Food Blog Heaven

We could browse these recipe-focused websites all day

By Aïda Mollenkamp

You’re whisking, you’re chopping, you’re sautéing: Preparing food is a pretty active pastime. But sometimes you just want to sit in front of your computer (like you’re doing now, for example) for a little spectator cooking. When a food blog has good recipes, photos, and writing, it can induce a Zen-like state. Here are 10 of the blogs we read when we’re too lazy to enter the kitchen but are looking for a fix.

1. Cooking for Engineers. This analytical site appeals to our bookish side. The recipes are doable and the photographs instructional, so you’re set up for success.

2. Leite’s Culinaria. An intellectual, comprehensive look at food. The recipes (we’re particularly fond of all those Portuguese ones) are beautifully photographed and reliable—the site has an army of testers working out the kinks.

3. Definitely Not Martha. Leslie Meerburg takes you through her culinary adventures from fabulous to flop, and posts some witty commentary. She just returned from a blogging hiatus and has recently posted some delicious-looking cakes that helped us forget she was ever gone.

4. Cooking with Monkey. Monkeys make cooking fun. The recipe section here is full of comforting, nostalgic dishes, and while it’d be hard to actually re-create them (as measurements and true instructions are a rarity), it sure is entertaining to watch Monkey work his culinary magic.

5. Accidental Hedonist. Consider this site’s more serious approach to food if you happen to be the only sock-monkey-hater in the world.

6. Becks & Posh. Sam Breach’s tongue-in-cheek, friendly tone combined with her pretty, food-porny photography and seasonal slants have us hooked. This site doesn’t contain as many recipes as some of the other blogs here, but there is tons of cooking inspiration.

7. Cooking with Amy. Amy Sherman’s not afraid of more obscure ingredients—how many of you use cardoons on a regular basis?—but she also covers the standards, such as banana bread.

8. Simply Recipes. Elise Bauer pairs mouth-watering photography with everyday recipes that are inspiring and well written. If you’re not sure what you want for dinner tonight, a glance through Bauer’s latest culinary adventures is sure to help.

9. Smitten Kitchen. The food-porn factor of this site nears illegal levels. But to say the photography is the only reason we frequent this blog would do a disservice to Deb Perelman, who writes, cooks, and waxes on about food quite alluringly.

10. David Lebovitz. Pastry chef Lebovitz’s eponymous blog mixes wanderlust (he’s based in Paris) with sweet cravings (his recipes tend to be chocolate-and-ice-cream-centered). When combining sugar and France, it’s hard to go wrong.