Organizing my recipes has been a big project on my to-do list since we first got married. It seems like I’ve tried every method out there with no success. Cute red metal recipe box with hand written recipes on index cards? Check. Special notebook with recipes written inside as I cook them? Check. Check. (Yes, I tried two of these.) Collected family recipes typed up on a word processor? Check. Links to recipes emailed to myself? Check. Pretty binder with dividers, tabs, and pockets? Check. I couldn’t commit to any of these attempts. Recently I thought I had settled on the binder method. You see, I thought that only pen and paper would work for me since I still use a paper planner and notebooks galore. The problem with recopying all my recipes onto paper that fit in the binder was that it took so much time. Every time I tried something new, I would write the title of the recipe down on a new sheet of paper and promise myself to go back and write it all out later. You can probably imagine my binder was full of half written recipes. It stressed me out to even look at my binder, so I started using my phone in the kitchen to look at recipes.
When my wonderful, amazing husband surprised me with a new iPad mini, I started coming around to the idea of using electronics for organizing. While browsing around the App Store, I found an app called Paprika. I had read about this app before, but had overlooked it in favor of my pen and paper ways. I decided to give it a try and downloaded the iPad version of the app. I tested it for a day or so and quickly realized the features were just what I needed. Less than a week later, I finally had ALL my recipes organized in one place! I was just giddy!
Paprika has four sections, Recipes, Browser, Groceries, and Meals. The recipes section allows you to add recipes manually by typing them in.
You can create categories to organize your recipes. The recipes section is also where you browse and search through all your recipes. I created a “To Try” category where I saved all the recipes that were just saved as links in my gmail account previously. I also added family recipes I’ve gathered and want to try. The “cookbook recipes to try” is a category I set up just to keep lists of recipes I’ve been wanting to make from my cookbooks. I mainly just wanted them all in the same place for meal planning purposes.
This is what a saved recipe looks like. I love how neat and organized everything is.
Paprika’s built in web browser really set this app apart for me. It supports many of the most popular recipe sites. On the supported sites, you just find the recipe you want to save and click the save button. It fills in the recipe form automatically for me. This is how I saved almost all of my “to try” recipes. It was so easy! If a site is not supported, it only takes a few extra clicks to clip the parts of the recipe from the site. I just really loved this feature.
Paprika also has a grocery list feature. I haven’t used it much because I still prefer sticky notes for grocery lists, but I can see how this would be useful especially if you have the iPhone or Android version of the app.
The meals section is also a favorite for meal planning. I like having a record of past meals. When I was planning this week’s meals, I opened up the app and browsed through the recipes I want to try. It was so much easier than looking in a thousand places for ideas. Eventually, I want to have a photo saved for every thing I cook or bake which will also help with meal planning. You can print out your weekly meal plan or add it to the grocery list.
So far, I am really loving this app. The only negative thing I’ve found about it is that you have to buy each version separately. I haven’t bought the iPhone version yet, but it might be useful to have in the future. Paprika is available for Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Android. You can find more information about it here.
Disclaimer: Nobody asked me or paid me to write this review. I was just so excited to finally have all my recipes organized in one place that I just had to share it with y’all. If anyone out there is wanting to get organized, I thought this might save them hours of writing or trying different methods!
How do you organize your recipes?
