If you are looking for an easy way to store, organize, and quickly locate your growing collection of recipes, I have a solution that I stumbled upon years ago. When I first started to LOVE to cook, I would find recipes in cookbooks. Locating the recipes I previously made was tough…and there was storage issue because cookbooks aren’t exactly small. Now I have completely shifted gears and have turned to an app to assist in helping me to organize recipes.
There are many recipe keeper apps available. When I first decided to give digital storage and organization a try, I tested numerous apps (just the free or trials so I could see which best fit my needs). The clear cut winner for me was Recipe Keeper.
You may wonder how difficult it is to make the switch from paper to electronic but I can honestly say that it wasn’t that bad. There are still recipes I have on paper. As I make them, I add them to Recipe Keeper.
Importing Recipes
They have super easy, user friendly ways to import new recipes. Most recipes I stumble upon on various websites can be auto added to recipe keeper. If you have a paper copy, you can take a photo the text is scanned. Then it can be easily added to create a digital copy of your old favorites. I also use the speech to text feature where I read the directions aloud and what I say in inserted as text in the recipe.
Custom Courses and Categories
Organizing recipes is a breeze with Recipe Keeper. You can add custom courses and categories so your recipes can easily be located. I use a lot of venison when cooking so be able to add a custom venison category was a definite plus for me.
Menu Feature
One of my favorite features that I use daily is the menu feature. I plan all of my dinners in advance (sometimes lunch and breakfast too). Saves a lot on groceries as I always head to the store with a list that contains ONLY the ingredients that I need for the week.
The recipes are linked to each day in the meal planner. You can view your menu by the week or by the month. When you click on the day and click view, and the recipe you’re making appears on the screen. Everything is in one place! I do prefer cooking off the screen of my iPad versus my phone as the ingredients and directions all appear on one screen vs having to scroll between screens on my phone.
Shopping List Feature
Recipe Keeper also has a shopping list feature. You select the recipes you are making and then add the ingredients to your list. Seriously…it’s that simple. You can adjust your list as needed to remove pantry staples that you don’t need to buy for each recipe.
Other handy features:
- when you add a recipe to your menu, it should you the last time you made that recipe
- you can adjust the serving size of a recipe with the touch of a button…very convenient when you need to scale up or down
- as you add each ingredient or progress through the steps of the recipe, you can touch the item/step on the screen and it appears lighter to signify that step has been completed…comes in handy for the kids when they are cooking…helps them stay on track
- SHARE- you can share your recipes with others via a link. It actually links to the recipe you have stored so if you’ve included any notes or substitutions on the recipe, the recipient can see those notes as well.
