Ok first of all... I am NO AUTHORITY on food blogging. Not one bit. I think I hit a nerve in the conversation that I was having offline-ish with someone on Instagram about a month ago. But this made me think this morning about it.
Headnotes are super important to show authority, why this particular recipe you are looking at is valuable and most importantly it is 100% how Google optimizes the search. You can embed search words and tags but you also have to include it in your dialogue and written content to allow Google to search and scrape your site to be able to get it to "find" and "promote" your recipe. Simple as that.
So when I am looking and searching for recipes honestly when I find one that I like I usually skip right to the ingredients list (I also have a chrome app that pops open a window with just the recipe it's called "recipe filter". It's pretty good...) to see if it's something even approachable for me. PS if there is mayo or sourcream mamma out...and then I will close the app window pop up and go through and read a little bit more. Sometimes there are hidden steps that aren't in the recipe proper... watch for that, I think it's a trick now a days for some bloggers.
Note most of the time, I would say it's about a 50/50 ratio that I find a recipe worth printing out to make later. But if there is a recipe that I do like and want to try, I read some of the headnotes/story that accompanies the recipes. Want to know why?
Here it is... it's really simple... I really DO want to know why this recipe was important enough to write up for a blog. Why did the cook think this was important... is it cultural, did they find that all the other gluten free brownies they tried weren't great, did they find this cloud bread recipe on another site and their adaption made it easier to bake and quicker, did their mother make something similar when they were growing up? All these really important things could be answered before you hit that "print recipe" button. It's really important to get a little background. It makes it really valuable to have this in the back of your mind when you are making something.
The author may have had to do something like this... will they save you some time maybe... it's worth reading to find out right?!
Sure ... sure ... sure... it is a pain in the ass sometimes to read a recipe post and all you hear about is how the preschool pick up line was so long when the poster realized that she may not have enough time to make the mac and cheese little Charlie loves the most in life so adapted a recipe to be no stir or whatever. But gleen what preschool Mom is telling you... time saver. This could save you 10 valuable minutes... Oh you don't have a kid you say... well this could be a walk around the block time instead.. whatever. You get my point.
I was doing a search on pinterest for a bao bun recipe ... btw... I honestly don't know why I was searching for bao buns because I can't have carbs like that... and I came across this recipe... https://thewoksoflife.com/chinese-bbq-pork-buns-cha-siu-bao/. There was honestly just enough interesting personal stuff that I dug deeper on the website and learned that a pineapple bun could be simple to make and honestly I didn't know that it's not pineapple flavor. I also didn't know that one of my favorite dimsum cart treats was this exact thing and named what it was, why and also with a pronunciation that will make it easy to ask for when the world opens up again enough to go to a sit down dimsum palace.
So see... while it may be a pain in the ass to dig through the story and discussion before the recipe, keep in mind... you are reading content that someone is putting out there to bring you into their kitchen in a big ole way. Be kind and conscious of the message. Sure hearing about little Madison's soccer practice may be a slog to get through... give it a second to resonate why you found the recipe in the first place.
Food blogging has to be incredibly difficult. I wanted to do it about 10 years ago before it was a thing but realized, nope... not for me. So I honestly admire the heck out of anyone that can do it. Kudos to you food peeps...I see you. And you should read the headnotes... you never know what you can learn.
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