Step 1: get everything into one place
Most people have recipes in five places at once. The first job is to move them, and the fastest route depends on where each one lives.
Where the recipe is now | The fastest way to keep it |
|---|---|
An Instagram Reel, a TikTok or a YouTube video | Share it to a recipe app that reads video, so you keep the written recipe and not a link |
A recipe website | Share the page or paste its link into a recipe app |
A screenshot in your photos | Open it in a recipe app that reads photos, then delete the screenshot |
A card, a book or a handwritten page | Photograph it and let the app read it |
Your head | Type it once, while you still remember the amounts |
Do not try to move everything in one evening. Move a recipe the next time you cook it, and add new ones as you find them. In a few weeks the recipes you really use are all in one place.
Step 2: choose collections you will really use
A collection is a group of recipes, like a section in a box of recipe cards. The mistake is to make too many. Start with five to eight, named after how you decide what to cook:
Weeknight dinners
Weekend cooking
Baking
Sides and salads
For guests
To try
Keep To try apart from the rest. It is where new finds wait until you have cooked them, so your other collections only hold recipes you trust. A recipe can sit in more than one collection.
Step 3: make every recipe findable
Give each recipe a plain title that says what the dish is. Crispy sheet pan gnocchi is easier to find than the creator’s joke.
Rely on search more than on folders. In six months you will remember the chicken, not the collection. Search by ingredient finds it.
After you cook a recipe, mark it and leave a note: what you changed, how long it really took. The good ones rise to the top.
Notes, a spreadsheet or a recipe app?
Apple Notes and Google Sheets are free and already on your phone.
What you need | Notes or a spreadsheet | A recipe app |
|---|---|---|
Search by ingredient | Yes, as plain text | Yes |
Save a recipe from a video | No, you type it | Yes, in apps that read video |
Change the servings | By hand | Yes |
A grocery list from a recipe | No | Yes |
Cost | Free | Free to start, paid for more |
Notes is enough if you keep a few dozen recipes that you typed yourself. It stops being enough when most of your recipes arrive as videos and links, because every one has to be copied by hand.
Ten minutes a month
Once a month, open To try. Cook one, move the ones you made to their collection, and delete the ones you no longer want. A recipe library stays useful when it is pruned.
Where ReciDeck fits
ReciDeck is a recipe app for iPhone built around this system. It saves recipes from Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, websites and photos as recipe cards, sorts them into collections, and searches them by ingredient or dish. Your whole library is your recipe deck. The free plan holds 10 recipes and 3 collections, enough to see whether the system suits you.
Sources and method
This is a method, not a measurement: it comes from how people describe losing recipes across saved posts, screenshots, bookmarks and paper. What ReciDeck does, and what its free plan includes, is described from the app.
