Why are online recipes so long-winded?
Google wills it so. Why? IDK, ask them. Probably yet another case of something net-harmful making them more money.Luckily it's also one of the only cases where a microformat is actually nigh-universally used. Outside a few sites where the "fluff" isn't fluff and is actually good content itself (e.g. Serious Eats) I just throw the URL into Paprika 3 (no affiliation, and there are tons of other programs and probably some browser plugins to do the same thing) and let it strip it down to the ingredients and instructions by reading the microformat markup. Works flawlessly nearly every time.[EDIT] Credit where it's due, I'm also pretty sure the microformat is only popular because of Google. I think they downrank sites in recipe searches if Google can't "see" the recipe, using the microformat. They may be both the cause of, and solution to, the problem.