Recipes aren't copyrightable, so websites add some filler that is copyrightable to the start.

So just copy the part that is without copyright somewhere else.

Why would anyone want to steal the filler? I had assumed people did this for some inscrutable SEO reason

A barebones recipe is a complete commodity on the Internet and aside from maybe some ratings you have no idea if you should make it or not. The life history on some sites can definitely go too far but mostly I appreciate some of the backstory about why they made certain choices in a recipe and what else they tried.

>Not sure why but it's a plague

Perceived SEO

true-ish, but also because lots of scrolling means you can throw tons of ads before you reach actual recipe measurements

Recipe blogs were the first thing I thought of! At least most of those have a link at the top to jump right to the recipe.