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How to organize your recipes so you can actually find them
Screenshots, bookmarks, cookbooks and a box of family cards. Bring them into one collection you'll actually cook from.
Most people don't have a recipe problem. They have a finding problem. The chili you loved is somewhere in your camera roll, the soup is in a tab you closed, and your grandmother's biscuits are on a card in a drawer. When you can't find a recipe in under a minute, you cook something else. This guide shows you how to gather everything into one place, sort it so the good recipes rise to the top, and keep it that way with a few minutes a month.
Step 1: Find where your recipes are hiding
Before you organize anything, make a list of every place recipes live. Most people find five or more. Don't sort yet. Just know where to look.
Step 2: Pick one home
The best system is the one you'll open while standing in the kitchen. What matters is that there's one main place. Two half-used systems are worse than one simple one.
| Home | Good for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| A recipe app | Saving from links, search, tags, scaling servings | Pick one that exports your recipes, so you're not stuck if it closes |
| A notes app or shared doc | Free, already on your phone, easy to share with a partner | Gets messy past 50 recipes without a clear naming habit |
| A binder | Family recipes, cooking without a screen, kids helping | No search, and every web recipe has to be printed |
| My recipes in Chomp Shopper | Saving from links, photos and documents, proven and to try, categories, notes, one tap to a shopping list | Keeps ingredients and your notes, not the cooking steps or photos, so keep the original link for the method |
Many people end up with a mix: a digital home for everyday recipes and a binder for the family ones. That's fine, as long as each recipe lives in only one of them.
Step 3: Split "proven" from "to try"
This one habit does more than any folder structure. Most saved recipes are ones you've never made. Mixed in with your favorites, they bury the recipes you actually trust.
Proven
You've made it, it worked, and you'd make it again. This is the collection you plan your weeks from.
To try
Everything else. A recipe moves to Proven after you cook it and like it. If you didn't like it, delete it.
Once a year, clear out any "to try" recipe you saved more than a year ago and still haven't made. If you haven't wanted it in a year, you won't miss it.
In My recipes, new saves start under To try, "I made this" moves a recipe to Proven, and recipes saved over a year ago without being made are gathered in one place for this clear-out.
Step 4: Sort by how you'll look for it
Ask what question you'll be asking when you open the collection. Usually it's "what can I make on a Tuesday?" and not "what Thai recipes do I have?" Sort by the role a recipe plays in your week, and keep it to about seven categories so every recipe has an obvious place.
| Weeknight dinners | 30 to 45 minutes, one pan or pot |
| Weekend and slow cooking | Roasts, braises, big-batch sauces |
| Breakfasts | Including make-ahead ones |
| Lunches and packables | Things that travel and reheat |
| Sides and salads | What goes next to the main |
| Baking and desserts | Bread, cookies, cakes |
| Holidays and company | The once-a-year recipes |
If your app supports tags, add a few on top: the main protein (chicken, beef, beans), the time (under 30 minutes) and any diet your household follows. Tags handle cuisine, too, without turning it into another set of folders.
Step 5: Save every recipe the same way
A consistent layout means you can read any recipe at a glance, whether it came from a blog, a cookbook or a card. Whatever home you use, capture these parts:
Name: What your household calls it, like "Mom's Sunday chili"
Source: The link or cookbook and page, and who created it
Servings and time: Active time and total time
Ingredients: With amounts, in the order you use them
Steps: Short and numbered
Your notes: When you made it, what you changed, who liked it
The notes are the most valuable part. "Double the garlic, kids loved it, 40 minutes not 30" turns someone else's recipe into yours.
Step 6: Save the ingredients, not just the link
Bookmarks feel permanent, but web pages disappear. A Pew Research Center study found that 38% of web pages that existed in 2013 could no longer be reached a decade later, and a quarter of all pages from 2013 to 2023 were gone.1 Recipe blogs move, get redesigned, or shut down.
For every proven recipe, keep the ingredient list and your notes in your own collection, along with the link. The link credits the creator and gets you back to their full method and photos. Your copy keeps the recipe even if the page goes away. Keep these copies for your own cooking, not to repost.
Step 7: Protect family recipes
Handwritten cards are often the recipes people most want to keep, and the easiest to lose to a spill. The National Archives' advice for family recipes comes down to a few steps:2
Scan or photograph each card
Then cook from the copy and keep the original safe. A scan is also the easiest way to share them with the rest of the family.
Store originals flat
Don't add new folds. A larger collection fits in archival file folders and a box.
Use clear polyester sleeves
If you do cook from the originals, sleeves keep off spills and greasy fingerprints. A binder of polyester page protectors works too.
Skip magnetic photo albums
Their self-stick pages and plastic overlays discolor paper over time.
While you're at it, write down who the recipe came from and anything you know about it. That's the part no scan can save if nobody records it.
Keep it tidy in 10 minutes a month
- 1.Add notes the night you cook. You won't remember next month what you changed.
- 2.Clear your screenshots. Move any recipe screenshots from your camera roll into your collection, or delete them.
- 3.Promote and delete. Move anything you made and loved to Proven. Delete anything you made and didn't love.
- 4.Fix names. Rename anything you can't recognize from its title alone.
- 5.Check your favorites still load. If a link has died, make sure your copy has the full ingredient list.
Put the collection to work
An organized collection makes meal planning fast. Each week, pick three or four dinners from Proven and one from To try. Over time your Proven list becomes a rotating meal plan on its own, and planning a week takes minutes.
My recipes in Chomp Shopper is built around this guide. It starts you with the seven categories above (rename them or add your own), keeps the ingredients, the original link and your notes, and counts each time you make a recipe. Select a few and get one shopping list, and when the meal planner fills your week it leans on your Proven recipes.
Start your collection in My recipes
Paste a recipe link, or upload a photo or document of a family recipe, and save it with one tap. Chomp Shopper reads the ingredients, sorts them by store section, and keeps the recipe in My recipes with your notes. It's free.
Sources
- Athena Chapekis, Samuel Bestvater, Emma Remy and Gonzalo Rivero, When Online Content Disappears, Pew Research Center, May 17, 2024. Pages sampled from Common Crawl, checked in October 2023.
- Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler, Preserving Family Recipes, Prologue magazine, National Archives, Fall 2016.