5 Ways To Organize Your Recipes
How many times have you come across a mouth-watering recipe while looking through a cookbook, magazine, or on the internet? You bookmark it with a post-it, tear it out of the magazine in the waiting room at the doctors office, or keep that tab open in your internet browser.
But how are we supposed to keep all of these recipes organized so that our minds and bellies can be satisfied!? As winter rapidly approaches with holidays right around the corner, it is important to create a system for your recipes (whether hard copies or digital versions) so they can easily be accessed for a cozy night in or dinner party for eight. Here are our top 5 ways to organize recipes.
When dealing with loose pages of recipes ripped out of magazines, newspaper clippings or printed offline, one of the best ways to organize them is to create a recipe binder. First decide how you would like to organize your binder, or binders depending on how many you want. Is a 1-inch binder going to hold each category? Breakfast, lunch, dinner? Main dishes, veggies, desserts? Or would you prefer a 2-inch binder for all categories? To start the organizing process, sort through your recipes purging any that you no longer want and then assign categories based on the recipes you have. Once you decide how many binders you are going to use, you can create categories within the binder using dividers. Once the loose recipes are all categorized, place them into plastic sheet protectors to keep them protected from spilled ingredients or general wear and tear. Keeping all of your recipes in a categorized binder will allow you to flip through your recipes with ease and find each one quickly.
How many of us have special recipes passed down from Great Grandma, our Mom’s best friend, or our favorite restaurant’s secret recipe? There’s something about those oil-stained index cards that bring a sense of nostalgia; baking those Christmas cookies from Grandma’s recipe that you now bake with your own children, having the same noodle kugel every Passover seder that you got sick of after eating everyday for 8 days. But how are we supposed to preserve these beaten up recipes after years and years of use? A great way to not only hold onto these memories and pass them down, but also keep them organized is to create your own cookbook. Createmycookbook.com is one website that will take Great Grandma’s cookie recipes and scan them into a spiral bound book. Creating your own cookbook is a great gift idea that helps preserve the recipes from being destroyed, while also passing down those family traditions.
If you have not jumped on the Pinterest! bandwagon yet, you’re missing out. It is a mecca for amazingly delicious recipes. Once you find a recipe that you would like to pin (save), create a pin board and categorize it to your liking – whether it’s recipes to try, tried & true recipes, meal categories, etc. This way every time you go to Pinterest, your recipes are saved in a location where you can easily access them. Another reason we love Pinterest for recipe organizing is because it allows you to access your favorites from anywhere on the internet. If you have the mobile app on your phone then you can whip up almost anything from almost anywhere!
The internet is a popular way to find new recipes these days. Whether you are searching smittenkitchen.com or getting emails titled “The Best Apple Pie of All Time,” what is the best way to save all of these recipes? One idea is to create a folder in Dropbox labeled “Recipes.” You can create subfolders with the same category ideas mentioned for a recipe book or Pinterest board. Whatever makes the most sense to you. Every time you find a recipe make sure to either save it in that folder or copy and paste the document into a new file that saves within the appropriate folder. This way in just a matter of clicks you can find that “Best Apple Pie of All Time” recipe waiting for you to try!
Yes, there’s an app for that. Tons! Often times free recipe finding apps such as Food Network and Epicurious, give you the option of creating your own “Recipe Box” to easily save and access recipes. If you’re looking to expand, here are some more options:
Paprika allows you to download recipes from anywhere online and save them into folders you create within the app as well as sync your recipes to the cloud to backup any recipes you want to save. Another great feature is the grocery list function, which pulls ingredients from any recipe you choose and moves them into a separate list you can look at while grocery shopping. While preparing your meal, Paprika allows you to cross off ingredients and highlight steps that have been completed. It also scales ingredients and has a built-in timer. Paprika costs $20 for your mac, or $5 for an iPhone/Android.
Big Oven has a library containing more than 250,000 recipes – what more can you ask for?! Not only can you store these recipes, but if you upgrade to Big Oven Pro, you can scan your own recipes that are then deciphered by not only the app, but also humans to make sure it all makes sense. From there you can add notes to the recipes, as well as any nutritional information. You can download this app for free or go for Pro at $2.50 a month or $20 for the year.
Similar to Evernote, Evernote Food allows you to save and organize your recipes as well as document notes, photos and other information about the meal that you make or have in a restaurant. There are many sites that you can access through Evernote Food where you can “clip” and save your recipes. The basic version is free, or you can opt for premium at $5 a month or $45 for the year.
Whether you prefer your hardcopies of recipes or venture online, there are tons of ways to organize them. Whichever method you choose to follow, make sure to look through it every couple of months to both inspire yourself with new recipes to try and to get rid of ones that you no longer want. That’s all the food talk I have for today, now it’s time for me to cook my next masterpiece!
