Finding Holiday Recipes Online

Nothing says the holidays quite like filling your house with the smell of homemade goods. Whether you’re hosting the big dinner yourself or preparing a side dish or desert to share with your family and friends at their home, this is one of the simplest and most enjoyable pleasures of the holiday season. 

If this is your year to make a meal or you are looking for a new dish to share with the people that you love, the TLC can help!  We have compiled a list of websites that you can use to find new recipes for everything from your holiday turkey and all the fixings for a vast quantity of deserts!  These websites allow you to search for thousands of recipes, and many also give you the option to create free log-ins where you can access a recipe box to save your favorites.  

We hope these websites are useful to you and that they add to your holiday cooking fun! 

Enjoy!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Recipe Sites:
-All Recipes
-America's Test Kitchen
-Christmas-Cookies.com
-Cooking.com
-Cooks.com
-Epicurious
-Food Network
-Gojee
-Tasting Table
-This Rawsome Vegan Life
-Tori Avey
-Veggie Num Num

Major Brand Sites:
-Betty Crocker
-KRAFT Recipes
-Pillsbury
-Campbell's Kitchen
-French's
-Lipton Recipes

Company Sites:
-NPR Recipes
-Library Cuisine Recipes

General Web Searches:
-Bing
-Google
-Pinterest
-YouTube

RECIPE SITES

This is your standard recipe website.  It contains lists of recipes and videos  suitable for cooks with all levels of  experience.  Allrecipes also has two apps that users can download on their Apple or Android devices that allow them to access the sites extensive collection of recipes on the go!  They are the Dinner Spinner app, which is free, and Dinner Spinner Pro, which you can purchase for $2.99.

Ever seen this show on PBS?   If not, now is your chance.  This site, which is  very reliable  and trusted among its  users, provides you with videos and  ecipes that were featured on its public broadcast shows.  It also has links to cooking magazines, featured cookware products, and other cooking websites for its users to explore.

What could be better than gathering together with family and friends around the holidays and baking tasty Christmas cookies?  This site is dedicated to providing its users with a variety of fun cookie recipes, as well as recipes for candy, fudge and other holiday treats.  It’s visually appealing and easy to navigate for bakers of all ages!  

This site is similar to the others as it provides users with a vast amount of searchable recipes, but it stands out because it is also a place to for and purchase cookware, bakeware, utensils, cookbooks and other handy items that any chef would love to find in their kitchens. 

This site may not catch your eye as quickly as some of the others, but it is chock full of recipes that can satisfy just about any cooking desire   that you may have.  Another great feature on this site is the face that it provides nutritional information, cooking times, and other instructional guides useful for even the most novice of chefs.

This site is a favorite within the library! It is very easy to navigate and visually appealing to its users.  The main site provides you with a vast amount of recipes and cooking ideas, and also contains links where you can check out the work of its recipe partners.  Epicurious also has a beautiful app that is available for your portable Apple and Android devices.  

This site is quite a bit different from many others on the list.   While it provides users with  a wide variety of recipes, it also promotes its  television shows, chefs, and featured   restaurants. That aside, it is still a very useful  source because it gives its users a lot of great  ideas for their upcoming holiday meals.  

Out of all of the sites listed in this post, this one definitely holds the distinction of being the most elegant.  It features gorgeous pictures of the dishes that it provides recipes for, and is almost guaranteed to make your mouth water while you are browsing.  The only downside to this site is that it is not the easiest to navigate if you are trying to conduct a recipe search and it doesn’t have as great a selection of recipes as many of the others, but these have little effect on the overall experience that it provides.

At first glance, this site resembles that of a news feed or magazine site.  Rather than focusing on just providing its users with recipes and cooking tips, it features a variety of food related articles.  Anyone looking for recipes will not be let down though, because those can be accessed by clicking on the “cook” tab at the top of the page.  

This site was recommended to us by one of our wonderful reference librarians, so we are still learning about it ourselves.  It is a simple, raw blog site maintained by one young vegan woman that contains beautiful pictures and focuses on the dietary needs and preferences of vegetarians.  It contains information about the necessary ingredients and preparation techniques needed to prepare many of the featured recipes, and also has links to her cookbooks.  Whether you are a vegan or just like to eat raw healthy foods, this is a good resource for you.  

This site is named for the creator, and is a lot of fun to explore because it is very unique!  Her blog “The Shiska in the Kitchen” has a recipe index, kitchen memories, “off the menu” posts about things other than recipes, and information about kosher recipes and recipes for Jewish holidays.  Her second blog “The History Kitchen” features different recipes along with information about why they exist!  The downside?  A pop-up consistently appears asking you to subscribe to the site. Subscribing may be worth it to you though, especially if you want greater access to her unique collection of recipes.

This is another site that is dedicated to vegetarian recipes, but is a good source for anyone who is interested in learning to prepare healthier meals because it isn’t critical of people who aren’t vegetarians.  It contains many great recipes, but preparing some of them exactly as listed may be challenging for us because some of the ingredients are exclusive to Australia, which is where the site originated.

All of the sites that we have listed so far are excellent resources for anyone who is looking for new recipes to explore this holiday season, however, you can’t forget about the sites that are associated with the major food brands because those are also very useful!  Besides, if it weren’t for many of the products that they provide, it would be very challenging to prepare most of the recipes that you will find on the other sites anyways.  We won’t focus on all of them, because that would take way too long, but we will share a few of our favorites!

MAJOR BRAND SITES

One of the most trusted resources for recipes, Betty Crocker has become a household name, and  a member of millions of families over the years.  Betty Crocker’s site, like her vast collection of cookbooks, is a great resource for both your holiday meals and any other meals that you’ll prepare throughout the year!  

Much to the surprise of many young children, KRAFT is known for way more than just their boxed macaroni and cheese!  This site, run by KRAFT foods, has links to wonderful seasonal and year round recipes and has information about their products that cooks may find useful when compiling  their ingredients lists.                                                                                                                                                                     

Who doesn’t love the Pillsbury dough boy?  This site, dedicated to his yummy product line, is very simple and easy to navigate and has collections of  recipes for the holidays and for “everyday eats.”  It also has information about their products and links  for coupons to help you save on some of the many  items that you’ll need to purchase in the coming  weeks, both food related and otherwise!  (You’ll have to clean up after your guests leave, won’t you?)

 


Forgot the recipe to grandma’s green bean casserole that has been on  your family table for the last 20  years? Not to worry, both the French’s and Campbell's Kitchen websites have got your back.  They have easy recipes for green bean casserole readily available for you!  

    Visit Campbell's Kitchen HERE

   Visit French's HERE

Oh no, not the French onion dip recipe too!!!  Lipton’s  website has many quick and easy dip recipes available to you at your fingertips this holiday season.

If you don’t want to visit a food specific website to fulfill your holiday recipe needs, you can think outside the box.  Here are a few other sites for companies that you can visit that aren’t just dedicated to all things food!

COMPANY SITES

 

NPR (National Public Radio). 
Who would have thought that you  could  find recipes on a public  radio  website?  Well, you can!  This site  contains recipes that were featured in  articles and interviews on the station!  

Cape May County Library. 
That’s right, even the library website has a collection of recipes available for you to explore!  These are recipes were featured in our vastly popular cooking demonstrations and programs that we have held over the  years!  The “Thanksgiving in two hours” listing is especially perfect for  this time of year!  

You also have the option to do general recipe searches on some of the biggest internet search engines.  This will help you gain access to many different resources and could lead you to finding that one recipe that you were looking for but didn’t know existed!  

GENERAL WEB SEARCHES

Bing is a great search engine to use to search for many different recipes.  You can do a general search for recipes, or can do a more specific search for recipes based on the food that you are looking to prepare.  Once you decide what you want to search  for, you can narrow your search based on  when the recipes were posted, allowing you to conduct a more specific search.  This is the best place to go for anyone who have a Microsoft Account because you can earn “Bing rewards” points for every recipe you search and redeem them for gift cards and other prizes as your collection builds.  


Google is another great search engine to use for your holiday recipe searches, especially if you are a Google Chrome user by default.  Type in the food that you need a recipe for into the search bar and click on the search tools option underneath it.  This will allow you to do a more specific recipe search based on the ingredients you plan to use, dietary needs, and the time that you have to prepare the dish.  This will also allow you to search recipes based on the date when they were posted, and allow you to sort pages based on whether or not you have visited them in the past.  


There is really no better place to go in your search for holiday recipes and ideas than Pinterest!  This site recently changed their layout, and made your searching experience even easier and more fun!  All you need to do is set your search requirements and they provide the links!  Sounds easy... and it is, because others have already done the hardest work for you!  Pinterest users can also return the favor and share their favorite recipes to help the community grow even more!


YouTube is a great source for recipe related videos!  Their extensive collection contains   everything from classic cooking programs (such as Julia Childs), to YouTube specific programs, such as Nerdy Nummies and My  Drunk Kitchen, to name a couple of our  favorites!  If you don’t feel like searching for recipe videos yourself because you are not sure where to go, Tasting Table has an article entitled “Best of YouTube” where they have compiled a list of recipe sites for you!  That article can be found by clicking here! 

 **(Disclaimer- My Drunk Kitchen features some language and themes that are inappropriate for children, so it may not be the best choice for family friendly cooking events!)**

Boy, that sure was a lot of information!  If you have stuck it out with me until the end, thank you!  I hope that the sites that have been provided will be worth it, and will help you add some  fun new flavors to your holiday table this year!

HAPPY COOKING!