I just wish more people would migrate to measuring by weight
drew1111: I understand a recipe can have a backstory but the recipe should be the focus, not how your mother did this and that and so on.