Posting recipes and finding them...

Recently, saw in many posts, many of us are starting to get frustrated of all recipes buried in the sea of information, especially lost recipes. I think we have reached a level that information need to be organised in a better way. Can we think of better idea to how to organise this? What do you think? A separate new recipes section? New index threads? or we need some software to help (Pepperplate)?

To quote a few:
@Chemicalkinetics

@smtucker
smtuckerDec '17 tomatotomato
tomatotomato: sense that a separate soup (and maybe stew) thread

Here is my problem with separate threads… then we have a post in “WFD” and in “Soup, Stews & Braises.” I love the idea of easily finding others’ soups, but then we are doing a bunch of cross-posting. One solution could be, writing up the details in WFD or WFL, and then posting in the new thread, the name of the dish and if you would make it again with a link to the full post.

Thoughts? @hungryonion?

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I don’t have a solution (and, indeed, don’t know if there’s a problem). I rarely contribute to the Whats For Dinner thread these days - it used to be a valuable daily thing for me to report on dinner plans (that started years back when my partner was very ill and I had no-one to chat to about dinner - the virtual community became very imprtant to me). But I still read it from time to time and value the fact that it’s just folk chatting about food, rather than a list of recipes. Yes, occasionally someone will ask for a recipe but it’s not a regular thing and the thread is more fun because of that.

Maybe a separate recipe sub-forum is needed. Call it The Cookbook. Have sub-sub-forums for starters, mains, accompaniments, desserts, etc (or whatever the majority American contributors would prefer them to be called). It then becomes our own digital cookbook.

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We need a sub-section under Cooking - for now. I think most of the forums are about asking questions, finding solution, making adjustment. They are great, and it is very nice to see many options and different solution-finding.

However, for full-blown “polished” recipes, I think they should go to a separate section.

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Maybe a recipe category where the recipes get posted, then linked back to the original post?

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That sounds like a great idea too. Regardless, we probably should have a recipe category if we are serious about it.

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Good! When can we have that? :yum::grin:

Here it is:
https://www.hungryonion.org/c/cooking/recipes

The question is, how do we organize the recipes? If there are quite a few eventually, i think we need some sort of index.

I really think that every recipe type should have its own thread. So, for example, if I post my Ciabatta formula, it gets a thread. If there are then 10 threads of fermented/yeast bread recipes, then we can create a sub-forum for fermented/yeast bread recipes. If there are a huge number pf quick bread recipes, same thing.

Thoughts?

I made a suggestion upthread to organise, at least initially, by way of sub-sub-forums for each category of recipe, so all the desserts would go in one sub forum, etc.

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This will be even better, neat and easier to find information.

I have just relink a recipe from WFD to see for the time being it works well or not. It seems that the recipe URL does not have a preview with a photo like the post below). Can we fix this? (See the post, the recipe is just a blue link without preview). Thanks.

Not sure how this can be fixed, however. the software decides to do its own thing. Taking away the s in https:// seems to do the trick if that helps.

I think the software only allows down to sub-categories but no further. Since recipes is already a sub-categories, I think we may need some different and better organization methods.

Well, we can do it by regions (like Italian vs French vs Chinese vs Japanese). Or we can categorize by techniques, like baking, fry pan, stew… Let’s see what we get first. I think that will tell us how to best categorize them.

Or have several sub-categories , eg “Recipes - Desserts”, etc

Yeah, I was thinking about that too. Basically, have Recipe on a higher level, so Recipe is not under anything else.

However, maybe it is simpler just to keep it this way for now until we have more recipes.

I think you’re probably right - although I doubt if we’d want to get to the stage of there being loads of recipes for the mods to sort out into categories.

A question for naf (as it was her idea) - do you think you need to further define the nature of the sub-forum? Is it intended to be a follow-up to a What’s for Dinner post, or it’s open to anyone to post a recipe they are interested in posting? In either event, there needs to be guidance about the level of detail - I recall when I regularly contributed to WFD, I’d rarely mention quantities or technique - but I think with this posts need to be written as though it was a cookbook - full list of ingredients and full details of method

I think a sub categories system will be needed once we have more recipes.

I have been thinking of going through older threads to reference recipes that are lost especially in the WFD threads.

I think it is interesting to use sub-categories in the title for the time being, for example:
Recipe-Meat-Italian, Recipe-Dessert-American etc.
or classified under cooking methods, like
Recipe-Fermentation-Korean, Recipe-Sous-vide, Recipe-Stew-English or Recipe-Soup-Chinese

Too bad that this software doesn’t have Tags, this can be useful for classification.

Very good questions.

I don’t think we should limit the recipes section only for WFD post. There are other threads like Dish of the Month or Cuisine of the Quarter or any threads that members post their recipes.

On the other hand, some HOers have post links to external website for more difficult to find or “rare” recipes, I think we should keep them referenced in the recipes section as well. (See the latest post by the Librarian). But these types of recipes should be just a link, should not copy and paste in HO because of copyright issues.

Agree! I think the most basic way is to have sections including:
Ingredients, Methods, Serving Sizes

I think that’s way too specific. Even cookbooks don’t get that detailed.

For example, if I posted a recipe for Chicken Manchurian, which is an Indo-Chinese recipe, I’d be forced to choose Recipe-Meat-Indian or Recipe-Meat-Chinese. It’s actually a fusion dish, so where would I place it? Or if you go by cooking method, if something is fried, and then braised, where would I put it?

I think you are better off keeping generic categories – Appetizers, Mains, Sides/Salads/Soups, and Desserts.