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A friend recently posted a photo on Instagram of a giant zucchini harvested from her backyard in Chicago, with a caption that she needed recipes that use a ton of zucchini. I knew exactly where to send her. The best food blog on the internet, Smitten Kitchen, has thirty-seven zucchini recipes in its archives, ranging from quesadillas to latkes to chocolate bread. I sent my friend the link to a zucchini butter spaghetti recipe from five years ago—an internet classic.
This summer, Smitten Kitchen celebrates its twentieth anniversary. Since Deb Perelman started the site, in 2006, she’s weathered wave after wave of changes to how food writing on the internet works. A former art therapist and (briefly) tech reporter, she started writing online before Instagram or TikTok existed, and before Twitter and YouTube were part of the job. She was part of an ecosystem of home-cooking blogs, all of which would link to one another, and most of which faded away years ago. SEO boomed, then crashed as a result of Google algorithm changes. Now many people get their recipes from ChatGPT. Yet Smitten Kitchen keeps going, with Perelman still doing almost everything herself.
I learned to cook from Smitten Kitchen, so I was thrilled to talk to Perelman about what’s changed and what hasn’t during her twenty years in food blogging. (Her passionate monologue about the rise of AI in internet writing is an all-timer.) Listen below, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Show notes:
About Smitten Kitchen, Deb Perelman, Smitten Kitchen.
Frequently asked questions, Deb Perelman, Smitten Kitchen.
Spring panzanella, Deb Perelman, Smitten Kitchen.
Zucchini butter spaghetti, Deb Perelman, Smitten Kitchen.
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