Most Popular Recipes on Pinterest

The most popular recipes on Pinterest are usually the ones that get the most attention, but are these recipes really worth making? Sometimes the answer is yes – but all too often, the answer is sadly no.

Here's the problem with recipes on Pinterest: a lot of them are developed by people with very little cooking experience, and very little recipe writing experience. So some of these "most popular recipes on Pinterest" are downright terrible. Others are actually recipes written by good cooks, but they don't know how to write a reliable recipe and end up leaving out steps or making mistakes.

Cooking is a skill, so if you want to improve your cooking skills, you need to learn from those who know what they're talking about. Like, anyone who develops recipes professionally should have a fairly strong sense of taste and smell they're worked to develop intentionally.

So what's the best way to discern the best recipes on Pinterest from the worst? Star ratings on food blogs count for very little, since recipe plugins allow bloggers to weed out and exclude bad ratings. Because of this, check out the comments (assuming the blogger hasn't just deleted all of the bad comments, too).

Also, make sure to use recipes from people who are respected in their field. You can usually Google a recipe developer's name to find out how respected they are. Do they have a cookbook out on a major publisher? Perhaps several cookbooks? Are they quoted in newspapers? Have they won any awards, such as a James Beard or IACP award? Those are usually GREAT indicators the person is respected because of their cooking skills.

When it comes to large recipe sites, like AllRecipes and Food52, their star ratings are a lot more accurate, so when it says 4 stars you can usually believe it's accurate. Just make sure there are at least five ratings on the recipe, so get a more accurate sample of ratings!