In this age of digital solutions, professional chefs are turning turning to e-readers and online cloud systems to manage their recipe clutter. The Wall Street Journal reports on these tips and how they can be of use to rescue home cooks from dreaded piles of loose recipes.
Professional chefs interviewed in the story stress that recipes need to be organized into categories from the start. And not just the standard labels like appetizers, main courses, and side dishes; use categories that fit your lifestyle. One chef's categories include "Comfort Food Lunches, Impress 'em Weekend Dishes and Back on the Wagon (for diet-friendly options)."
Then the challenge becomes finding an organizational system that works for you. Utilize free recipe storage boxes on sites you frequent and either scan or file your printed recipes. There are more and more digital solutions emerging daily; read more below for the latest recipe storage sites.
• Read more: Chefs Solve a Modern Kitchen Crisis: Recipe Clutter at The Wall Street Journal
Do you store your recipes online or file them the old fashioned way?
Related: More iPhone Apps for the Home Cook
(Image: Michal Czerwonka/WSJ)
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This is why Evernote is great - recipes can be tagged for the cuisine, course, time, style, attributes, etc. Then, you can search by ingredients and tags. And you can share, like this:
http://www.evernote.com/pub/embryoconcepts/recipes-tried
http://www.evernote.com/pub/embryoconcepts/recipes-untried
*Original source is noted, but the 'tried' recipes have almost all been modified.
I've been using Ziplist.com and like it a lot (free). But recently I signed for a free trial of PlantoEat.com and I like it even better. It has a yearly cost, but it has a slick menu planner I like a lot and it imports recipes very nicely.
At home I have a stand-alone software (not web based) called Big Oven where I put all of my tried-and-true recipes. That way they'll never be lost if these online services go away.
I also love evernote. There's a browser plugin that lets you grab text, images, video and save it into your evernote account. So, you can have everything in one place, including your scanned recipes.
another vote for evernote!
Another plug for Evernote, if you upgrade to the premium account ($45 a year) you can search your scanned documents. So say you've only tagged your recipes by category/course you can still search by the ingredients (or exclude ingredients). Example, you want to see all the dessert recipes that include peaches and brown sugar but has no nutmeg. And that works for scanned items, web clips, text docs, everything. Plus it has so many more uses than just recipes. AND you can access it from any computer, smart phone or smart pad. The End.
Evernote as a recipe organizer convinced me the iPad was needed. Revolution in the kitchen!
I use Evernote faithfully, too, but I'm interested in the comment about Big Oven. I have it on my phone, too, but I've never used it—it looks like you have to type your recipes in. Do you? Or can you import them from somewhere? It would be nice to have access even if I've got no internet service.
I have a gmail account that I just use for recipes. When I find one I like I just cut and paste and email it to myself (including a link to the original location), and then I use all kinds of tags and categories and whatnot to organize them. It works pretty well (I can easily search for particular ingredients or I can just sort by my various categories), the only hassle is that I have to log out of my regular gmail account to get to the recipe account, which is annoying.
I love the sound of Evernote though! I never knew you could scan (and search!) documents. That could potentially heal the great divide between digital recipes and cookbooks at my house!
I have a binder with plastic sheet covers inside, I just print or copy recipes and slide them inside.
I also email recipes to a gmail account. Mobile gmail is searchable from your smart phone. When I am shopping I can just pull up a recipe on my blackberry.
I am a big fan of Delicious http://www.delicious.com/
You just click on save to delicious when you see a recipe on the internet you like. All recipes are bookmarked in the categories you set up, are accessible on any computer AND it's free. Also, because I like to store favorite recipes, I use MacGourmet. You can have all your recipes on your iPhone or iPod touch so when you are grocery shopping, you can just pull up a favorite. Love it!
I have Shop N'Cook for the Mac. I love it. It's easy to import recipes from anywhere online and it's easy to put them in categories. I can search by whatever - ingredient, recipe, source, category etc. It gives me nutritional information will create a shopping list and do lots more things than I every need.
I use MS OneNote. I know it has syncing capabilities to SkyDrive so that solves the cloud issue. I pair it up with Windows speech recognition and a headset, and it works pretty well for hands off recipe searching and navigation.
I've been using Mealfire for a while now. It's a free web app with one-click import from most of the major food sites. You can also enter recipes with copy-paste or by typing them in. Once the recipe is in your account, you can tweak it, tag it, schedule it, add notes, create a shopping list, etc. Pretty fantastic app from a very small shop.
Lately, I'm looking more towards PepperPlate, also free, with better cross-platform compatibility for computer, IPad, and iPhone.
I also vote for Evernote. I have been using it for recipes for the past couple years and have found it greatly simplifies my life. I even take the recipes from magazines, look for them online, and add them to Evernote. Either highlight directly or choose a print friendly view first and then Windows key + A to enter automatically into Evernote. Sometimes, there will already be keywords/tags in the article/blog that you can copy in to help with searching later. I used to put "Recipe" in front of the title of the recipe, but I got lazy. :)
Oh, and I forgot to mention that it syncs online, so you can access from multiple computers. With the Android app, I can also use my phone when shopping or keep it nearby for following the recipe.
I use evernote for recipes normally, but recently realised this is of limited use when you're stuck in the middle of nowhere with no mobile signal and often no charger, so I've started putting my very favourite recipes in a book http://annabelvita.com/recipes-on-the-move
- love the idea of using categories that work for your life, rather than starters/mains/desserts....
I recently found Springpad and love it. It even lets you create a shopping list pulling ingredients from multiple recipes--perfect for dinner parties!
http://blog.springpadit.com/2010/03/five-ways-to-add-recipes-to-springpad/
Whoops, this is the link I meant to post: http://blog.springpadit.com/2010/08/springpad-is-the-ultimate-recipe-app/
You might want to take a look at http://www.bigoven.com, particularly http://www.bigoven.com/recipe/scan
BigOven's RecipeScan feature lets you snap a photo of a recipe and then it's uploaded into your personal recipe cloud storage. Because it is specific to recipes, you can do lots more with them, like add them to grocery lists (and have items automatically sorted by aisle), calculate nutrition facts, so you can find calorie, fat, protein, sodium, etc. You can add them to a menu plan, and plan days or weeks in advance and then generate a grocery list from that plan. And you can of course do this on the iPad, iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, NOOK, Kindle Fire, web, and more.