How To Organize Your Digital Recipe Collection
AI-created, human-reviewed.
In a recent episode of Hands-On Tech, host Mikah Sargent tackled a common challenge many digital cookbook enthusiasts face: how to efficiently organize and format recipes saved from online sources.
Listener Wayne had been using Apple Notes to save recipes from Apple News and other sources, with plans to use BBEdit to reformat them into HTML using a template. Wayne's workflow hit a roadblock when he discovered Automator doesn't access Notes, making his formatting strategy difficult to implement.
Mikah identified a core issue with Wayne's approach—using general-purpose tools for a specialized task—and offered a more efficient solution: dedicated recipe management apps.
"I think there's a better go-between when it comes to organizing and storing your recipes," Mikah explained, "and that is an app that is purpose-built to format recipes." He specifically recommended two options: Paprika and Crouton, both available in the App Store.
These specialized recipe apps solve Wayne's formatting challenges by automatically extracting the important information from recipe websites. When you share a recipe from Apple News (which now features a dedicated recipe section) to an app like Paprika, the app intelligently parses the content, separating ingredients from instructions and formatting everything in a clean, consistent way.
What makes this solution particularly powerful is the cross-platform compatibility. Paprika, for example, is available on both iOS and macOS with sync capabilities, allowing Wayne to capture recipes on his iPhone and then access them on his Mac for further processing if needed.
"Your iPhone syncs with your Mac, it syncs with Windows, it syncs with Android, wherever you are," Mikah noted, highlighting the flexibility of this approach compared to the complex BBEdit workflow Wayne was attempting.
The recipe apps also offer robust export and printing features, generating PDFs or printable recipe cards, providing Wayne with multiple ways to use his recipe collection beyond just storage in Notes.
This solution elegantly bypasses the limitations Wayne encountered with Automator and Notes while delivering a superior end result—properly formatted recipes that are easy to view, edit, and share across devices.
If you've been wrestling with digital recipe management, Mikah's advice is clear: instead of cobbling together a complex workflow with general-purpose tools, invest in a dedicated recipe management app that's built specifically for this purpose. Your digital cookbook—and your future self looking for that perfect recipe—will thank you.
