Epicurious, hands down.

Allrecipes.com never really fails me, in large part because of the user comments. I can see what the last ten people did with the recipe and I know going into it what's likely to happen.

That said, I almost never use an actual recipe unless I'm baking something where the chemistry of it really matters. Most of my best meals have come from, "well, what do we have left in the fridge that can be cut up to go in the stir-fry pan?"

recipezaar.com

Cooks Illustrated

I really like the search features and filtering you can do on foodnetwork.com. I can search for chicken and then filter down the thousands of recipes to get something I want. Very useful when I have no idea of what I want to make.

@thrashanddestroy: Another vote for recipezaar.com here.

I love allrecipes.com some of the recipes even have caloric value listed and the rating system they use really lets you know if what your about to cook is going to be good plus they have hundreds of variations of the same recipe ---ie: want to make rice pudding but hate raisins they have an alternative---great stuff

[www.supercook.com]

VegWeb. It isn't super shiny flash-0-motronic, but it's extensive and has a sizable community behind it.

Plus, the forum boards are pretty good for getting random recipe questions answered... or watching people get into strange little arguments.

My step mother Looooves Epicurious. Swears by it. I usually search foodnetwork.com for ideas, but when it comes to actually following recipes, I rarely stray from myrecipes.com The reviews often yield some great insight about the dish, and some extra ideas about how to make it better.

This is way middle-of-the-road (why do I feel I need to apologize? LOL), but Cooks.com is where I generally end up when I Google-search for a particular recipe or food. I've gotten some favorite recipes there, including a super-easy, delicious ground-turkey meat loaf.

[www.foodtv.ca]

This is the Food Network Canada's link to Michael Smith's recipes. I have tried a number of the meals he has cooked and find them to be as easy and delicious as he indicates on his show. Although occasionally there are some differences in the recipe between the show and the website... doesn't appear to be a problem though.

Great food for family and friends...

@Etoiles: I like Allrecipes for the same reason. A lot of times there are helpful tips and tricks in the comments, and people will post how they put their own twist on the dish, which is fun to read too.

I heartily recommend SparkRecipes to anyone looking for recipes for healthier fare. There's some insanely delicious stuff on there that's made it into my regular cooking rotation, like Parmesan Broiled Tilapia and Maple Dill Chicken.

Definitely allrecipes because of their ingredient search. I can plug in the ingredients I have on hand and it'll tell me what I can make with them. Totally maximizing food I already own without having to go buy more.

@chucklebuck:

I love recipezaar and the community so much I even paid for a subscription. It's my FAVORITE recipe place by far.

Smitten Kitchen is a treasure trove. And I don't use any recipe that disallows user comments - why reinvent the wheel?

I normally just search Google for recipes. But one site I use is Mimi's Cyber Kitchen, particularly the archives.

[www.cyber-kitchen.com]

I love crockpots so [crockpot365.blogspot.com] is high on my list

For simple stuff and cookng with my kiddo, Betty Crocker's site is pretty good: [recipes.bettycrocker.com]

Nibble Dish: [www.nibbledish.com]
Tasty Planner: [tastyplanner.com]
Real Simple: [browse.realsimple.com]

@Carolyn Gabriel: Thanks for the recommendation! I found two recipes on the front page alone, I'm sold!

@JessicaFazoons: I adore Smitten Kitchen. I've had a lot of success with her recipes.

@Etoiles: Another vote for allrecipes. While the user comments are sometimes pretty dumb -- "I used Crisco instead of olive oil and cinnamon instead of oregano, and I baked it with cream of mushroom soup instead of pan-frying it, why didn't it turn out right?" -- more often they offer helpful suggestions. Plus, since there are often several similar recipes posted, I can cherry-pick what I want and what I don't, like if I'd rather do something from scratch than use a packaged ingredient.

Amazon.com is my favorite. They sell a huge collection of nicely bound books of recipes.

Alternatively, I use google. It searches all the recipe sites at once.

I'm a book person, so I reach for Cooking for Two (Or Just You): Healthy Cooking for Two by Francis Price, I believe.

Though I also like Real Simple's cookbook and will check out their recipes on-line.

And I think I'll try the Chicken w/ Citrus sauce in the article.

Epicurious, allrecipes are two of the best free sites. Cooks Illustrated is well worth the subscription, and it's a really great resource for learning techniques.

If any of you are iPhone users, the BigOven app is really awesome. You can search by ingredients, and it'll bring up things you can make with what you have.

I like using Wegmans' website. They put out a quarterly magazine with new recipes. They have a pretty good selection of recipes now. Plus, they usually feature items that are then put on sale for that season. Once I have some recipes I like, I can also make a list and print it out according to how the store I shop at is set up. It's pretty nifty.

cookingforengineers.com

If you sign up for the Cooks Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen email list, they send you a selection of recipes from past issues organized around a theme about once a week.

Taste of Home I get the magazine and love the website. I used to use Allrecipes and some others, but Taste of Home recipes are tried and true and now it's the only site I use.

The Pioneer Woman Cooks http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/ She's my favorite source of how-to's, and I like that all her steps are photographed so its more educational

I usually just google search, and usually wind up at Cooks.com

But when I want to learn technique, I've found Youtube to be a good source. I whipped up some hollandaise last night for some steamed potatoes, thanks to a video on Youtube

simplyrecipes.com

@thrashanddestroy: Another vote for recipezaar. It has the largest user-submitted recipe database by far (almost 10 times as many as allrecipes), a fantical user base who submit, rate and review, and good tools to help you filter and sort through the almost overwhelming piles of recipes you might get for a basic search.

[bitten.blogs.nytimes.com]

@JessicaFazoons: I agree heartily. Smitten Kitchen helped me get through making my friends' wedding cake without losing my mind.

@CumaeanSibyl: That's actually why I don't really like Allrecipes anymore (used to love it, though).

It's gotten to the point where the user comments are basically worthless, because *no one* made the actual, listed recipe ("I substituted Splenda for the honey", or "I left out the milk because my son is lactose intolerant", etc, often for some really crucial ingredients that are a centerpiece of the dish).

So they are really commenting on their own recipe, not the one posted. I don't have time to sort through that all, and just want to know whether the posted recipe has been tried and tested to success. I remember a New York Times article from a few years ago that parsed all this; was pretty funny.

@Carolyn Gabriel: I have several of my own recipes on that site as well. I haven't been using it as much lately though. Sometimes the recipes are hit and miss and what I consider bland, people there find flavorful. I think that might be some regional taste differences.

@formergr: Found the article more easily than I expected, called "For Orange Zest, Substitute Kool-Aid ": [www.nytimes.com]

I second the Smitten Kitchen mention above as well as recommend Thursday Night Smackdown, another food blog from which I got my current favorite recipe, The Chicken of 1000 Garlics. Ok it's only 50 garlics but that doesn't sound as cool.

@Etoiles: Agreed! One of the things I really like about AllRecipes is the user comments. I also like that even though a lot of the recipes are user submitted, it's not brand specific. I was digging through old cookbooks and it was ridiculous how many family and individual-submitted recipes in community cookbooks named brands of things that I had never even heard of, and it was so vague to the extent that I didn't even know if my substitute was even the same product.

Recipezaar allows me to sort recipes by user rating and store them in my online cookbook. I also like Google Base for searching for fancier recipes.

@veg-o-matic: User comments/recipe ratings and the ability to upload photos of any recipe are also pretty great functions as well.

Some people take some fantastic photos of food. Others, not so much.

For reasons I can't quite put a finger on, I tend to favor Allrecipes.com. I've also used Epicurious and Recipezaar as secondaries.

I used to go to the Food Network site too, but -- while they do have some good recipes there -- the site has become littered with "showcase" recipes by their celebrity chefs, which aren't all that useful for everyday cooking. So I gave up on that.

Men's Health's recipe finder: [recipes.menshealth.com]

[foodieview.com]

Great for typing in the stuff you have on hand and getting a recipe or a meal.

I use google, and then "shop" through the various hits, most of which have already been listed here, until I find the recipe that sounds the best to me.

Sometimes I want to duplicate a delicious food that I've eaten in a popular restaurant (e.g. the cheesy biscuits at Red Lobster). Those taste-alike recipes can often be found by googling.

It's not glamorous and foodie, but using www.astray.com is like rummaging through a hundred thousand recipe boxes. It has EVERYTHING, usually in four or five variations, and cross-referenced in a simple interface.

I used to be a vegetarian (until becoming a low-carber due to diabetes), and if you are in need of excellent vegan/vegetarian recipes, the following are invaluable resources:

www.vegsource.com
vegweb.com
www.everydaydishtv.blogspot.com
blog.fatfreevegan.com (not all fat free!)
www.postpunkkitchen.com (especially forums)
www.bryannaclarkgrogan.com (a very generous cookbook writer with hundreds of online recipes)
www.vegandad.blogspot.com (amazing meatless "meat" recipes)
www.vegetariancookeryschool.com
www.vegan-food.net

Mangia!

usually i am a cookbook person. the joy of cooking has a great section on the background and properties of ingredients and that helps me improvise with what i have on hand.
but if i need more info online i head over to the free "drill-downs" tutorial videos on rouxbe:

[rouxbe.com]