Online recipes are such bullshit. You have to wade through an endless amount of filler text, video crap, sponsor fluffing and ads before you get to the actual recipe hidden at the bottom of the page.
Everything is designed to maximize SEO and make you click shitty ads. Capitalism ruins everything it touches.
[2400 word blog post about the ex the author divorced eight years ago that then abruptly shifts its tone to talk about how their kids are doing in soccer and what the soccer moms are talking about for another 1100 words.]
"Anyway, here's my authentic family recipe for a super authentic Shrimp Scampi and a side of Garlic Breadsticks handed down straight from my Grandma Schneider, just like they make in Italy." - Chef Gerhardt Ainsley from Omaha, Nebraska
Here's a super traditional recipe that has five substitutions for contemporary ingredients!
Here's a super authentic traditional recipe that is not in any way from the purported country of origin, and has ingredients that you couldn't reasonably purchase there even if you wanted to! Now with a bonus illegal-to-import-to-that-country ingredient!
Let me introduce you to all these ancient non-latin-american recipes that heavily involve tomatoes!
shout out to the heroes who put a "go to recipe" button at the start of their essay
This sweet and savory apple crisp reminds me of a cool autumn day. Fall winds bring about more than changing leaves, just as it brought American Airlines Flight 11 into the north Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11.
For this recipe, you will need...
Be sure to check out my recipe for blueberry pie, picked fresh from my very own bush
did 9/11
I've found that adding the word "reddit" to every search I make so I can go to a related subreddit and read people posting about the thing in question really makes the internet more useful (as long as I'm not looking for information about China, of course). A lot of the other websites that clog up search results are procedurally generated, and semi randomly copy/paste information from source websites (often including Reddit comments lol) to create pages like the one you're talking about.
Yeah site:reddit.com works even a tiny bit better for that, and I use it all the time. Reddit users at least dog pile blatant spam with downvotes, so you're cutting out 98% of the absolute shit advice.
every recipe is simply "COOK BLACK BEANS, EAT BLACK BEANS"
if we're really quiet i can say that if you don't nsfw meat related things it gets very posty, so you either omit meat or you nsfw tag it and hope for the best
we love our vegan comrades, please don't @ me
Its so fucking annoying. And very often the story is pure bullshit, and the recipe is just a copy paste of something else. The only worse phenomenon is mom bloggers.
This is why I like forums where people share recipes, like our glorious cooking sub. No frills. No bullshit. No blog. Just using a public bulletin board space to post up some favorites and share pics of your accomplishments. Nobody has to hear about a "Tuscan villa experience" from the summer of 1983 just to learn how to make a fucking caprese salad.
Lmao I've seen this complaint 4 times on Hexbear now. It's almost become a monthly thing.
It's true though and you are right. Nobody likes reading a blog story before getting to the recipe.
This plugin skips straight to the recipe:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/recipe-filter/
Been using it for years now, Recipe Filter is OP against bullshit blogs with hidden recipes. Highly recommend it.
Makes me want to go to my fucking library and borrow a cook book.
The problem is mostly ad views and not SEO.
SEO wants important info at the top, it wants people to abandon less, overall Google wants to keep you coming back.
But look at most of those shitty recipe articles- they have interstitial ads galore. Phone users are hitting those by accident all the damn time. They get way more money if the user has to actually scroll. So the culprit is Google Ads not Google Search.
Phone users
unironically feel like phones ruined the internet (enabled by capitalism of course)
I remember being in 2010 and thinking "oh that's useful, but who's actually going to use the internet on their phone, other than to search for directions or listen to music"
turns out the answer was everyone (except me)
I still remember the first time I had an iPod touch on a campus with full wifi coverage, so basically a smartphone, and it was amazing that I could just look up anything at any time at a whim, never having to wonder about lots of stuff
google searching is one thing but heavy habitual browsing on a phone, I just can't do that (and I'm under 30)
For anyone fucked by the paywall, because this is more of a treat than anything that could come out of an oven:
Shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Regina Schrambling wrote of the healing power of cooking. “The food is not really the thing,” she said. “It's the making of it that gets you through a bad time.” This recipe, adapted from "The New Carryout Cuisine" by Phyllis Méras with Linda Glick Conway, was one she turned to in the trying days that followed. A mere two steps, and ready in less than an hour, it’s comfort in a pan, just as good for when the darkness creeps up as it is for those days when you just need a bit more. And to those who might scoff at the two sticks of butter? Consider taking Schrambling’s words to heart: “Abstemiousness,” she wrote, “is not an option when you're feeling low.” —Regina Schrambling
"On the important day, I said, 'my cooking is very good,' and that was very helpful for us all." ---me
If you want to avoid websites filled with storytime nonsense designed to load ads, you're going to have to stop using Google as a way to find recipes and start using databases that are actually designed to be noncommercial. Ignoring for a moment their problems with news reporting and so on, the big public broadcasters typically have quite good recipe databases without any of the bullshit. Here's a few:
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/recipes/browse/
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/
https://www.nhk.or.jp/dwc/recipes/
https://www.pbs.org/food/recipes/
And as other commenters mentioned, getting a cookbook from your local public library would also be a very good option.
