I just don’t bother with these kinds of sites anymore. Even when I was inexperienced with cooking, I felt none of the stories or pictures (often delicately staged much like commercial photoshoot) helped me with making the recipe.
You shouldn't bother with _most_ long format recipe sites, but you should with some.
You should also realise that the fluff doesn't mean it's a bad recipe. I have a few sites that have amazing, innovative and bulletproof recipes, with lots of fluff. Those recipes aren't anywhere else. Your top recipe on google simply isn't going to have that level of thought put into it, because if it did, somebody would be monetizing it.
I don't necessarily find that to be true. Allrecipes is often a highly ranked link and it's pretty basic. And I have a few sites I tend to like that have a fair bit of writing in addition to the recipe such as SpruceEats that pop up fairly often.
I would rather not rely on commercial curry powder. This becomes a problem if one day you can't buy the same brand.
These recipes would be totally un-followable unless you've made them before, especially without pictures. Some of them are terrible recipes, particularly the "curry". And maybe there are good reasons for them being very basic (e.g. they're traditional or they're meant to be simple or for beginners), but because there's very little in the way of explanation in them, who knows.
Hard pass. This website is just a pure html version of the first google link when you search for a recipe. Much like that first google link, these recipes will also be boring and flavorless.