A Revelation about Recipe Websites

This goal of mine to become a better cook isn't anything new. Since moving out on my own I have wanted to become a better cook. I have always wanted to be like my friend Chrystal. She can open up the refrigerator, survey the contents, and come up with a spectacular meal effortlessly. She doesn't measure and she doesn't hesitate in making decisions on what foods will mix well together. THAT'S the kind of cook I want to be. I have a theory on where I have been lead astray in my attempt for culinary greatness. Hear me out on this one...

In an attempt to find new recipes without spending a small fortune on cookbooks, 
I discovered a site called Recipezaar and I have visited it countless times over the last couple years. It seems like a great set-up: people post recipes, other people try them and then review them, then others can then read the reviews and then chose whether or not to make them. I have made quite a few recipes from this site. Some turned out good. More turned out bad. I generally will try a recipe only if it has gotten lots and lots of fantastic reviews, but for some reason this doesn't seem to matter. Really bad recipes continue to get great reviews. How can this be? How can so many people be wrong about if a recipe is worth your time and money to make?

A couple months ago, my friends and I got together to do a once-a-month cooking exchange and one of the recipes that I decided to make got hundreds of great reviews... no exaggeration here... hundreds of 5 star reviews. Well, it turned out horrible. It was worse than horrible. It looked bad, and it tasted worse. Since that experience, I have thought a lot about the whole concept of these recipe sites. How is it possible that I could try so many different recipes that got fantastic reviews and have them be horrible? I am not that bad of a cook. I can definitely follow a recipe. I started looking at different food blogs for some insight. After a little bit of research I had an epiphany: the recipe sites such as Recipezaar will never work for me because they are too random. Anyone can join, post, and/or review recipes. There is no accounting for individual preferences, regional styles, and taste in general. I would be much better off finding a couple of individual websites and/or blogs run by people who share similar tastes in food as me and use their recipes. So I set out to find such sites. The first one I stumbled upon was thewednesdaychef.com, a blog by Louisa Weiss. She makes recipes from top chefs and then reviews them on her blog. She is a wonderful photographer and writer. She makes much more sophisticated meals than I have ever made but our tastes seem to be very similar.  From her site I was led to quite a few other food blogs that have piqued my interest, and I have started to follow a few blogs from cooks who also seem to like the same types of food that I like. 

Well tonight I made a wonderful recipe called Butternut Squash with Browned Butter and Thyme from a site called Simply Recipes. Elisa Bauer runs this blog and she definitely has similar tastes as me. I figured I couldn't go wrong with this recipe, and boy was I was right. It was simple to make, beautiful to look at, and full of flavor. However when I make it next time, I will use less butter than I used this time. It called for 3 Tbsp, but I would safely say that I could probably get away with 1 Tbsp. Take a look at my success story:

And an added bonus is that my house has a wonderful smell ever since dinner!