Golden Gnocchi with Mushrooms and Pea Cream
Golden gnocchi & mushrooms50 min
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How to Save Recipes From Anywhere: Cookbooks, Links, Social and AI

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3 min
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Alex Fahey

Pictured: Golden Gnocchi with Mushrooms and Pea Cream

Short answer

Save the recipe itself, not a pointer to it. Paste website and social links into a recipe app that pulls out the ingredients and steps, photograph cookbook pages and handwritten cards, and copy anything an AI wrote before the chat scrolls away. Then keep it all in one library you can plan and shop from.

Contents

A screenshot is a photo of a recipe, not a recipe, and a bookmark is a promise that a website will still exist. The test is whether the ingredients and steps end up somewhere searchable and yours.

From a website

The easiest source. Recipe sites publish structured data underneath the page, so any decent recipe manager can read a pasted link and pull out the ingredients, steps and servings. Paprika built a business on doing this well. Don't just drop the link into a notes app: recipe sites reorganise, add paywalls and close down.

From a cookbook or a handwritten card

Photograph the page. Text recognition can now turn a photo, handwriting included, into structured ingredients and steps. Check the quantities afterwards: it reads a grandmother's handwriting well, but not perfectly. The alternative is typing, which is why most cookbook recipes never go digital.

From TikTok, Instagram or YouTube

The hardest source, and the fastest-growing. The recipe sits partly in the caption and partly in the video, and both go if the creator deletes the post. A screenshot keeps the caption and loses the method. Saving the video leaves it inside the platform, unsearchable. Paste the link into a tool that extracts the ingredients and steps, and the recipe outlives the original.

From another person

The text from a friend with "that curry you liked" deserves better than your messages app. Paste it into your collection, or photograph it if it came on paper.

From an AI chat

The newest source and the leakiest. A recipe ChatGPT wrote for you sits in a conversation that scrolls away and can't be searched by ingredient (why chat logs lose recipes). Copy anything worth keeping into your recipe manager straight away, or use a tool that runs inside the chat and saves it for you.

Why one library matters

A recipe you can't find is a recipe you don't cook, and a collection split across five apps can't be planned or shopped as one week. In one place, the week's plan draws on everything you've saved, and one merged shopping list covers the lot.

How Chop it saves them

I built Chop it, so weigh this accordingly. Add a recipe has five ways in: Social media link (TikTok and Instagram), Recipe website, Photo of a recipe (a cookbook page or handwritten card), Recreate a meal (a photo of a dish you'd like to cook again) and Write my own. On iPhone you can also tap Share in Instagram, TikTok or Safari and choose Chop it.

Imports are rewritten in British English and UK metric and credited Inspired by, with a link to the original. We don't reuse the source's photos. The first 10 imports a week are free, then 1 credit each. Recreate a meal costs 1 credit.

In Chop it in ChatGPT, choose Connect Chop it and the conversation can save recipes you make there to your library and import up to five recipes per session.

Quick answers

  • What happens to a saved recipe if the original post is deleted?
    Nothing, if you extracted it. The ingredients and steps live in your library as their own recipe, and only the Inspired by link stops working. A bookmark or a saved video disappears with the original.
  • Do imported recipes keep the original wording and photos?
    No. Chop it rewrites each import in British English and UK metric, so cups become grams and millilitres, and credits it Inspired by with a link to the source. It doesn’t reuse the source’s photos.
  • Can I add recipes without the iPhone app?
    Yes. Add a recipe works in the browser too, and Chop it in ChatGPT can import up to five recipes per session once you choose Connect Chop it. Only the Share shortcut from Instagram, TikTok or Safari is iPhone-only.
  • Can I fix a recipe after it’s imported?
    Yes. Open it and edit the ingredients, quantities or steps. It’s worth a quick check after a photo of a handwritten card, where the odd quantity can come through wrong.

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