Top Search Chef

Posted on November 11th, 2008
By Steve Petersen in Search, food

I'm not a fanatic of Bravo's competition show Top Chef, but my colleagues Chuck and J.W. who both sit next to me are big fans of the show.  So, in honor of the show's fifth season premiere tomorrow and the likely endless commentary that I'll overhear at work for the next few months, I've decided to do a cooking related blog post today.

While I don't know if any of the Top Chef contestants, judges, or fierce fans, google or search Yahoo! for recipes, some people do use search engines to help plan a meal.  As the Food Channel explained in November 2005, search engines can help with meal planning.  You can type ingredients that you already have into a search engine to look up recipes using them.  I have never done this, but perhaps I'll give it a try someday to see what would come up if I use three ingredients that I do have — apple pie spice, microwave popcorn, and spinach…

My point is that technology influences our lives in interesting ways.  Who would have thought that Google or Yahoo! would help you cook dinner?  Well, maybe that doesn't sound that big of a stretch for Ask's mascot, Jeeves the butler. 

Has anyone had success with cooking with the help of search engines?

Is Jeeves Top Chef material?

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Comments

1. J. W.
   

   November 11th, 2008 at 5:19 pm

   SuperCook at http://www.supercook.com/ is a website that works in a very interesting way. Just start entering ingredients in the upper left and it will start listing recipes on the right. Every time you add another ingredient, it finds recipes using only those ingredients and only a minimum of additional items. I’ve had success with it.

2. Hannah
   

   November 12th, 2008 at 9:38 am

   The issue I have with searching for recipes is vetting the source. I don’t trust Joe Chef, so I stick to FoodNetwork.com or other sites where I know that someone is staking their reputation on my results.

3. Our Food Recipes
   

   November 12th, 2008 at 11:28 am

   Hi..you have a great and informative blog. Just added and faved you. Hope you can join Our Food Recipes. Thank you

4. Amy
   

   November 12th, 2008 at 1:29 pm

   It was a surprise to me the first time I used Google as a solution to “what to cook with the leftover stuff in my fridge” - but now I use it ALL the time. It’s almost “entertainment reading” for me if I’m looking for a break in my day.

   I’ve found all sorts of recipe sites I would have had no idea existed. Blogs, specialty sites, ethnic foods, vegan, desserts, and huge numbers of sites providing ideas for seasonal fruits and veggies. It’s been a big surprise which sites (ie Food Network) hardly ever come up in the listings, as if they have paid no attention to SEO. It also appears that the books Google has scanned as part of its ’scan all the great books’ project are not in the generalized searches.

5. BillB
   

   November 13th, 2008 at 4:29 pm

   http://www.epicurious.com/ is where we go MOST of the time - some dishes are a little ambitious, but ssooo good. Try it you’ll like it!