- The Origin Story — This paragraph explains the origin of your dish. When did you first create or taste (and then steal and only slightly change) this recipe?
- The Family Story — What’s the family story behind the recipe? For example, “this was my Grandmother’s chili. She was one of the only survivors of the Oregon Trail and she used to make this chili for all the men. They called her Chili Millie.”
- The Ingredients — This is where you describe a few specific ingredients. The more obscure or expensive, the better. Is Manuka honey a must? Do you only use Early Girl tomatoes found at a farmer’s market in Santa Fe, NM during a full moon in the month of September?
- Your Health Journey — What is your Pilates routine? How many bushels of kale do you eat per week? Are you a fecal transplant donor? People need to know these things if they are to make your Sauerkraut correctly.
- A Photo of Food — If a picture says 1,000 words, then a very large picture of a Mason jar filled with pickled vegetables says 100,000 words.
- How They Can Be Like You — Give your readers a taste (no pun intended) of how they can be more like you. Tell them how you became a fecal transplant donor and where they can donate if their micro-biome is up to snuff.
- Another Photo of Food — I suggest lentils spread out over a reclaimed wood table. It doesn’t matter that no one would actually do that while cooking unless they got spooked by the ghost of Julia Child and dropped their lentils. It also hardly matters if yours is a recipe for a Mint Pomegranate Shrub.
- An Excerpt From Your Unpublished Novel — Your food blog is a great place to showcase your fiction writing. It will add some flavor (pun intended!). And besides, you never know when a publisher who previously rejected your manuscript, may one day be in the mood to make Vegan Blueberry Muffins and chance upon your blog and realize, “Wow, this book that I had previously panned as a crappy version of Little Women may actually be a bestseller!”
- A Link To Your Online Dating Profile — People may be so smitten by your Paleo Snickerdoodles that they will want to know more about the woman behind the cashew cream 🙂
- Your Personal Security Information — Fair game for this paragraph includes: Your Social Security Number, your Driver’s License or your Credit Card number. Don’t worry, your information is safe here, nestled between paragraphs #9 and #11. Your readers won’t even see the last few paragraphs. They will just be madly scrolling, wondering if there even is a recipe for Grain Free Strawberry Crisp at the bottom.
- Empty Space — Just press on the space bar and hit return a bunch of times. This will add a whisper of mystery to your recipe.
- Filibuster — You can liberally sprinkle anything here (pun deliberately forced in). Parts of the phone book, excerpts from an Astrology blog, your favorite passages from Untamed by Glennon Doyle. It’s completely fine if you use copywritten material. Unlike the editors at Little Brown Nosers, who swore that you’d “plagiarized the hell out of Louisa May Alcott,” no one is reading at this point. Go to town.
- Some You Time — Take a moment and lean your head down on your keyboard. Alternatively, get your cat to walk across it. Whoever said “brevity is the soul of wit” didn’t know a thing about online recipes. It’s more like “long-windedness is the umami of food blogs.”
- The Recipe — Include the recipe if you feel like it. 6 point font works well.
How To Write An Online Recipe in 14 Easy Paragraphs
