Find food tools fast

Go online for everything from conversion charts to preparation advice

By Maureen Halushak

If you’re anything like Toronto mom and full-time financial reporter Laura Urmoneit, there aren’t enough hours in the day for healthy meal planning.

“I’m too busy to go shopping after work,” says Urmoneit, who trades in financial jargon for after-work fun with daughter Emily. She has her groceries delivered through the online grocery service Grocery Gateway and makes good use of the site’s nutritional reference information. “You can see the nutritional content of what you’re buying in a very easy format,” she says. “They have a high fibre section and a low carb section, which makes shopping for healthy food a whole lot easier.”

There is a bevy of food-related information and tools online to help you save time while cooking.

Discover cooking demos

If you’re unsure how to butterfly a chicken or bake a loaf of bread, check out the Food Network and Cooking.com for instructional videos.

Epicurious offers technique videos — with step-by-steps on everything from folding napkins to boiling lobster. “They have lots of photos and the descriptions are easy to follow,” says Hallie Sprackman, chef and owner of Toronto catering company Food by Design. Adds Jennifer Bain, food editor at the Toronto Star: “Epicurious is a great resource for its recipes and food reference.”

Convert with confidence

The next time you’re elbows deep in a Naked Chef recipe that calls for eight pints of berries or three ounces of ricotta cheese, visit the Conversion Charts of Reader’s Digest Canada to transform pints into litres and ounces into grams. You’ll also find cookware size conversions and Fahrenheit to Celsius equivalents.

Substitute in a snap

Alone in the kitchen with a recipe calling for pepperoncini? Head to your computer before you consider substituting it with pepperoni. Consult the highly reliable Food Dictionary, with more than 4,000 food and drink definitions. There, you’ll discover that pepperoncini are red chile peppers with wrinkly skin and slightly sweet flavour.

Also try the Food Network for its handy Ingredient Substitutions Chart.

Eat right

Long before South Beach and Atkins hit the diet circuit, Canada’s Food Guide to Healthy Eating told Canadians how to eat — for free.

Whether you’re counting carbs or calories, use Food Network Canada’s Nutrition Calculator (which references Health Canada’s Canadian Nutrient File) to get the skinny on your favourite foods.

Read food safety tips

For advice on kitchen concerns such as proper storage, reheating of leftovers and safety tips for food thermometers, visit the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s Food Safety Tips and Facts page.

Find how-to help

Whether you need help cooking a turkey or canning tomatoes, it’s best to go directly to the source. “The web sites we recommend to readers are run by corporations connected to the food in question,” says Bain. “They have big budgets to produce up-to-date and reliable information.”

She likes sites such as Butterball and Canada’s Beef Information Centre. “Butterball is great, whether you eat the brand or not.” Use its step-by-step guide, complete with turkey and stuffing calculator to roast your first bird.

At the Beef Information Centre’s Virtual Beef Counter, bone up on beef cuts and read answers to Frequently Asked Questions on topics ranging from Mad Cow to marinating.

Here are other reliable sites to turn to for culinary queries:

America’s Test Kitchen gives the lowdown on kitchen gadgetry — such as boning knives and pepper mills — in their Equipment Corner.
Dairy Farmers of Canada offers an Encyclopedia of Canadian Cheese and a Wine and Cheese Party Planner.
Delia Online offers advice on a myriad of cooking methods — such as boning a trout and whisking egg whites — from renowned British chef Delia Smith.
Eggs.ca, which is a site of the Canadian Egg Marketing Agency, offers extensive egg information.
The Emily Post Institute is a great source for food-related etiquette queries. “What I enjoy about this particular site is the ability to ask specific questions with its staff getting back to you quickly,” says Sprackman.
Foodland Ontario has storage and preparation tips that apply to produce from every province.
Kraft Canada is another of Urmoneit’s favourites. “It has how-tos for everything from barbecues to birthday parties.”
Homecanning.com, the official site of canning supply company Bernardin, offers step-by-step guides to preserving high acid and low acid foods.
Put Pork on your Fork, run by Ontario’s pork producers, is home to pork recipes and tips.
Saveur magazine is a gateway to information on worldwide cuisine.

Enter a foodie forum

If your four-year-old isn’t keen on discussing quinoa, foodie forums, such as The Daily Gullet, are great spots to ask questions about ingredients, techniques and food in the news, and also to suss out restaurants across North America.

“Chowhound’s Message Board is a fabulous resource and makes for entertaining reading for people swapping notes on restaurants and trying to find who makes the best version of any given dish,” says Bain. “In the meantime, it’s just fun to see what other people are eating.”