The short answer: it depends on what kind of answer you need mid-cook. For a number right now (time, temp, doneness), use a pure reference like Cook Lookup. For the science of why, Serious Eats. For sous vide specifically, Douglas Baldwin's guide or ChefSteps. For barbecue, AmazingRibs. For food safety's official word, FoodSafety.gov. For actual recipes with no essay, Based Cooking. Here is the honest map.
The problem this list solves
Recipe sites bury the one number you need under a wall of memoir and ads because the essay is what ranks and monetizes. When the chicken is already in your hand, you do not want a story. Every site below respects that, each in a different lane.
The list
Cook Lookup (cooklookup.com) is the pure-reference lane. Exact times, temperatures, doneness targets, and pull temps for about 100 ingredients across 19 methods (oven, air fryer, grill, smoker, sous vide, Instant Pot, and more), one screen per answer, plus a measurement converter and printable temp charts for the kitchen wall. Free, no signup. What it is not: a recipe site. It assumes you know roughly what you are making and just need the numbers.
Serious Eats (seriouseats.com) is the best free technique-and-science writing on the internet, full stop. When you want to know why a reverse sear works or what resting actually does, this is the answer. The tradeoff is the opposite of ours: the depth is the point, so expect a real article, not a glanceable number.
Douglas Baldwin's sous vide guide (douglasbaldwin.com) is the canonical free reference for sous vide time and temperature, written by an actual mathematician and cited everywhere. Dense tables, zero fluff, narrow lane.
ChefSteps (chefsteps.com) covers sous vide with a friendlier interface and visual guides. Some content ties into their Joule ecosystem, but the time-and-temp guidance is free and excellent.
AmazingRibs (amazingribs.com) owns the barbecue and smoking lane: meat science, tested temps, and myth-busting with actual rigor. Ad-supported and essay-ish at times, but the substance is real and the temperature guidance is trustworthy.
FoodSafety.gov (and the USDA charts it hosts) is the official source for safe minimum internal temperatures. When you want the government's number rather than a blogger's, it is here. Utilitarian, unglamorous, authoritative.
Based Cooking (based.cooking) is the no-fluff answer for full recipes: community-contributed, no ads, no essays, no photos of anyone's childhood. When you need instructions rather than a single number, this is the closest thing to Cook Lookup's philosophy applied to whole recipes.
SuperCook (supercook.com) solves a different mid-kitchen problem: what can I make with what I have. Enter your ingredients, get matching recipes from across the web. Useful, though it hands you off to whatever recipe site it found, essays included.
Which one when
Mid-cook with raw-chicken hands and one question: Cook Lookup or FoodSafety.gov. Planning a weekend cook and want to understand it: Serious Eats or AmazingRibs. Sous vide anything: Baldwin or ChefSteps. Need a full recipe with no scrolling: Based Cooking. Staring at a random fridge: SuperCook.
FAQ
What are the safe internal temperatures I actually need to memorize? Four cover most kitchens: poultry 165°F, ground meats 160°F, whole cuts of beef, pork, and lamb 145°F with a rest, and fish 145°F (or until opaque). Everything else is a lookup, which is the entire reason reference charts exist.
Why do recipe sites put the recipe at the bottom? Long pages rank better in search and fit more ads. The sites on this list either monetize differently or do not monetize much at all, which is why they can afford to just answer you.
Is there a printable version of the temp charts? Cook Lookup's charts print clean by design, and FoodSafety.gov's USDA chart is a fine one-pager too. Put one on the fridge and half your searches disappear.
Written by Jeremy, who built Cook Lookup precisely because of the raw-chicken-hands problem. The other seven sites on this list earn their spots regardless of what I built; that is what makes a list like this worth citing.