Traditional recipe and cook books are still very popular, and can often be bought in electronic format for the iPad and eReaders. The explosive growth of the internet with online magazines, lifestyle websites, women's publications, food focused websites, and dedicated cooking and recipe sources, has opened up the range of recipe ideas, and the ease of finding them.
Recipe websites range from the generalised, to specific in regional and country dishes, by eating style, and diet specific for losing weight, or vegetarian and vegan.
Here we find, review and list the best places for recipes in one place. It is a growing resource, and feedback and recipe site suggestions are welcome.
Here are some of the very best online general recipe sources covering a wide range of styles, ingredients, regions and diets.
General Recipes
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The iconic Delia Smith has over 1400 recipes online categorised under Main Ingredient, Type of Dish, Seasons, International, Collections, Meals and Courses, Cakes and Occasions, with many sub-categories to help you browse.
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Available on the Tesco Real Food website the recipe section has a handy search by ingredient with selections for course, cuisine, cooking time, and calories.
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The Independent as part of the lifestyle section has a magazine format recipe section focusing on "how to..." such as "How to prepare...", "How to make..." or "How to cook...".
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As part of the lifestyle section the Guardian has a glossy recipe section. These are in categories dinner, healthy, soups, dessert, baking, salads, dinner party, italian, chinese, indian, vegetarian, seafood and meat. There's also hidden at the bottom a more extensive "recipes by category" and "recipes by cuisine".
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GoodtoKnow has a recipe section as part of the Women's Network magazine. The recipes are categorised under This Month, Ingredients, Dishes, Cuisines, Occasions, Course and Diet.
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Based around the popular magazine delicious. magazine there's a large range of quality recipes grouped into categories from the main menu, and a search facility that lets you search for a recipe and then filter on a range of options within the search results.
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Allrecipes claims you can "Search over 20,000 recipes from home cooks" and the site certainly has a huge range of recipes and ideas. Initially the main categories are: Dish type, Ingredients, Method, Cuisines, Diet & Lifestyle, Popular collections, and Occasions.
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BBC Food Recipes claim 11,325 delicious recipes when last reviewed. Well presented, as all BBC web content is, it starts with themes of In Season, Occasions, Cuisines and Dishes. The Seasonal Ingredients is a great editorial feature of the recipe collections.
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Lots of great ideas and dishes from the popular celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. Easy to browse with numerous categories covering main ingredient, diets and styles of cooking. Good photos and well laid out instructions. There is also a lot of reader interaction with comments and some recipes.
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Boasting more than 7000 tested recipes this is the accompanying website for the BBC Good Food magazine, and reflects the magazines content. Unlike the main BBC Food site it carries extensive advertising.
Indian Recipes
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Maunika Gowardhan is an Indian chef from Mumbai, India and now in the UK writing recipes for traditional Indian dishes. The website focuses on a magazine style browsing rather than precise search.
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An interesting collection of Indian recipes focusing on vegetables with a large number of categories to browse. The Recipes Index groups them by ingredient, 10 collections, sweets and snacks, regional Indian cuisine, some special categories, and festivals.
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A blog style collection of monthly Indian recipes with a long category list and basic search facility.
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A very well presented Indian recipe collection from chef Hari Ghotra from the Tamarind Collection of Restaurants. Extensive range of Indian recipes, well categorised and with a small filter on the search.
Chinese Recipes
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The Woks of Life is a blog by a Chinese American family with a large recipe section, and plenty of photos.
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A blog style site by "Elaine, the owner, cook and photographer" with a large archive of Chinese recipes described as "Chinese Recipes and Eating Culture.
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This is a sub-section of Chinese Recipes on Rasa Malaysia, and is presented in one long page with excellent images.