For years I have been collecting recipes from magazines, books, friends and websites. At one point we had 6 binders full of recipes and it was getting kind of ridiculous. Finding a recipe, even with categories in the binders, was near impossible. We have well over 1000 recipes in print form.
Then I discovered the Paprika Recipe Manager App and our lives were changed. This tool is invaluable for any home cook for saving, organizing and finding your recipes.
First of all, Paprika runs and syncs on everything. Apple, Windows, iOS, Android, even the Kindle Fire. As of the time of this article, it costs $19.99 for the Mac / Windows Desktop version and $4.99 for both the iOS and Android versions. I have it installed on my iPhone, MacBook Air laptop and Samsung Galaxy 10 tablet and the app syncs seamlessly across all the devices. As someone who has been using this app for two years now, the costs are well worth it.
Not only does this app organize and save recipes, but it automatically generates grocery lists as well.
You can see below the base interface, on the left are the four main tabs, Recipes, Browser, Groceries and Meals (calendar). In the middle you can see the Categories of which you can create as many main and sub categories as you wish. You can see how I have Asian Cuisine broken down further because my wife is a vegetarian so she can avoid the meat and seafood recipes in her search. For Dessert I have that broken down by the type of dessert. Then on the right side of the screen are the recipes themselves. Up on the top right you can see the Search bar, you can search recipes by Name, Ingredient or Source.
But the BEST PART about Paprika is that you can instantly save recipes from any website.
Here’s how it works. I have a recipe from the New York Times website I want to save. So I click on the Browser Tab in Paprika, which is a standard web browser, so you can do searches and browse for as many recipes as you want directly in the app. I received this recipe in an email so I copied the link and pasted it into Paprika. You can see on the lower right of the image below there is a “Save Recipe” button.
Click that button and Paprika automatically brings the recipe into the interface. You can see the title at the top, Ingredients on the left, Instructions on the right and the Prep, Servings and even Links to the original web page all come in.
Click on the Categories button in the upper right to bring that list up. Again, I set all of these Categories up myself and I’m going to assign this Spinach Lasagne to both the Italian and Italian Vegetarian categories. You can assign as many categories as you wish.
Click Save Recipe and now you can see the Spinach Lasagne is now the Paprika App in the Italian Vegetarian category.
Click on the Recipe Name and the recipe appears ready to cook. The recipe will sync automatically to the Paprika server and when you open the app on other devices, the recipes will sync on those devices.
You can also load your own recipes in manually and even load in photos of your dishes. You can select as many recipes as you want and add them all to the grocery list. You can also manually add and subtract items from the grocery list and use that list on your mobile device to check off items as you buy them. I use the grocery list on my iPhone all the time. What I love about having Paprika on my iPhone is those times when we’re out and about or in the grocery store and get inspired to make one of our recipes. Since the recipe is right there on the phone, we can immediately pick up what we need to make it.
If you’re in a group of folks who like to share recipes, you could all share one Paprika account for instant recipe sharing. Download and install the app on each person't device, then create one common User account.
You’ll all have to purchase the app to put it on your various devices, but if you all share the same account, whenever someone loads a new recipe, everyone will get it through the Sync function. That’s very cool.
Now for cooking, we have a small Android Tablet on a VESA mount on the kitchen counter so the tablet is available but up off the counter so it doesn't get in the way.
So stop printing and storing your recipes away where you’ll never find them again! Make it super easy to copy and store recipes from any website. And generate grocery lists at the touch of a button. I cannot recommend the Paprika Recipe Manager App enough, we literally use it daily.