Food52 [2009]

“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the crowd-sourced cookbook!” food52 is truly a one of a kind website, and the cooking only site home cooks will ever need. food52 offers people who love cooking and eating a place share and find excellent recipes, as well as artisanal foods, kitchenware, wine and cooking tips. The is designed for inspired home-cooks who have ever wanted to write their own cookbook but never had the time; now we have a place show our recipes to a larger audience.

Using food52 home-cooks upload their favorite recipes, along with their photos or videos show casing their creations, and the hosts and Merrill and Amanda, along with the food52 community cook and vet them, creating the first curated crowd-sourced recipe database. food52, recognize talented home cooks by giving them a place to show off their work, a place where cooks of all kinds come to be inspired and engaged in lively conversation. This project grew out of an insight the hosts had while working on a cookbook: the best recipes come from home cooks.

Every week the hosts post assignments/solicitations for the best corn recipes, say, or the very best grilled pork and cooks of all sorts of cooks are encouraged to submit their theme inspired recipes. The hosts choose the cream of the crop as finalists and post slideshows of themselves making the recipes. Next the hosts present these back to the food52 members, who get a chance vote which one will make it into the cookbook, to be published by harper studios and recieve a bounty of cooking utensils from OXO. Every recipe in the book will come from the food52 community. “It won’t be just a cookbook, it will be an artifact of their participation.”

In addition to the contests the site is combined with a blog , where the sites editor's write about food, cooking, and their culinary discoveries.

Links:
food52
food52 on techcrunch