good recipe is like a reliable old friend – a way to impress dinner guests or significant others, or a means to bring comfort to oneself by indulging in a favoured meal. Everyone could always do with more good recipes, but instead of pulling down your cookbooks off the shelves, open another tab on your browser and give the following recipe blogs a go. These are some internet chefs with foodie chops, pun intended.

Smitten Kitchen
Even if you’ve only dipped a toe into the world of food blogs, odds are you’ve heard of Smitten Kitchen. The recipe food blog to end all recipe food blogs, Smitten Kitchen comes to us from a teeny-tiny kitchen in New York belonging to Deb Perelman. A one-woman food blogging operation, Perelman’s recipe archive is truly epic and her recipes are shared across the internet with boundless frequency. As an added bonus, many of her recipes are extremely adaptable and simple to follow, meaning that they’re perfect for novice chefs looking to gain further confidence in their cooking skills.
smittenkitchen.com

Trotski & Ash
Trotski & Ash is a beautifully presented recipe blog by friends Sarah Trotter and Romy Ash. What’s lovely about Trotski & Ash is that each recipe is preceded by the often poetic story behind the dish; just read the introduction to the recent recipe for poached quinces and yoghurt cake and try not to dissolve into a cloud of food-desiring sighs. The photography by Lauren Bamford does what all good food photography should do, which is to lure you into the recipe by showing the delectable qualities of the dish. This is a food blog to linger over, cherish and bookmark like mad.
trotski-ash.com

Cates Cates
“Catherine can’t stop talking about food.” So reads the byline at Cates Cates, and thank goodness for that, because otherwise we wouldn’t have such a charming food blog on our hands. Catherine’s voice is intimate and friendly, highly knowledgeable and often very funny, and comes across more like an old friend detailing all their recent culinary scrapes and escapades. But what is most interesting from a recipe perspective is the plethora of recipes for cakes and other decadently sweet treats. The Feasts and Fancies section, which compiles all of Cate’s celebration cakes, is a marvel to behold. The recipes here are also highly aware and respectful of food allergies and preferences, with Catherine stating, “If the allergy-friendly food isn’t so good that the people without allergies are fighting over it, I’m not doing my job properly.” That’s cooking we can get behind.
catescates.com.au

My New Roots
Written by Sarah Britton, a vegetarian chef and holistic nutritionist, My New Roots was set up as an outlet to express Britton’s interest in “wholefood” eating. This basically means plenty of organic and raw foods. Indeed, if you’ve been interested in investigating or experimenting with raw food, this is a good place to start. Each recipe is full of information about the foodstuffs used, including detailed histories on the nutritional properties of ingredients. And the accompanying photography makes everything look instantly scoffable.
mynewroots.blogspot.com

Eat This Food
A relative newbie on the food blogging scene, Eat This Food is an “occasional” recipe blog that is unique due to its choice of presentation. Run by a collective of inner-suburban “food enthusiasts”, the recipes here look as if they come straight from a design magazine, both in terms of photos and typography. They’re sharply written and easy to follow, and you’ll end up using the photos of the fried sardines with coriander aioli or the sticky lamb shoulder as a guide as to how best make your guests ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ at your food skills at your next dinner party.
-eatthisfood.net

My Friends Can Cook
There's an admirable philosophy behind this newish recipe blog: cooking should not be a laborious, stressful process, but rather a relaxing experience one should be able to share with friends and family. As such, the recipes here are simple (there is no croquembouche designed purely to make amateur chefs cry here). Instead, there are plenty of easy stews and soups, like the Vietnamese beef casserole, healthy salads and stir-fries. It even goes right back to basics with a fatastic bolognaise recipe. A handy, easy cooking blog to have tucked away in your RSS feed. And they send out recipes weekly on a Monday, straight to your inbox when you need it.
myfriendscancook.com.au

My Kitchy Kitchen
The "experimental playground" of American food writer, photographer and director Claire Thomas, My Kitchy Kitchen is a gorgeous blog to behold, filled with brightly lit photographs and beautifully plated up food. But where this blog's difference lies is in the fact that many of Thomas's recipes are accompanied by little instructional videos via which you watch her go through the steps of making the dish, all set to jaunty tunes. Check out her video for making s'meaches, a combination of roasted peaches and the classic American campfire snack s'mores, all set to Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire. You'll be wanting to hold your own country and western-themed campfire party in a jiff.
thekitchykitchen.blogspot.com