One way might be to modify the final callback for the inner each() to check for an Error object with a special property that indicates you're breaking out early and that it's not a real error. Then inside your conditional, pass an Error object, with that property set, to the callback.
Example:
// main async.each
async.each(recipes, function(subArray, callback1) {
// nested async.each
async.each(subArray, function(theCurrentRecipe, callback2) {
checkHREFS(theCurrentRecipe, function(thisRecipe) {
if ('i have a conditional here') {
// break out of this nested async.each,
// but continue the main async.each.
var fakeErr = new Error();
fakeErr.break = true;
return callback2(fakeErr);
}
// continue
callback2();
});
}, function(err) {
if (err && err.break)
callback1();
else
callback1(err);
});
}, function(err) {
if (err)
return console.error(err);
// success, all recipes iterated
});