5 Key Elements for a Cooking Blog

Posted on 21. Apr, 2011 by Guest in Blogging Elements

This is a guest post from: Mariana Ashley

Are you aspiring to be the next Bobby Flay or Rachel Ray? Have you dreamed of starting a cooking blog to share your passion with the world? Creating a fantastic food blog can get you one step closer to the professional industry. Even if you aren’t planning on being the next Food Network star, starting a cooking blog can be a great way to share your recipes with your families and friends. You can also keep track of your successes and failures, as well as your progress over time. Whether or not you want this blog to attract thousands of readers, there are certain elements that can set your site apart from others. Adding these key elements can also be helpful for you and your family as well. If you cook on a regular basis, your thorough blog will help you keep track of which recipes should be used again! The key elements are listed and described below.

Availability of Ingredients

Whether you are using a family recipe, a recipe from a professional cookbook, or even a recipe you came up with five minutes ago, discussing the availability of recipe ingredients is essential. If a blog reader is looking for a fast dish to try, they probably won’t want to spend time going to five different markets looking for ingredients. If your recipe, for example, calls for exotic peppers or hard to find cheeses, make sure you let your readers know! It may help to establish a scale for each recipe you discuss. If most of the dish ingredients are available at your local grocery store, you can mark the ingredient availability at 10. For example, if you are using one of Bobby Flay’s Mexican cookbook recipes, which requires exotic peppers not readily available in a local supermarket, you may want to rate the ingredient availability level a bit lower at 6 or 7.

Recipe Difficulty

This is another essential element you should discuss in your blog. What skill levels are required for the recipe in question? Does one need to be a master chef to create the dish? Can a novice cook recreate the dish without much unease? You could use a scale for this as well, or you can just discuss general difficulty in each blog entry.

Health Benefits/Drawbacks

Due to a growing emphasis on healthy eating habits in the media, many Americans are looking for healthier food options. If you’re recipe incorporates a lot of fatty ingredients, you may want to offer substitutes for those with high cholesterol or high blood sugar. If these healthier ingredients may jeopardize your recipe, at least let readers know that the recipe may not be for someone on a strict diet! You may want to say, “This dish is absolutely delicious! Unfortunately, it does come with a hefty calorie count, so make sure you cook healthy the rest of the week!”

Make it Personal

Most readers like to read what your husband/wife/significant other/friends thought of the dish you made. Incorporating personal stories or tribulations about your cooking experiences can make your blog more enjoyable to follow!

PICTURES PICTURES PICTURES!

Pictures of your dishes are a MUST for any cooking blog. Readers want to see what their dish should look like! It may be helpful to take pictures of the dish at different stages. For example, if you are making devil’s food cake, try to take pictures of the ingredients, the batter, and the final product!

author:

Mariana Ashley is a freelance writer who particularly enjoys writing about online college. She loves receiving reader feedback, which can be directed to mariana.ashley031 @gmail.com.

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