How to cook the geek way

Social media and food go together like peanut butter and jelly. We’ve all got to eat, everyday, and most of us carry a phone or some other communications device with us everywhere we go, which means we’ve got a cooking school in our pockets. Even though our lives are more busy than ever, it’s possible to have a healthy, balanced diet with the aid of technology.

We’ve compiled a list of ways for you to cook the geek way, and eat better with the help of technology. If you want to misbehave a little bit too, we’ve got you covered.

Without further ado, feast your eyes on our list of how to cook the geek way.

Food blogs

Food blogs are an obvious place to start. On food blogs people share recipes, talk about new cookware, share the memories they have of favorite meals, or tell crazy stories about recipes gone wrong. You can find 50 food blogs worth checking out here, but one of the fastest-growing and most immersive blog communities for foodies can be found on Tumblr. Our own Courtney Boyd Meyers recently spoke wth Foodspotting’s Amy Cao, and got her top 5 Tumblrs for foodies.

The world of food blogging is too vast to encompass in a single post, so let’s focus on one particularly fun corner of the food blogging world; food porn. Food porn is not quite as racy as it sounds, and generally has two flavors, naughty and nice. Food porn sites instantly make our mouths water when we look at all the amazing pictures.

Any site meant to stimulate the dark crevices of our mind with gorgeous food photos counts as food porn, and this isn’t a bad thing. In fact, there are plenty of photo blogs that can make us drool, and make us healthy at the same time. Look at the photo of these green beans from the blog Sprouted Kitchen, and tell me you don’t want to eat your veggies.

We also like sites like Herbivoracious, and Kath Eats Real Food, for healthy, beautiful food photography.

Devilish delicacies

A few of our favorite naughty sites, include this This is Why Your Fat and BBQ Addicts, the blog from the guys who unleashed the famous Bacon Explosion onto the world. Below is a shot of the Amazing Spaghetti Bomb, which looks like it could cause some serious devastation.

Another fun food site is Cake Wrecks, a community where bakers share photos of the most adventurous, or mis-guided tarts the mind can conjur.

Food Porn Daily sits right in the middle. Sometimes they’ve got the healthy stuff that would make your mom happy, such as grilled eggplant and zucchini with fresh mozzarella (see photo below). But there’s plenty of time for creamy cheese cake covered in whole chocolate chips. For that photo, and many more, you’ll just have to click through.

Online Video

YouTube is another great place where you can learn some amazing recipes. This should come as no surprise, as YouTube by itself is the world’s third largest search engine. During this year’s Super Bowl, I was able to find dozens of recipes for buffalo wings, until one finally caught my fancy.

Recipe site Chef Al’s Blog put together it’s own list of the Top 10 YouTube Cooking channels, providing a world tour of food styles. Check out the video below for Japanese Nabeyaki Udon Noodles. And don’t worry, the dog in the background is just a spectator like us.

Foodie Apps for cooks

Food has always been a social experience, which is why food apps make so much sense. Food apps both connect us with communities of eaters and make it easy for us to share the experience and photos with our friends, or the culinary community at large. You can check out 12 Seriously Tasty Apps for Foodies, which we posted recently, and now we’ve compiled some more interesting apps for you to check out.

Gourmet Live is an app and food-based community created by magazine publisher Conde Nast. With Gourmet Live diners can share upscale food experiences (does Conde Nast do any other scale?), and get rewarded for it. The app, which can be downloaded to the iPad and iPhone highlights the editorial content from now-defunct Gourmet magazine, as well as videos and recipes and commentary.

Other food apps combine the best of fine dining and location, such as Foodspotting, which lets users find and recommend eating experiences, and share photos of their favorite foods. We recently wrote about Paprika, an iOS app for managing recipes. One of the oldest and most reliable food/location apps is Yelp, with a strong user community, and a mobile experience that delivers the best reviews and recommendations. While it doesn’t tell you how to make what you want to eat, we thought it was a mandatory part of the list. How often have you heard the expression, ‘let me Yelp that for you,’ after all?

What are some of your favorite resources for high-tech foodies? We’d love to have you sound off in the comments section below.