chefs.com has a recipes section they've asked me to review. At first, I was going to turn this down since I didn't think it would be of interest to my readers. However, after looking at my stats and checking out their recipes, I think it will. Especially over the holidays searches for beer recipes have been very popular for traffic to Hail the Ale! Also, chefs.com's recipes include a beverages section which has approximately 20 recipes using beer. Note that the beer category is really a keyword search so not all listings have beer in them since some recipes suggest it would be good with beer.

I checked out a few of the beer recipes and some of the other recipes and found they are all formatted the same with information on prep time, cooking time, total time, and servings. Each recipe also has the standard ingredients and instructions as well as a rating. I like the prep and cooking time since that is usually what I'm most concerned about when I'm planning a meal. The formatting on the instructions could be polished up to be a bit easier to read and make it easy to scan back to the step you were on when you're preparing the meal.

Like most recipe sites, you can email, print, and save a recipe. One nice feature that I haven't seen on other sites is the ability to "edit" a recipe. At first, I thought this was a wiki-like feature but it turns out it is a way for you to customize a recipe. I can see this being useful for those times when you end up changing something after trying a recipe so you don't have to rely on your notes on a printed copy. You an also assign tags to recipes to make them easier to find later on. For example, I could tag all recipes I like that have cheddar cheese with a "cheddar" tag. This could be handy when you are trying to figure out what to cook with the ingredients in you fridge or cabinet.

To use most of the features above, you'll need to create an account. This was easy and during the process it is apparent that the recipe part of the site is to get you interested in using chefs.com to find out about becoming a chef. Apparent, but not annoying. The only qualms I have with the signup process is the confirmation email's test part is still HTML format and the activation link automatically logs you in. 

I think the editing and tagging features are enough to make me try out this site in the future. Now that my wife has decided to go vegetarian, I'll be needing to search for more recipes to add to my arsenal. 

Pros:

• Nice layout and easy to use
• Recipe editing
• Recipe tagging 

Cons:

• Account activation email text part in HTML format
• Activation link automatically logs you in 

[tags]beer,recipe,thanksgiving[/tags] 

I think I’ll try this after dinner tonight. Take a bit of stout, throw in a scoop of ice cream, and let the flavor gods do their thing.

“This recipe is very easy and makes delicious bratwurst. My guests always ask for these during football season. You won't be able to get enough onions and peppers in the slow cooker because every time we make them, we run out! This recipe is for 10. If you have a very large slow cooker, you can get 15 in, but most can only hold 10 (you may need another slow cooker if making more).”

Link: All Recipes