Recipe Sites that Taste 2.0: GroupRecipes.com

As mentioned in my first post, I’m on a hunt for the best “Web 2.0-esque” recipe site. I already know my favorite restaurant review site, Urbanspoon, but what kind of community site exists for finding unique, delicious recipes? As mentioned earlier, I came up with the top 4 ways I typically assess a recipe site: Food Porn, Inventory, Inspiration, and Ease-of-Use. Hopefully this covers the qualities you all might look for as well. So first up, GroupRecipes.com:

Food Porn rating: 7
A little lower on porn than some others but there is a tasteful, rotating image on the home page. The images are user-dependent so not every recipe has one, but the images that exist are high quality. People also can vote on pictures so that they appear more frequently.

Inventory rating: 8
Inventory here is relatively high as well. I used the terms: fava bean, porcini mushroom, and ceviche to test the level of recipe inventory, as explained in the initial post. GroupRecipes had 299 porcini mushroom recipes, 515 fava bean recipes, and 19 ceviche recipes. I would have given it a higher score but it has been around for a few years, so in some ways I’d expect more.

Inspiration rating: 9
When you first join you take their “taste test” where you rate your affinity for various foods so they can make recipe suggestions. I was happy to take the simple test to improve my experience, though it wasn’t mandatory. Furthermore, you can give a thumb’s up or down to various recipes so that the “Recipe Robot” continues to learn. As you browse the site anticipates how much you will like each recipe based on your taste. This is great for helping to dig through the piles of options.

Ease-of-Use: 9
The home page is clean and features a feed of recipes sorted by popularity or newness. I also liked how previous searches populate in the upper right hand corner of my window. The advanced search functionality is great. I can search by main ingredient, course, cuisine, or cook method.

Cool features: the recipe robot, a firefox plugin, send-to-phone, a comment wall for users a la Facebook

I am pretty impressed with GroupRecipes and can actually see myself becoming a consistent user. How about you? Poke around and let me know what you think!

Filed under Food 2.0 |