5 Great Cooking Resources Online

Technology and food are inseparable now. You can now use gadgets to brew coffee by the cup, or you can approach the fusion of tech and food from the other direction by eating up some iPhone-themed cookies. But there's more out there than just novelties; the web is home to some truly incredible cooking resources.

These foodie favorites run the gamut from food stores to blogs to massive recipe databases, and they're all bound to be helpful. There's a whole internet full of delicious cooking resources; consider these 5 picks a jumping-off point.


Foodzie
Foodzie is sort of like an online grocery store, but the shopping experience isn't all that's different. You can pick up most (if not all) of your needed ingredients here, along with some prepared foods, but they all come from different places than the mass-produced products you'd find at your local big-chain grocery store.

Foodzie prides itself on its relationship with "small food companies" and claims that all the foods on sale are "special in some way," whether they're handmade, made following old family recipes, incorporating unique ingredients, and so on. In other words, it's a digital foodie paradise.

This outlet's foods are arguably luxury items; they typically cost a bit more than the grocery store alternatives. But for folks who want to buck the system and buy foods from small businesses and other, more human-seeming sources, it's a deal.


Epicurious
Now that you've got your ingredients, what do you do with them? It turns out there are a virtual ton of online recipe archives -- so many that they could never all be listed here. That said, two stand out: Epicurious and AllRecipes.

Epicurious is one of the oldest websites in its category; its home page claims that it's been "celebrating food for 15 years." Owned by one of the world's biggest publishing companies, Epicurious spares no expense in acquiring recipes from the most prestigious cooks and publications such as Bon Appétit and Gourmet magazines.

And unlike many of its competitors, it's more than a recipe database. You'll find all sorts of editorials and guides within its digital pages, plus a community with which you can discuss your latest foodie concoctions.


AllRecipes.com
AllRecipes.com is one of the most robust and popular websites for recipes; its database is massive and varied, with everything from cheap chili recipes to gourmet options. It's particularly easy to browse compared to other recipe sites, and its sheer volume and usability makes it the populist's choice for cooking ideas.

Like Epicurious, AllRecipes.com has some how-to articles, but the focus is mainly on the recipes, and you couldn't call AllRecipes.com an editorial publication in the same way that you could Epicurious.

The site also has some fun social features, like a game in which you vote for the best photos of food, a number of community blogs, and videos at Allrecipes.tv.




Serious Eats
This one's primarily a blog, and it's a great one. Serious Eats' bloggers write about new recipes and eating out (mainly in New York, for the latter), but the bulk of the helpful articles are in the numerous columns. There's a column about Asian foods, a column about chocolate, a column about knife skills, a column about spices -- there are more columns than can be named here.

Those resources are the main draw, but Serious Eats also sells cooking supplies and serves up a solid library of how-to videos for cooking newbies -- and there are a few videos for experienced home chefs, too.

And then there's Serious Eats' public forum, called Talk. It's perfectly simple -- it only includes the tools you need to have great conversations about cooking and recipes with other internet denizens.

Dorie Greenspan
One of the world's most esteemed food writers, Dorie Greenspan runs a robust blog for foodies all over the world. It's chock full of recipes, videos, news, and juicy photos. Regional sections for New York, Paris, and Connecticut cover the best chefs in their respective cities. Greenspan also runs a series called On the Road, through which she explores the culinary offerings of farflung places like Asia.

Greenspan's blog lacks the community features that Serious Eats offers, but the writer makes up for it by engaging with her fans on Twitter. She tweets actively about pastries, writing, and numerous other smart topics to nearly 50,000 followers, and she responds to followers' own tweets fairly frequently.

Be sure and check out her sections on tools and gadgets for cooks, too; there are some great finds in there.

Do you know of any other great resources out there for foodies and aspiring chefs? Let us know in the comments!

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Tecca is a next-generation personal electronics information and shopping service. We bring together the web's leading content, commerce, and community features to provide comprehensive solutions for consumers' ever-growing technology needs. Think of us as that tech savvy friend who helps you when you have questions about what to buy, what to  pay, how to make the most of you already have, and when it's time to upgrade. Get to know us on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. Before becoming the Digital Entertainment Reporter at Mashable, Samuel Axon carried the reins at the tech blog and database Obsessable. Previously he was an editor at Engadget and the Joystiq network, and a consultant to entrepreneurs in the online gaming space. He is based in Chicago, where he invests all his professional energy in new media -- particularly blogging, web video and interactive entertainment. He expends most of his personal energy swing dancing.