While we’re talking about ingredients, let’s chat about ingredient lists. I have some tips for you that will help us both when you submit your recipes:

• Always submit one ingredient per line, no blank lines, no dashes or bullets. On our end ingredients are listed in single boxes, we have to remove all the excess before we ever get to the heart of the recipe.


• When a recipe uses the same ingredient multiple times only list the ingredient once, followed by “divided”. This is especially important for callouts or contests with ingredient limits. Your recipe might have 12 ingredients but if you listed tomato sauce 3 times and beef stock twice, you’ve just added 3 ingredients to the count unnecessarily. When we read it there’s a chance we’ll see 15 ingredients and keep scrolling, without ever taking a deeper look.


• Make sure the ingredient is readily available, brand names are fine but we should be able to buy the ingredient at a local grocery store. Our readers really don’t like to shop around.


• If you’re using a seasoning blend make sure it’s not a brand exclusive (like Penzy’s BBQ3001).


• List measurements for your ingredients, this includes salt and pepper. It’s easy to just grab the shakers and shake, shake, shake but we can’t reproduce your results if we don’t know how much you shake out.


• Make sure your ingredients are ingredients. Don’t write a separate recipe as an ingredient. If your recipe uses browned ground beef, list the quantity of ground beef and then write the browning step in the method.


• Watch out for processed ingredients. Fresh is always best. When we take a first look at your recipe and see a bunch of cans or boxes or mixes we move on. Our readers are critical about sodium content and processed ingredients are almost always high in sodium. Today’s cook uses less canned soups and seasoning packets than ever before. Do you have a great recipe but need a substitute for a processed ingredient? Create a post in our Facebook group and ask for suggestions. Feel free to tag me, James or Peggy and we’ll do our best to respond.

A quick congratulations to the Volunteer Field Editors that reviewed recipes all 3 months of the first quarter in 2019. We threw all the names of those that reviewed recipes in January, February and March into a hat and pulled out Lonnie Hartstack and Cindy Worth. These two dedicated home-cooks were randomly drawn to win a little prize from the office. Consistency pays my friends! We’ll take a look again at the end of the 2nd quarter and do another drawing. Remember, you have to have reviewed recipes all three months to be entered.

A couple things worth noting, I’m going to be on vacation starting April 27th, returning May 13th. I will be unavailable during those 2 weeks. If you have an urgent matter while I’m out reach out to Peggy Woodward and she’ll be glad to help. Also – the ONLY email to use to reach me is fieldeditors@tasteofhome.com, take a peek at your address books and make sure to delete anything else. I know it can be confusing, we’ve been chatting a long time but it’s important to use the right address so your message doesn’t get lost.

Happy cooking, my friends!

Sue Stetzel

fieldeditors@tasteofhome.com