Editorial standards
Food & Drinks is everyday Australian home cooking, organised by ingredient and season. This page explains how we check what we publish, and what you can hold us to. Recipes are checked and edited by the Food & Drinks Editor.
How every recipe is checked
Every recipe is checked for Australian measures and ingredients before it goes up, and again when we change it.
That check covers:
- Metric and Australian names. Grams and millilitres, a 250 ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon. Plain flour, bicarb soda, capsicum, coriander, caster sugar.
- Standard ratios. Baking and preserving recipes are compared with accepted ratios for flour, liquid, sugar, acid and salt.
- Oven temperatures. Given in Celsius, fan-forced and conventional.
- No hidden quantities. Every amount sits in the ingredient list, not buried in a step.
- Storage and food safety. How long it keeps, where, and how to reheat or freeze it.
What “Tested” means
“Tested” appears only on a recipe that someone has cooked from the written recipe. If a recipe does not show it, it has had the check above but has not been cooked from the page, and it says “Reviewed and updated” or “Updated” with a date.
How we work out seasons
We use Australian sources: state government and health guides, produce market calendars and the national horticulture statistics. Each ingredient page shows the national peak months, then any state that differs, because Queensland’s winter supply is not Victoria’s. Where sources disagree, we say so. Staples that are available all year, such as onions, garlic and lemon juice, do not limit when a recipe is shown as in season.
How we work out cost per serving
When a recipe shows a cost, it is the total of the ingredients divided by the number of serves, using Coles and Woolworths shelf prices that we check by hand. The line shows the month we checked. It is approximate, because prices move and pack sizes vary. We leave pantry basics such as salt and water out of the total, and say so.
Images
Recipe and ingredient images are generated illustrations, styled to show the dish or ingredient. They are not photos of the recipe as written. Each one is labelled under the picture. Where we cook a recipe and photograph it, the photo replaces the illustration.
Corrections
Spotted a mistake? Tell us through the contact form at the contact form. We do not publish an email address. When we fix a recipe, we note the change on the page with the date.
Sister sites
Planting Season (growing) and Drink Lab (drinks) are sister sites. We link to them only where it helps, for example a planting guide on a zucchini page. Every link is labelled with the site name, there is at most one on a page, and each site keeps its own audience and email list.
Advertising and affiliate links
There are no ads above or inside a recipe, and no pop-ups. Anything sponsored, and any affiliate link, is labelled as such.
What we do not claim
We do not make health claims we cannot source, and we do not call anything the “best ever”. If we cannot check it, we do not say it.