Item: Paprika Recipe Manager
Price: $4.99 - $19.99
Overall Impression: A simple to use, attractive and intuitive app for storing recipes you find both online and off.
Last year I talked about wanting to organize all my bookmarked recipes, which over the years had gotten scattered across a number of different systems (Google Reader, Evernote, Delicious), none of which really worked for me anymore. I decided to give Paprika a try and was happy to discover it has all the features I've been looking for in a recipe app, along with a few I didn't even know I wanted, but am glad to have.
The Review
Characteristics and Specs: Paprika is a recipe management app that allows you to capture online recipes and sync them automatically between various devices. To add a recipe you found online, you navigate to the website within the app's browser and locate the recipe you want to add, or use their bookmarklet to save recipes while browsing online. On websites for most major food magazines as well as recipe-focused sites like Epicurious, recipes are captured with the click of a button, but even entering recipes from blogs or non-compatible websites takes less than a minute of highlighting and clicking. It's also possible to enter your own personal recipes, so that everything is stored in one place. The app also makes it easy to generate grocery lists or meal plans based on the recipes you have saved.
Favorite details: One-click recipe capturing! I really appreciate the intuitiveness of the app; captured recipes are almost always formatted perfectly and items on the grocery store list are already organized into the correct aisles ("Produce," "Canned and Jar Goods," etc.), so I don't have to waste a lot of time correcting the technology's incorrect assumptions. (I wish I could say the same for my iPhone's Auto Correct!)Find It! Paprika Recipe Manager, $4.99 - $19.99, available for the Mac, iPhone, iPad & Android
Related: The Recipe Box: A New Recipe Organizer for Your iPad
Apartment Therapy Media makes every effort to test and review products fairly and transparently. The views expressed in this review are the personal views of the reviewer and this particular product review was not sponsored or paid for in any way by the manufacturer or an agent working on their behalf.
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I use Web Clipper with Evernote, make intelligent use of Tags, and so far so good. It syncs across my Mac and iPad (don't have a Smartphone - gasp!).
no pc compatibility?
Looks interesting, but if I drop $20 on the desktop app, am I still going to have to spend $5 to get it on my phone and tablet as well? That seems a little much.
I will stick with pepperplate instead. Clever web clipper, good amount of information storable in recipes, in built timer, grocery list, menus, monthly planner, iphone/pad app and web interface as well. oh and it's free.
Yes $25 might sound like a lot to pay, but the old saying "you get what you pay for" is true. I splurged and bought both the desktop and iOS version almost a year ago and haven't looked back since. It's great! I like that I can access my recipes from the phone so when I'm at the grocery I can check the ingredient lists. I like that I can clip from almost any web page using the bookmark applet they offer. I've been moving all of my recipes into Paprika and use it regularly. Highly recommended.
Is it possible to search recipes by ingredient, or is it only by recipe name?
How is it with nutritional info? If it automatically calculated the nutritional info from the ingredients, without me having to enter it, that might induce me to break up with Evernote.
I can't imagine my life without "the Pap." Sorry, Evernote, I use you for everything else, but you can't compete with the Pap. I have almost 3000 recipes and love that I can cross reference them in as many categories as possible. No more torn magazine pages. I have an ipad and a PC, so I long for more compatibility, but am sure the day is coming. It is an amazing tool, intuitive, easy to use, and visually appealing. It is worth every penny--think of how much you would spend on a cooking magazine or a cookbook. It takes a while to load recipes, but done in bits and pieces while watching TV or eating lunch, soon, you have freed up a lot of space where where magazine and web printouts used to pile up.
I use one tsp, it's a chrome app. it's free until you pass 150 recipes and then you pay about 5 bucks. I was using pinterest before but then I fell overwhelmed and unorganized, especially when trying to search something on my own board.
I did a trial of Paprika but opted not to buy the full version. I prefer Pepperplate. The app is free for iphone & ipad. It has an android version that is available in the Kindle Store. You can access it online and it has a bookmarklet that allows you to add recipes from the web. It also has a meal planner. I can access my recipes on my iphone, mac, ipad, and kindle fire.
I've never tried the desktop version of Paprika but have been using the iPad version for about a year and love it! I pin recipes that I want to try out and once I've tried a recipe and decided it's a keeper I just copy the link, paste into the Paprika apps web search browser and once it pulls up I can either one click save or use the highlight and click depending. I love, love, love this app!
@jrgutknecht: Thanks for the heads-up on the bookmarklet. I've added a link to the review and will start using it myself immediately!
@embryoconcepts: It doesn't calculate the nutritional info; it just has a separate field to store whatever nutritional info the recipe includes.
Can you share your recipe collection with others in Paprika?
Ditto on the Pepperplate comments. I love it for shopping lists, menu planner, cooking timer, best of all is the "add to Pepperplate" button they recently gave us for just zipping a recipe into the Pepperplate app from your computer. Very handy indeed.
Based off of the description of the app in this article, I can't understand why one would pay for this when they can use Pinterest for free. Recipe organization is primarily what I use it for, and I can access it on my laptop, tablet, or phone- depending on which devices my husband is bogarting at the time of meal preparation. I'm surprised Pinterest didn't even get a mention in this article, actually...
Cookbooker.com is another app that allows you to track the recipes you've tried. I love going back to revisit what my family enjoyed in the past, and seeing other users favorites.
the interface looks a lot like macgourmet deluxe, which i've been using for years. macgourmet is pricey, but includes the iphone app and calculates nutritional info. you can use it to create shopping lists, publish to the web, store photos, generate emails (for when somebody asks you for a recipe), and is searchable by ingredient, keyword, course, and/or rating. i love it. don't know how i lived without it before i had it. it will even extract a recipe automatically from some websites—just give it a url.
For those of you who use Evernote for everything *but* your recipes, visit http://www.saymmm.com (Say Mmm). It's a web app with a clipper that will yank the pertinent details (i.e. ingredients and quantities) out of any recipe you find online, let you copy and paste in the directions, tag, categorize, and send the whole thing to the Evernote notebook of your choice. You can then use the website and your recipe notebook to formulate meal plans complete with automatic shopping lists, divided into things you are likely to need to buy fresh and things you should check your pantry for first, further divided into standard grocery store categories. It is *exactly* the solution I needed to turn Evernote into my electronic cookbook, meal planner, grocery list manager, and recipe collection.
Kirsten and others - Pinterest is a great website no doubt. The thing that sets Paprika apart for me is that not only do I store recipes found online there (like at Pinterest) but I can add my personal ones. THEN, I can select which ones I want to make that week with a click of a button and THEN I can generate a grocery list from those recipes. I can add or subtract to that list with ease. And THEN, I can send my husband to the store to get the groceries, since it is synced to his phone. And if I forgot something after he left for the store? No problem. I add it and he gets it on his phone in real time. There are some great things about the app for sure.
I LOVE using Paprika. The capture recipe function is the best. And the grocery list feature is simple yet very useful.
I've been using The Recipe Box on my iPad and love it.
I luv YummySoup! Have been using it for years after extensively searching (& still periodically checking to see if there is anything better out there). It's a lot like Paprika, except I think better IMHO. Paprika emulated a lot of features after YS : ). Tried Paprika, liked it, but I am a very visual person & I really liked the overall look of my recipes being displayed horizontally with nice big pictures to easily scan the eyes across rather than vertically. If I'm not mistaken there was one feature that I liked better in Paprika, but it wasn't that big of an improvement to warrant the switch. I also like that YS is very stable with large amounts of recipes. I find it is easier to break them down in different libraries for hardly used/need/special occasion that I don't want clogging up my main library. The graphics are much more rich & pleasing to the eye, so if you are willing to shell out a few bucks (about the same as Paprika) you might want to take YummySoup! for a test drive. Also, the developer is very responsive to questions & requests : ). Now... if I could only find that room where all the food is I might actually cook someday! But you better believe I'll be nice & organized when I do ; )
I have been using Paprika for a while now and I have the computer app and the iPad app. I absolutely love it! There is literally nothing I would change about it, my only thing is that it would be nice if there was a search feature for individual item (not just the title of your recipes). But that's not too big of a deal to me. Your "Potential Problem" was no problem at all for me, I love adding all my recipes and planning weekly meals/grocery lists on my computer, then it syncs with my iPad and I can just take that to the grocery store, so easy!!
sounds great but again .. NO PC version? hello...
You can search for more than just a title: hold down the little circle with 3 lines at the right of the search field. It will let you choose search by Name, Ingredient, or Source :)
You can even type ingredients separated by commas (no spaces) and it will show you recipes with those ingredients
you can send a recipe individually. it sends an email to the person with a file they can open as well as the recipe written out with all info and photos in case they don't have paprika themselves.
Just downloaded Paprika yesterday, because of this post. It's frickin' amazing. I'm going to do a review of all the amazing on my blog tomorrow at http://hopelesslymidwestern.com
In the meantime, if you're on the fence. GOOO FORRR ITTTT. You'll love it.
I have been wanting a way to collect all my bookmarked links and organize them, this is perfect!
I down loaded the iPad version for $4.99 last night after moving several books marks (by just the link as well as using the toolbar function), I was sold. I quickly bought it for my Mac for $19.99 and then for my iPohone.
I wish you could share Paprika with others, lik ask permission from the person through your device and share recipes. hopefully that will be an update soon.
Try it you won't regret it!
I use allrecipe.com (pro) and it works perfect. I can access everything from pc or tablet and don't have to worry about any special apps
In my ideal world I'd like an app that will capture my printed recipes from years ago and read them the same way that the online recipes can be read. i.e. organize recipes in different ways /categories and provide shopping lists. Is there such an app? I have four binders of printed recipes that I'd LOVE to make electronic!
@Danielle H.: Yes, it IS possible to search by ingredient or by source, as well as by recipe name. (Thanks for pointing that out, @mewantelfears.)
I have Paprika for my iPad and iPhone and it is worth EVERY PENNY. Seriously, I'm sure you all have spent $5 on dumber things before.
I love that I can share recipes with Paprika and non-paprika users. I especially love the app during the actual cooking process, as it allows me to scale ingredients, cross off steps and ingredients I've used already, set multiple timers (GREAT during Thanksgiving), covert measurements, etc etc etc. The grocery list is great too. I hardly ever pay for apps, but this one was well worth it.
I've had Paprika on my iPad and iPhone for about a year and love it. It works perfectly for me. It's well worth the few dollars it costs.
I got Paprika for my ipad and iphone last summer and love it! I've even lured my husband into the kitchen (look honey, the recipe is right here on the ipad!). There are a couple of small things that would be great to see in the next upgrade (Paprika developers are you listening?) The first is to be able to reorganize the categories in the shopping list. I'm a Trader Joe's shopper and a creature of habit, so I take the same route around the store every time (maximizes efficiency). It would be great to be able to reorganize the categories to reflect the layout of the store. The other small annoyance is the grocery list on the phone... it scrolled around like crazy when I tried to use it in the store and I kept losing my place. I gave up and now I email the list to myself, edit it, and print it out. This adds a few minutes to the process at home, but decreases my frustration in the store.
I use this too. My favorite thing about the grocery lists (at least if you use gmail on an iPhone, like I do) is that if you email it to yourself from Paprika, the little checkboxes next to each item are functional in the email! This is so helpful when grocery shopping with a toddler who constantly distracts you from the task at hand!
I love Pepperplate. Very pretty, can take recipes from most sites, does grocery lists, free, and has Android and iOS versions. I generally import recipes on my computer or ipad, then look at the grocery list on my phone.
Too bad Paprika doesn't have a PC version. I don't have a Mac and I've been looking for a solution to this for a while - I have hundreds of recipes in Word docs saved in file folders on my computer. Have to find another way. I was actually uploading many to Blurb.com to make my own printed cookbook, figuring that was easier to use in the kitchen.