Embarrassed to say I’ve not ever made a recipe from this site. It always pops up when I do a search for a new dish, but … that’s about as far as I get.
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I don’t trust it.
That has been my inclination as well, but I look forward to the article… whenever I get to it.
Since retiring and trying to learn better cooking/baking skills, I now read a tremendous amount of food sites/articles/etc. AR for a simple trying to learn home cook sounded approachable.
What I learned was that Allrecipes has changed its original forum intent a few times over and I def remember when they printed cookbooks under their AR banner, recipes completely submitted by forum members. Pre ads, pre national sponsors. Once recipes could be altered by anyone reading along, the forum became a mess of clickbait and even less reliable sources. However, the powers that ran it (magazine publisher) attracted ChefJohn. That collab surprised me but again did little to keep it solid.
But today, I would describe AR as having lost its way and fallen under the legacy of AdWords.
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This is when I used it, very early on. I submitted several recipes, and was “published” in 2 of their cookbooks. It was a decent site back then, providing some interesting recipes submitted by readers. But there were so many other sites being created, that I just fell away from it. It began to get a “Taste Of Home” feel…much more “down home country” vs more imaginative recipes.
OK, this I’d never heard of! They allow anyone to make actual changes to recipes that others post vs the inevitable substitutions mentioned by some commenters who then give it a low rating because it doesn’t taste good?
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Yes, recipes are cut and pasted, altered and added to the category.
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And then add a diff photo of the dish! There is no mechanism in place to prevent cut and paste. AR owns all rights.
Me, too. And I actually have glanced at the recipes.
No, but trust your instincts and experience. I’ve found a number of solid recipes there, as well as plenty of ideas. You need to read the recipes closely, however, as well as the reviews. Take the good stuff, and leave the rest.
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But is there a reason to choose AllRecipes over another site? Am I going to find something there I won’t find elsewhere?
I’ve only so many I’m willing to check (NYT, SE, etc.). All Recipes has been consistent enough for me to keep it on the list. YMMV.
Even this short Wikipedia nails most of what I read over the years on its evolution.
Did Chowhound run aground under multiple admin changes? I never participated in the community there but read enough comments from users to believe much that was great about the community supported content was treated poorly.
A similar backlash occurs at AR amongst community written content.
Yeah, I stopped using it sometime during the period before Meredith Corp bought it from Reader’s Digest.
Looks like the 1st recipe that was accepted by them back in early 2000 that was then published in their first cookbook was “updated” in January 2023. 
CNET bought them in 2006, and it was merged with CHOW. CHOW went away, and it was when CNET was merged into CBS Interactive that it began to change. It was still a usable forum site, but the horrible redesign in 2015 and then the user community that built the site being ignored that was the start of the death knell of CH.
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And then the message boards were eliminated, and that really inhibited everyone’s ability to use them.
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That’s def my impression. @LindaWhit @small_h
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OMG what a total shit show that place became.
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