If you like to cook, the Internet is a godsend, a real treasure trove of recipes.

Normally, people would search for recipes by using a search engine and simply typing in keywords relating to the dish they want to cook.

NONE This is an okay way to find recipes but it is not the most efficient way for you will inevitably get recipes mixed up alongside other items containing those same keywords. How nice if we could easily search for recipes only.

Actually, we can. Google has just launched a new service called Google Recipe which allows you to narrow down searches for recipes based on criteria such as ingredients, calories and cooking time.

"We realised recipes are a popular search, and we're constantly trying to improve the experience," says Kavi Goel, the project's product manager.

He adds that Google gets 10 million searches a day for recipes alone.

That makes up only 1 percent of the overall search numbers but Goel says it's enough to justify giving recipes its own view on the Google search engine.

 New technology

Google devised new technology in 2009 to improve on specialised searches and this is what is used to in the new service to allow people to narrow their searches to recipes only.

NONE "If you're a recipe publisher, you can add markup to your webpages so that your content can appear with this improved presentation in regular Google results as well as in Recipe View," Goel says.

"Recipe View is part of our ongoing efforts to enrich the search experience using structured data, and this release is an exciting technical milestone for our team since its first time we've built a brand new set of search tools based off of rich snippets data," he adds.

The new search option will come in the form of a choice in the left column that appears after entering a Google search. You can search for recipes by entering the name of a dish or food type.

The results can also be filtered by cooking time, ingredients, or calories. Results will include star ratings and user reviews.

You can also search for recipes based on certain holidays like Chinese New Year or those by your favourite chef such as Ching He-Huang.

Unfortunately, the new service is currently only available in the US and Japan although Google says it will eventually roll out the service to the rest of the world.

You can however test it out by going directly to this page .

You can also watch how Google's own executive chef Scott Giambastiani uses Google Recipes via this video .

General Tso's Chicken

If you try the service you will find that you can really refine your search.

NONE Let's say you are interested in a dish like General Tso's Chicken, a Chinese dish that's a staple in American Chinese restaurants. In fact, it probably originated in the US (it's largely unheard of in China, Taiwan or Hong Kong).

When I was a college student in the US, I used to order this all the time but can't seem to find any Chinese restaurants that serve this in Malaysia.

I am a fairly decent cook but I don't have the recipe for it and never thought of looking it up before.

After hearing about Google Recipe, I decided to give it a try and to my delight, I found plenty of recipes for it.

The only problem is I'm actually quite fussy about ingredients. For example, I don't like onions and some versions of General Tso's Chicken include scallions (green onions).

No problem. I just have to click the "no" box next to scallions and the results will show me only recipes for General Tso's Chicken that do not contain scallions.

I also don't take alcohol but rice wine and sherry are common ingredients in this dish.

Same thing: Just click no to these two items as well, and you'll get General Tso's Chicken recipes that don't contain scallions, rice wine or sherry.

It's really quite amazing. Give it a try. Happy cooking and bon appétit!

OON YEOH is managing editor at AsiaReach Media. You can follow him at www.twitter.com/oonyeoh.