Ep #27: Recipe Development Tips for Food Bloggers with Gaby Dalkin

Every good craft requires practice and time devoted to understanding the foundational pillars. Food blogging is no different. In order to share recipes with your readers that will inspire them to create dishes of their own, you need a good understanding of recipe development. That’s why today’s interview on Recipe Development Tips for Food Blogers with Gaby Dalkin, professional chef, provides such valuable information. Read on for more of the story.

Professional chef, Gaby Dalkin, has an inspirational food blog sharing delicious recipes, some of which she’s actually traveled the world to deliver. How inspiring! But, of course, the art and science of recipe development is a skill that improves with time and training.

I’m not embarrassed to say that when I first got into food blogging I had no idea how to develop a recipe. All I knew was what I liked in a recipe: seeing the ingredients listed in the order of their appearance in the process. It turns out that’s one of the keys to creating a good recipe!

But there’s a lot more to a good recipe than just getting the ingredients in the right order. And it’s so important to have your recipes delivered in a method that makes it more user-friendly for your audience.

Gaby talks about the importance of food in our lives and the joy of sharing that with others. It’s one of the things that makes food bloggers so special!

You can find ways to add your personality to your recipes, while at the same time delivering instructions that are straight forward and do-able. Gaby shares lots of great tips that you can begin using today to take your recipe development from good to great!

Featured Content – Recipe Development Tips for Food Bloger with Gaby Dalkin

Here are some of the highlights of my discussion with Gaby:

• Why Gaby started her blog What’s Gaby Cooking
• What inspired Gaby to go to culinary school
• How Gaby met her best friends at food blogging conferences
• Gaby mentions that her favorite part about food blogging is meeting incredible people
• What Gaby hates about food blogging is something we all probably understand!
• Gaby talks about how social media can compete with the creative part of food blogging
• Gaby hires out some parts of her food blog to allow her time for working with clients and other things she does with her blog
• Gaby has a well-honed process for recipe development, including testing her recipes
• Gaby talks about a mistake she made in a recipe that caused her to develop her current recipe development process
• Gaby writes her recipes out before even heading into the kitchen and how a step like this can help you think through your recipe’s photo shoot (making sure you’re incorporating colorful ingredients)
• Gaby talks about how she has a style for her blog and the look that’s been established for the photos on her blog
• We share tips on how to share bits of your personality with your recipe instructions
• Attribution is a hot topic amongst food bloggers and we don’t shy away from talking about it
• Have you ever wondered what’s the best way to list ingredients in a recipe? Gaby has an answer for you.
• We even talk about a little recipe history, thanks to a quote by George Carlin!

Show Notes

This episode includes references to some resources you might find interesting. Here they are:

• Check out Gaby’s site What’s Gaby Cooking
• Give a shout-out to Gaby and connect with her on Twitter and Instagram!
• Gaby mentions the site The Italian Dish blog.
• Marly mentions Rouxbe’s Plant-Based Pro certification program
• Gaby mentions Teaux Deaux as one of her favorite getting things done app.
• Marly mentions the book Will Write for Food by Dianne Jacob
• Be sure to follow Gaby on SnapChat. Her username is: whatsgabycookin
• Check out the Summary of the 2014 Chopped Conference for more testimonials
• Connect with Chopped Academy Online:  Instagram  | Twitter
• Connect with Marly: Namely Marly |  Instagram  | Twitter
• Production, music, graphic art & sound design by Shawn Beelman

Announcements

1. Learn about future Chopped Podcast episodes by subscribing to the ChoppedCon newsletter. Just add your email in the subscribe section at the bottom of this page. You’ll be glad you did!
2. Tickets for the 2015 Chopped Conference are available. You can also attend a Food Photography Workshop with Matt Armendariz or participate in the dynamic Food Blog Success Summit. Take your food blog to the next level…learn more and buy your tickets today!
3. Our next podcast interview is with Brandon of the site Kitchen Konfidence. Brandon and I are talking about the food blogger as teacher. Yeah, that’s right, we have opportunities to instruct and encourage our audience. Brandon shares ideas on how to do it. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss it!

Subscribe to the Show & Feedback

Thanks so much for listening to today’s podcast. I hope you found it informative and helpful to the work you do every day. Make sure you don’t miss out on any of the Chopped Podcast episodes by heading on over to iTunes to subscribe to the Chopped Podcast. While you’re there, provide a review and rating is a great way to help other podcast listeners find it too! That’s it for today’s podcast. As always, thanks so much for joining in the discussion!