Food52.com Plus BLT Salad Recipe Plus Website
Food52 puts your recipes in the spotlight--and in a cookbook
They say that "two cooks in the kitchen will spoil the broth," but that's not necessarily so.
Somewhere between the proliferation of CSAs and recipe forums, we realized that a group approach to cooking has its merits.
In that vein, noted food journalists Amanda Hesser (pictured, left) and Merrill Stubbs (right) have conceived the coolest social group experiment since the commune: Food52.com.
Officially launching today after a short beta run, the website has a brilliantly straightforward premise: Create a cookbook that celebrates home cooking with recipes from the country's best home cooks (that's you).
Each week, Hesser and Stubbs post guidelines for a recipe contest on the site, and members (there's no cost to sign up) have a week to post their submissions.
After careful tasting and testing, the Food52 team will pick two finalists, and then the community will vote on the recipes. The winners from each contest will appear in the forthcoming Food52 cookbook, to be published by Harper Studio next year.
But it's not all competition: The site also culls recipes from other top cooking blogs and posts video tours of home kitchens, making it an optimal place to look for inspiration for tonight's dinner.
We just found our own inspiration in this winning member recipe for a BLT Panzanella Salad (click here to download).