You cooked an amazing Texas brisket last week and want to make it again to impress the in-laws, but you can’t for the life of you remember where you found the recipe? Nightmare! To make sure this doesn’t happen in the future, why not take a look at ways to store recipes so you always have them on hand?
Here are four methods for organizing and saving your recipes so you can easily find them, and also share them with others. Just choose whichever method suits you best.
This may seem a little old school, but some people still prefer cooking using recipes on paper, and why not? If your recipes are all jumbled, first organize them into piles. You could sort them depending on cuisine—e.g., one pile for French dishes, one pile for Italian dishes, etc.—or maybe depending on the course; for example, one pile for appetizers, one pile for main courses and one pile for desserts. It’s completely up to you. Place them all in a three-ring binder, or several binders if you have a lot of recipes to store. If you put each one in a plastic sleeve, it makes it easier to remove when you need that specific recipe and also means you can wipe it down if you happen to splatter on it while cooking.
Many cooks and bakers have taken to using Google Drive to organize and store recipes. You can save recipes from various sites, make notes on them, and also calculate the nutritional value for each dish. The search function lets each recipe be found super easily when you enter the name of the dish, or even an ingredient it contains. As long as you have your own Google account, that’s easily done, thanks to Drive.
To save a recipe, simply open up a new document with Google Drive and paste in the desired recipe from wherever you’ve found it. This should mean that all photos and links from the recipe are also pasted into the document. You don’t even have to save it, as Google Drive saves automatically.
If you want to make your recipe saving more social, invite a select group of family members or friends to the Google Drive and turn it into your own online, communal cookbook. Be sure to loop in your top chef buddies. Then you can try each other’s recipes and even have a cook-off.
If you have a profile, Pinterest is great for storing recipes since it’s like your own personal online folder. Anytime you find a recipe online that strikes your fancy, simply click on the “Pin It” button to save it to one of your Pinterest boards. Organize your boards depending on the cuisine, difficulty level, preparation time, etc., and you’ll be able to find them all right away. You could even create a board for recipes you want to try the next time you feel creative. Once you’ve given the Pad Thai a go, you can write yourself some notes on the board for next time, and then move the board to another section.
When you’re at a loss for what to make one evening, you can easily scroll through or search your pins and find something that whets your appetite. If that doesn’t do the trick, try searching through all of Pinterest—you’re bound to find something.
There are so many apps on the market nowadays to help you store recipes, bringing order to your collection and helping you feel much more inspired in the kitchen. Different recipe storing apps offer different features so first decide what you’re hoping the app will do to facilitate your cooking experience. Many enable you to search for recipes and plan a meal, as well as acting as a digital grocery list—making it easier for you to buy all the ingredients you need each time. You can often rate the recipes on the app so others know if they’re worth making. A lot of the apps also show the nutritional value of each dish so you can easily determine if you want to go ahead and try it.
BigOven and ChefTap are two free apps that are definitely worth a look.
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