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I prefer using Google Bookmarks. It's more straightforward and I can search from my Google toolbar.

I've been using Delicious for awhile to save recipes for future reference. It's convenient because Quicksilver, the program I use to search for things on my Mac, automatically catalogs my Delicious links, so I can just type "side dishes" into the Quicksilver search box and it will pull up the Delicious page with all my bookmarked side dish recipes. Or, if I remember the recipe I was looking for was on 101 Cookbooks, I can type "101 cookbooks" into the search box and Quicksilver will display all my bookmarked 101 Cookbooks recipes.

I've recently been considering switching over to Evernote from Delicious for tracking recipes because Evernote allows you to actually store the text from a website, rather than just the link, which is helpful in case a certain website ever goes down -- I'll still have the recipe text and photos saved. I miss the Quicksilver integration though!

Um...can you tell I'm a bit of a productivity nerd? I'm looking forward to hearing the methods other people use!

I do this too -- but there's an easier way to pull up all the tagged stuff. If you scroll down to the bottom of the "subscriptions" section on the left sidebar, all your tags will be listed there, and you can click on whichever one you want to view. (It may by default show only unread posts, which is probably none, so you'll have to click on "all items" at the top.)

A few weeks ago, this blog (I think) mentioned "springpadit.com" as a recipe organizational tool. I love it! It still has some kinks in it, but it creates a link to the original site, collects the ingredients, then you paste directions. I then drag and drop the recipes into my weekly meal planner -same site- and click "shopping list", where ingredients for those recipes can be dragged into my shopping list as I review them.

It is so nice! My kids can drop menu items onto any of the days so they can participate with their favorites. It really has changed the way we eat as a family.

It's kind of a hack, but I flag any recipes (mostly from this site) that I want to refer back to as "Shared" instead of "Starred". I don't use the Sharing function in Google Reader for anything else, so I can just go to my Shared Items and browse the list of recipes. I do wish the tagging functionality was a little more usable, until this post I hadn't actually figured out why tags were of any use at all.

Oh wow. This is a great idea! I had thought of tagging design ideas, but never recipes. So far, I've been copying and pasting recipes from the Kitchn and elsewhere and then emailing them to myself at my gmail. I have a folder in my email for all recipes and they're further sorted by mains, desserts, etc. I've just had a really hard time stomaching using delicious, etc. in addition to google and all of my social networking sites and i hate how messy my bookmarks look when I bookmark everything. I'll try this! And springpadit.com sounds interesting enough to give it a whirl.....

I do this exact thing. I continue to add tags all the time and often tag one post with multiple tags. My tags come up on the left side of the screen under the subscriptions. I'm in love with this technique. If there is something I want to make right away or it contains ingredients that are perfectly in season now I star it. When I'm looking for inspiration those are the recipes I scan first.

As someone already mentioned, it is dead easy to click on a tag at the bottom of your subscription list and see everything that has that tag.

And the search function for Google Reader works great if you are looking for something with a particular ingredient.

However, I use an inexpensive little piece of software called Personal Knowbase for storing recipes - can also use tags to find things, plus it has a good search function, including Boolean search, and filters. I think it handles tags better than Google Reader does.

You can use the keyboard shortcuts to go to the tags quickly as well: g then t then start typing the tag name

Delicious.com seconded!

I use Google Reader as well, but I just star the recipes I want to try. Once I get around to a recipe from Reader, I import it into MacGourmet and organize them all within that program. Only downside is that it isn't free. :(

Oh, man. That's why I have to print things out - I already have a strict filing system in place for hard copies (things ripped out of magazines, etc). I know, it's awful, and I really do limit what I print; but if I had to introduce a second pool of recipes to search through, I'd never get anything done.

http://www.abreadaday.com

I LOVE using zotero (zotero.org) to organize recipes. It supports tags, allows you to save notes about the recipes, can take a snap-shot of the page in case it disappears, and has a number of other useful features. And it is free.

(Its intended purpose is really for academic research, but I've found it to be perfect for my e-recipe collection.)

I have been using tags in Google Reader for a while now, but I really disliked the fact that I couldn't search all tagged items if I didn't know which specific folder I wanted to search (for example, if I had a lot of blueberries and wanted to find all the recipes using them I'd tagged, I had to search each tag individually or search the whole reader, including recipes I hadn't tagged.) I'll admit, I'm a bit anal when it comes to organizing things as efficiently as possible. I tried so many other methods: printing recipes out, saving them to my computer, but nothing was as streamlined as I wanted...until just two days ago, I figured out a solution. I registered a blog with Wordpress and set it to be private (password-protected). I cut and paste the recipes I want to keep into quick blog postings, categorize them with any term I think will be useful, and put a "Search" widget into the sidebar. I'm so happy now! (In the words of Austin Powers: "Nerd Alert!")
--Julie (chompsky.wordpress.com)

I save some recipes in google reader, but usually just until I get a chance to clip them into Evernote and tag them.

What I LOVE about endnote is that you don't have to access the entire webpage again. The standalone desktop app is awesome.

And there is an excellent iphone/ipod touch app for Evernote. Even when I have internet access, I haven't really gotten into google reader on the ipod touch yet. But, when I don't have internet access on my ipod (like in a grocery store) I can still access recipes and notes that I mark as "favorites". So I have an entire searchable library of stuff I know I want to make everywhere I go!

Thanks for this. I've been copy-pasting recipes into iWork Pages, but that's rather clunky, even if it does give the option of using purty symbols like the ones for degrees and "1/2" and so on. Evernote could be the fix I've been wishing for.

This is a timely article since I was just thinking of some type of solution since my Bookmarks are exploding at the seams with recipes.....

I'm definitely curious to try EverNote - I heard about them a while back and your comments reminded me!

Any thought to bundling all of your recipe blogs you subscribe to in Google Reader, then sharing the link to this bundle?

I copy-paste into google documents (yes, of course making sure to note where the recipe came from) and then share recipes with family and friends.

We use this in my lab as well to keep a centralized protocol list, chemical inventory and other documents we use frequently. It keeps us from printing out copies all the time and makes making changes to the central protocols easy.

I started using Xmarks (previously Foxmarks) because I wanted to back up my bookmarks, but I definitely use it to organize my recipes. Each recipe goes into a folder (appetizers, breakfast, tips and techniques, etc), and I add tags or descriptive words to the title so I can search for them from my sidebar. It's especially handy when I'm looking at a new recipe and I want to compare it to others I might have previously bookmarked.

EverNote does the same thing... It's free and lets you tag to your heart's content. It also captures links and you can copy parts of a webpage and edit them. I have all my The Kitchn recipes neatly organized in EverNote. ;)

Delicious is a great tool for this use, as others have noted. You can make tags yourself and be as specific or general as you want. Plus, you can add notes to reflect recipe changes or other important info ...