Celebrating 20 Years of Simply Recipes

The first time I can remember visiting Simply Recipes, it was because I was craving chicken pozole. The year was 2009. I was fresh from culinary school and owned exactly two cookbooks, neither of which contained a recipe for pozole. 

Google had launched its search function a few years prior, and I was just learning the power and delight of typing a simple query into Google’s search bar and receiving page after page of matching results in return. Elise Bauer’s Chicken Pozole on Simply Recipes was at the top of Google’s list. 

I clicked it (of course) and was rewarded with step-by-step instructions and photos showing me how to make exactly the soup that I was craving. This level of care and detail was a rarity in those early days of the internet, and reading through the recipe, I felt like Elise was speaking directly to me and me alone.

That night in my dinky Boston kitchen with its yellowy overhead light and my one dented soup pot, I confidently cut a whole chicken into parts, drained the hominy, and squeezed lime wedges over my finished bowl. The pozole was fantastic and I’ve been a Simply Recipes fan ever since.

Years later when I came to work for Simply Recipes, I learned that my experience had been shared by millions of loyal readers since Elise first launched the site in 2003—people who found Simply Recipes through a craving and a Google search and kept coming back for more. As her website grew from a blog meant to archive her family’s favorite recipes into the full-blown cooking destination it has become, Elise stayed true to her core mission: helping home cooks like herself feel confident in the kitchen and create happy memories of gathering around the table.

This is a mission and a legacy that I have been honored to carry on at Simply Recipes, and I am beyond humbled to be celebrating our 20th anniversary this year. Twenty years! That’s 20 years of the internet’s favorite banana bread; 20 years of covering food trends like kale salads and Instant Pot recipes while always looking ahead to what’s next on the horizon; and 20 years of making memories in the kitchen with each other, just as our Simply Recipes editors did recently while making videos of our top 10 recipes for you.

My time at Simply Recipes has been magical, and I cannot wait to see what the next 20 years have in store. Thank you all so much for being a part of our Simply Recipes family—we couldn’t do it without you!

With love,
Emma Christensen, General Manager, Simply Recipes

A Letter from Elise Bauer, the Founder of Simply Recipes

The founder of Simply Recipes talks about how the site got its start, what's changed in home cooking during the past 20 years, and what she's up to now.

Our Top 10 Recipes of All Time

You have favorites! Of the thousands of recipes Simply Recipes' has published in the past 20 years, these are the 10 recipes you click on the most. To celebrate, our editors created fun videos for each recipe for you to follow along.

The Internet’s Most Popular Banana Bread

Simply Recipes' banana bread recipe has been the most popular recipe on Google for years—it's that good! We handed the banana recipe over to five of our favorite bakers and asked them to add their own spin to it. Our minds are blown and we can't wait for you to try them all!

The Next 20 Years in Food Trends

Food-trend prognostication is an art that requires data, intuition, and pure love for food. That's why we asked nine cookbook authors, food editors and bloggers, and food content creators—people that cook, learn, and think about food day in and day out—to give us their best predictions for what foods we'll be shopping for, cooking, eating, and talking about in the next 20 years.