How to save recipes so you never lose one again

That one recipe from that blog. The pasta from a TikTok. Your mother-in-law’s stew, somewhere in a WhatsApp chat. You saved them all, just not in the same place, and not in a way you can find them at 5 pm when you have to decide what’s for dinner.

Recipes rarely get lost. They get scattered: across bookmarks, screenshots, chats, saved videos and cookbooks. This guide fixes that, one source at a time.

Save the recipe, not the place you saw it

A bookmark, a saved video or a screenshot doesn’t keep the recipe, only a pointer to it. Websites change or disappear, videos get deleted, and you can’t search a screenshot.

A recipe is only really saved when you have three things:

• the ingredients with their amounts,
• the steps,
• and where it came from, so you can find the original or know who to thank.

Whether you use a notes app, a document or a recipe app, the principle is the same. Below, for each source, is how to do it, and how it works in RecipeHub.

Recipes from blogs and websites

A bookmark feels like saving. But a year later the page has a new version, sits behind a paywall or is gone. And anyone who has hunted for a recipe between five ad blocks and a life story would rather not open that link again.

• Copy the recipe into your own collection: the ingredients, the steps, and the link as the source.
• In RecipeHub, paste the link. You get a clean recipe with servings, ingredients and steps, which you check before you save it. The link stays as its source.
• Site won’t import? Copy the text of the page and paste it instead. That works for any site.
• Recipe in Spanish or Dutch? RecipeHub translates an imported recipe into your language, ingredients included, so your shopping list stays in one language.

Recipes from TikTok and Instagram

In a video, the recipe is in one of three places: in the caption, as text on screen, or only in what the creator says.

• In the caption? Copy the text and paste it. RecipeHub turns it into a recipe.
• On screen? Take a screenshot when the ingredient list shows, and import it as a photo.
• Only spoken? Write it down as you watch, or look for the creator’s blog: it’s often in their bio.

Saving a video in the app itself works as a reminder, not as an archive: videos disappear, and searching your saved videos is hard. Keep the video’s link as the recipe’s source. RecipeHub doesn’t import videos; the caption or a screenshot gets you there.

Recipes from WhatsApp and other messages

Recipes from family and friends are often the ones that matter most, and they live in the chats where they’re hardest to find.

• A recipe as text? Copy the message and paste it. Note who it came from as the source: “Mum”, “Sam from work”.
• A photo of a recipe card or a cookbook page? Save the photo and import it.
• A voice message? Write it out right away, while you still know what “a splash” meant.

Don’t wait. Scrolling back three months for a message is exactly the work you want to avoid.

Recipes from cookbooks and recipe cards

You don’t lose a cookbook, but you do forget which recipe was in which book. And a handwritten card is often the only copy.

• From a cookbook: you don’t need to copy the whole book. Save the recipes you actually make, with the book’s title and the page number as the source.
• A handwritten card: take a photo in good light, straight from above, and import it. If the recipe runs over two sides, add both photos at once. Check the ingredients before you save: handwriting is still handwriting.

Keep the photo of your grandmother’s card in your photos as well. The recipe you want to search; the handwriting you want to keep.

How to find them again

Saving is half of it. The other half is finding the recipe when you need it.

• Give a recipe a title you’d search for. “Pasta” says nothing; “Pasta with spinach and lemon” does.
• Use a few tags, not twenty. Say quick, vegetarian and for guests.
• Make cookbooks for how you cook, not only for what you cook: weeknights, Sunday, from Mum.
• Cook it within a month. A recipe you never make is a bookmark with extra steps. Put it in your week.

Ten minutes a week

It works best as a habit. Once a week, say on Sunday when you plan your week, go through what you came across: the screenshots, the saved videos, the forwarded messages. Ten minutes, and your recipes are in one place instead of six.

That’s what we’re building RecipeHub for: links, text and photos become recipes in one place, and from those recipes you plan your week and write your shopping list.