Online recipe organiser

April 4, 2013 3:26 AM

I'm looking for a recipe organiser where I can write my own recipes and clip recipes from the web. I can google with the best of them, and I can see there are lots of sites that can potentially do what I need, but I don't want to create a gazillion accounts for testing, so please give me your tried and true recommendations. Details inside :

My computers are both Ubuntu and my phone Android, so no Mac- or Windows-only recs, please. Nothing phone only. In fact, a phone app would be nice, but it's not necessary. A web interface is enough for my needs.

I want to look at sites coded especially for recipes, so nothing generic, like Evernote. (Even if I might still go with Evernote in the end anyway.)

Ideally, I want:
- to clip recipes from the web. I think there are microformats for recipes, so compatibility would be a huge plus.
- to write my own recipes in.
- to be able to use both metric and imperial. Automatic conversion would be a plus.
- to add my own commentary or pictures to the recipe.
- to be able to search my recipes with the contents of my pantry : I have eggs and flour but no butter, what can I do?

Some sort of social features would be nice, especially the ability to search other people's recipes, and to "friend" people who have similar tastes to yours.

Thanks!

posted by snakeling to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

Best answer: I use Ziplist. It's missing a few features you want, but the recipe clipper is awesome! And you can generate grocery lists and meal plans from your recipes. There is an app version too. But not sure about the conversion and the extent of the social features. (It's also a bit ugly.) But it's a good workhorse, at least.
posted by Mrs. Rattery at 4:16 AM on April 4, 2013

I love Pepperplate! You can clip web recipes with a button click from many sites, or add them manually if there are any incompatibilities. You can easily add your own recipes and photos. I am not sure about measurements- although one neat feature is that you can automatically scale the recipe up or down and it will do the math for you. The database is searchable. You can also do meal planning, send recipes to other people, and add an entire recipe to your shopping list (which is also easy to edit). The shopping list is awesome!
posted by catrae at 4:16 AM on April 4, 2013

Paprika allows clipping and editing recipes. It also has a great shopping list feature. I'm not sure if it allows pantry searching.
posted by freshwater at 5:03 AM on April 4, 2013

I know you said no Evernote, but you might not be aware of Evernote Food. It finds the recipes in your Evernote and nicely organizes them. I use the iPhone and iPad apps, and they have an Android app as well. You can clip recipes, search, and also put together meal combinations. I use it daily when cooking and grocery shopping.

I've also heard that Plan to Eat is a great site but haven't personally tried it.
posted by JuliaKM at 5:07 AM on April 4, 2013 [1 favorite]

Another Pepperplate fan here. I clip from the web on a PC and read the recipes on both iPad and iPhone.
posted by sarajane at 5:59 AM on April 4, 2013

I'm a Pepperplate fan too! It is very quick and easy to use. It does not have the conversion feature though...
posted by cat_link at 10:11 AM on April 4, 2013

Response by poster: Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I tried Pepperplate, since it received so many recs, but I'm afraid it's not for me. I really dislike the interface.

I tried ZipList then, and I think I've found my One True Love. The recipe clipper does an amazing job even on small blogs, and I love the design.
posted by snakeling at 2:22 PM on April 4, 2013

I know you said no general purpose tools, but I use Springpad for this and it's great. Springpad has a recipe note type that includes typical information like ingredients, directions, etc. Tagging is included, as is ubiquitous search. You can organize recipes into multiple notebooks (which are essentially folders) and it has a nice, visual interface.

- Clips recipes - Yes. Will fill in the ingredients and directions from at least some websites.
- Write your own recipes - Yes.
- Use Metric or Imperial - Yes. (Ingredients is a big text field). Conversion - No.
- Add your own commentary or pictures - Yes
- Search with pantry contents - No. There is a general search and tagging, but not specifically what you're looking for. You could just do a search for flour and water and that would bring up all recipes with those two ingredients, but it doesn't match an inventory of your pantry with recipes.

It will also build a shopping list from a recipe. (You can choose to add any/all of the ingredients in a given recipe to the list).

The client is purely web-based, with apps for Anrdoid and iOS. It's also free. Here's a Springpad notebook on using Springpad for recipes.
posted by cnc at 2:32 PM on April 4, 2013