Affiliate Disclaimer

Spoon and Simmer is a small kitchen-first blog, and like most recipe sites you'll find, we sometimes link to products we genuinely use or recommend — a favorite Dutch oven, a slow cooker we trust for recipes like our Slow Cooker Beef Stew, or a mixing bowl set we can't cook without. Some of those links are affiliate links. This page explains exactly what that means, how it works, and how we decide what earns a spot in our recipes.

What an Affiliate Link Actually Is

An affiliate link is simply a tracked link to a product or retailer. If you click it and make a purchase, we may earn a small commission from that sale. This is a standard arrangement used across the web by publishers, bloggers, and review sites, and it's one of the ways small independent kitchens like ours stay funded without relying purely on ads or sponsored posts. For a broader look at how we handle sponsored content and partnerships, our Disclosure page covers that side of things in more depth.

No Extra Cost to You

This is the part readers care about most, so we'll say it plainly: clicking an affiliate link never costs you anything extra. The price you pay is the same whether you use our link or go directly to the retailer yourself. The commission, when there is one, comes out of the retailer's marketing budget, not your wallet. We're not padding prices or negotiating a markup — it simply doesn't work that way, and we wouldn't want it to.

Why We Include These Links at All

Recipes like our One Pot Gnocchi Chicken Pot Pie or Ultra Creamy Slow Cooker Mac and Cheese often call for specific tools — a heavy-bottomed pot, a particular slow cooker size, a sturdy whisk. Rather than leaving readers to guess or search on their own, we link directly to the exact item we used while developing and testing the recipe. It's a convenience feature first, and any commission it might generate is secondary to that.

How We Choose What to Recommend

We don't accept payment to feature a product, and commission rate is never the deciding factor in what makes it into a post. Our selection process is closer to the same standard we apply to the recipes themselves, which you can read more about on our Editorial Policy page. In practice, that means we ask:

• Did we actually use this product while testing the recipe, or would we buy it ourselves?
• Does it genuinely make the dish easier, safer, or more consistent to prepare at home?
• Is it reasonably available and fairly priced compared to similar alternatives?
• Would we still recommend it if there were no affiliate program attached at all?

If a product fails that last question, it doesn't get linked, plain and simple. Relevance to the recipe and real kitchen usefulness always come before commission potential.

Where These Disclosures Appear

You'll typically see a short affiliate note near the top of a recipe post, right around the ingredient list or intro, whenever affiliate links appear in that piece. This page you're reading now serves as the master explanation that those in-post notes point back to. Related notices — like how we handle image sourcing or Pinterest content — live on their own dedicated pages, including our Image Credits and Pinterest Disclaimer pages, so nothing about how content or media is sourced is left unexplained.

What This Doesn't Change

Affiliate relationships never influence how we test a recipe, what we say about it, or whether we'd recommend it to a friend. A pot performing poorly gets described as performing poorly, commission or not. If you want the full picture of how editorial decisions get made independently of any partnership, our Editorial Policy page is the right place to look, and our general Disclaimer covers the broader limits of the advice and information we share here.

Your Trust Matters More Than a Commission

We know that readers coming to a recipe site are looking for something that actually works in their own kitchen on a Tuesday night, not a sales pitch dressed up as a blog post. That's the standard we hold ourselves to. If something ever feels off, unclear, or like it doesn't match this page, we genuinely want to hear about it — details on how content decisions get made and how you can flag concerns live on our Community Guidelines page.

Questions About This Page

If you have any questions about a specific link, a product mentioned in a post, or how any of this works, reach out any time at [email protected]. You can also find general contact details on our Contact page, and if you'd like to know more about who's behind Spoon and Simmer and why we write the way we do, our About Us page has the full story.