Let’s be honest—sometimes, apartment living can be a struggle, and cooking in an apartment can be even more difficult. Creative culinary freedom can be hindered, counter space is often limited and your budget might not allow you to splurge on expensive kitchen gadgets and ingredients. Fortunately, there’s a select group of bloggers out there that understand the (sometimes) hair-pulling frustration of living (and cooking) in a small space, and can commiserate with fellow apartment inhabitants who are hungry to live on more than just ramen noodles.
From long-time apartment dwellers to those who have relocated from a larger space, we’ve searched the internet far and wide to track down the top five apartment cooking blogs from those who know the drill. So take a big bite out of the following blogs. We’re sure that you’ll find apartment culinary inspiration to suit your palate.
Bluestem Kitchen
What It Is: A recent graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, the writer behind Bluestem Kitchen, Erin McDowell, found herself cooking in tiny apartment kitchens and blogging about ideas, recipe improvisations and delicious meal solutions.
Why We Love It: Bluestem Kitchen includes recipes for simple yet creative food that don’t require special equipment or extravagant ingredients. Plus, Erin’s pictures are gorgeous and absolutely drool-worthy.
My Crummy Apartment
What It Is: My Crummy Apartment is a blog dedicated to real cooking on a real budget, in a really small basement apartment kitchen.
Why We Love It: Documenting the trials and tribulations of a self-proclaimed “kitchen impaired” amateur foodie who relocated from a big house with a state-of-the-art kitchen, this blog offers a healthy heaping of humor along with video tutorials that range from the helpful to the hilarious.
Tiny Urban Kitchen
What It Is: The name of this blog says it all. The writer behind Tiny Urban Kitchen, Jen Che, an MIT grad residing in a tiny urban condo in the Boston area, has been cooking in tiny spaces since her college days, where she managed to make complete meals with a rice cooker and a hot plate.
Why We Love It: Jen’s charm and wit shines through in every post, and she brings a unique point of view to the table. In an interesting twist, her experience as a research chemist comes in handy in certain posts involving gastronomic experimentation.
The Kitchn
What It Is: As a spinoff blog from the now infamous Apartment Therapy website, The Kitchn offers amazing recipes with a focus on home-cooked meals, DIY advice and kitchen tours to apartment dwellers.
Why We Love It: Touted as somewhat of an authority in small space management, this blog includes expert advice from industry authorities. You won’t find this much comprehensive and well-organized small kitchen and apartment culinary advice anywhere else.
Smitten Kitchen
What It Is: Blogging (and cooking) from a 42-square-foot kitchen in New York City, Deb Perelman’s Smitten Kitchen focuses on elevated comfort foods prepared in a tiny space.
Why We Love It: With posts including “How to Max Out Your Tiny Kitchen” and “Build Your Own Smitten Kitchen,” this blog is about more than just amazing recipes. SK has also garnered praise from Saveur, Time Magazine and InStyle, among other media outlets.
Photo Credit: iStockphoto/sturti