Growing up, this is how my mother collected recipes. She’d write them on 3×5 cards and keep them in a recipe file box. She also had a variety of cookbooks, although her mainstay was The Joy of Cooking.
I have that same system, although I find that it’s where I’m most likely to keep family recipes–making pretty much any recipe file box much too large. Here’s how I store recipes (as you may guess, “Where is the recipe?” is often my first question in cooking):
- The aforementioned file box
- Ring binder of 4×6 recipe cards (my mother sent me off to grad school with this, and since it’s in her handwriting I will keep it forever–although I will always wonder why she included the recipe for escabeche when she knew I hated it)
- Ridiculous number of cookbooks
- File of Word documents on the computer
- Delicious.com–which in spite of its name is not actually a cooking site–with a specific tag
- My “recipe box” on Allrecipes.com
In fact, Allrecipes.com is where I’m most likely to go for new recipes. I know a lot of people use Pinterest, and I have a board with pictures of food, but I’ve never cooked from any of those recipes.
So how do you organize recipes? And why do I have so many cookbooks I never use?
Photo by pirate johnny, via Flickr.
I’ve been accused of being the only person that ever “reads” a cookbook, like a regular book. But, while I also collect many recipes in the same ways you have listed, I still love to look at and read cookbooks…with their photos and stories…sort of like reading cooking blogs! 🙂
A good cookbook is good reading!
yeah, I have had lots of different storage for recipes over the years. I realized that I like to change the recipes as I go along. I just really need the pic now, which is why I love pinterest. Though, I am looking into transferring them to evernote and printing them out.
I almost never follow the recipe exactly, but I do like to have lots of sources for inspiration.
I laughed when I saw the index cards….I have a TON of those, old ones from my mom and newer ones that were given to me at my bridal shower. I had the 3 ring binder thing going, but it was getting way too messy. Now I just download recipes to my iPad and saving them there. Oldschool though – I love my Barefoot Contessa & Lidia bastianich cookbooks and my cooking bible How To Cook Everything by Mark Bittman
I’m going to have to copy more of my mom’s recipes next time I’m at my dad’s house–but I’m going to use his copier, not recreate the cards on more cards!
I was told by chef friend (who had 5,000 cookbooks) that if you find one good recipe in every book, it justifies its presence in your library. I agree (although I only have about 30–and lots of recipes found online saved in Word).
I think that justifies buying it, but I’m not sure it justifies long-term shelf space. We need to clear that up!