Recipe Software

There are a number of free recipe organization tools out there on the web, as well as a number of paid ones. Some of them are little more than a quick and easy way to send you advertisements. Others are more than advertisements and can provide a host of features, such as quick search or online storage, that make them functional and useful.

What makes for a good recipe storage program?

1) It is simple to use. Adding a recipe should be quick and painless; finding a recipe should be easy to accomplish with search and organization functions.

2) It is transportable. The program needs to be small enough to email or download quickly, or, it needs to be based online.

3) It lets us find more recipes, but only if we want to.

Gimmick or Tool?

Definitely a tool. Provides versatility, numerous features, and gets the job done with minimal fuss.

How does it help me?

One local restaurateur went so far as to call it, "The only reason I'm able to run this place."

Top Pick

Living Cookbook Recipe Management Software

Undoubtedly the most polished and versatile option for electronic organization of your recipes is professionally designed and supported software.

By storing your recipes on your computer, rather than online as the other options do, this kind of software ensures that you have the information readily and quickly available; no waiting, no downtime, and no data loss.

Functionally, this type of software is also more powerful. It is installed on your computer, and you are the only one using it. This allows for a greater variety of features to be included.

The program most often recommended to me by professional chefs and food-lovers alike is Living Cookbook Recipe Management Software.

Living Cookbook organizes your recipes so that they can be easily found, whether you do this alphabetically, by ingredient, by popularity, or even visually with your own images is up to you. Simplicity appears to be the watchword here, and wading through seemingly endless lists is a thing of the past.

There are a myriad of other features included in Living Cookbook. You can import recipes directly from the internet, plan meals in advance with it's versatile calendar, or even select any number of recipes to print out as a cookbook.

What really impressed me about this software, however, was the customer support and service that it's creators provided. When I had questions about a certain feature, or wanted to know if I could complete a particular task with the software, the customer service team was prompt, polite, and informative.

Tool or Gimmick?
Tool, but you have to choose the right site, and functionality is limited.

How Does it Help Me?
Allows you to easily store and share recipes. Available from any internet connection.

Top Pick
Group Recipes

There are many forums and social bookmarking sites out there that focus on cooking. The majority of these do not feature recipe storage and sharing options. A handful of the best do, however, and these are the ones we'll be taking a look at.

Social bookmarking sites are not for you if you do not wish to share your recipes for others, or if you -must- have access to your recipes. As many of them are free, they rely on large traffic volume to drive affiliate sales or ad clicks. As such, they generally make it difficult to keep your recipes private. Some also suffer from lengthy down times, and as with all free sites, make no guarantees that they will always be available. The risk is small, but certainly, losing all of your recipes could be a very big problem.

CookingDojo.com is a social bookmarking site that allows you to share recipes with others via bookmarks and submission.

Just like any other social bookmarking site, people can bookmark (submit) recipes that they want to keep track of or bring attention to. If others like them, they too can bookmark them. As more people bookmark each recipe, it gains more prominence and is ranked. Recent submissions are also visible on the homepage.

Each recipe is stored on a "recipe card" which you and others can view online.

Clearly, it's good to be able to see what others think of each recipe. Being able to store your recipes online also means that you can access them anywhere.

Unfortunately, the system used to organize your own recipes is a little confusing. It is very difficult to search through your own recipes, and almost every attempt at doing so leads to the inclusion of other people's. The recipe cards system is both novel, and limiting. There are no visuals, and the small size of each card makes everything appear cramped and rushed.

You'll also be subjected to a column of ads running down the center of the screen. The site owners need some way to fund this project, however, so clicking on them may help them out. It would be nice if these ads were more relevant to cooking.

Visualrecipes.com is another social bookmarking site dedicated to recipes.

The draw of this site is that is features both recipes and photographs to go along with them.

It functions as any standard social bookmarking site does; people submit recipes, others bookmark them, and they become more visible as more people do so. In addition to this, visualrecipes.com also organizes recipes into categories based on the ingredients; chicken, fish, vegetables, as well as categories based on the type of dish; cakes, pizza, chili, etc.

It also features a small forum, and a blog. Unfortunately both the forum and blog do not appear to see much activity; the blog has not bee updated since February 5th.

Search functionality is limited to a google-based site search, and there is little to no organization of ones own recipes. Rather, they are stored in a list that you must scroll through.

GroupRecipes.com is the most polished and user friendly of the social "cookmarking" sites.

Recipe storage and retrieval is excellent, and the search and organization functions are simple and effective. Unfortunately it suffers from being slow at times, and I've been unable to access this on several occasions.

Sharing recipes or finding new recipes is also easy, and a novel feature of this site is the "Group Recipes Widget" which is able to be installed in a blog or on a website. It will allow others who view it to see the latest recipes you've been checking out.

Gimmick or Tool?
Normally a gimmick. Often full of nothing but ads and marketing with little substance.

How Can it Help Me?
Useful for finding new recipes and tidbits of information.

Top Pick
Alot.com recipe toolbar

Avoid everything else.

Toolbars tend to get a bad wrap, and for good reason. Many of them are nothing but adware, that is, software designed to pummel you into submission with ads.

For those of you unfamiliar with them, a toolbar is a free piece of software that you download on to your computer. Once downloaded, it will install itself and become part of your browser (such as internet explorer, or firefox). Most feature search functions, and links to various resources. Unfortunately these links are largely worthless, and are normally nothing but ads designed to generate revenue for whoever produced the toolbar. When they install themselves, some toolbars will also make changes to your browser settings. They may change your homepage, or allow pop-ups to be shown.

In general, toolbars are a waste of your time.

The one toolbar I -do- recommend, however, is the Alot.com recipe toolbar

None of the above applies applies in this case. Alot.com, Google, and Better Homes and Gardens have combined forces to bring you what I consider to be one of the better pieces of free recipe software.

This toolbar features a wide-ranging search function that reviews the Better Homes and Gardens recipe collection.

Once you've found the recipes, storage of your own recipes is accomplished via the Better Homes and Gardens website, which allows you to collect clippings and search through them as you wish.

Additionally, recipe videos are available directly from the toolbar, as are quick recipe links.

All in all, this toolbar is focused more on the discovery and organization of online recipes. If you want to store and organize the recipes you have at home, on paper, then this is not the tool for you. However, if you're looking for a tool to augment the discovery and collection of new recipes, it is definitely worth a look.