Browsing & Cooking

Browsing and Searching

The Recipes page lists every recipe you can see: your household's own, plus everything other households have shared. Each card shows the cover photo, difficulty, times, and tags.

The controls at the top narrow the list down:

• Search looks through titles, ingredients, and step text.
• Difficulty: Easy, Medium, or Hard.
• Meal type and dietary tags: breakfast to dessert, vegetarian to keto. You can pick several at once.
• Favorites only: just the recipes you've hearted.
• Ready to make: only recipes your pantry and tools can actually cover right now.

Reading a Recipe

A recipe page shows:

• The cover photo (click to enlarge), a description, and the details: prep, cook, and rest times, difficulty, tags, and the source it came from.
• The ingredient list with exact amounts at the current scale, pantry indicators, and costs when prices are known.
• Numbered steps, possibly with photos, embedded timers, and links to other steps or recipes.
• Tools the recipe needs, with their settings ("Oven (180C)"). A tool your household doesn't own is flagged "not owned".
• Sub-recipes it builds on, like a dough or a sauce, linked so you can jump over.

Pantry Indicators

If your household keeps a pantry, the recipe tells you where you stand at a glance: a banner reads either "You have everything for this" or how many ingredients you're missing. Each ingredient line carries a dot:

• Green: your pantry covers it at the current scale.
• Amber: you have some, but not enough. The tooltip says how short you are.
• Hollow circle: a staple that's always on hand. It scales with the recipe but never goes on a shopping list.

Change the scale and the dots react: doubling a recipe can turn a green dot amber.

Substitutions

Out of something? Each ingredient line has a substitutions button that asks the AI for sensible swaps, with the ratio to use and a note on what changes.

Cost Estimates

When ingredient prices have been recorded, each line shows its cost and the recipe shows an estimated total, both scaled along with the servings. See Ingredients & prices for how prices get in.

Scaling

Every recipe has a quantity control matched to how it's measured: servings for most dishes, total weight for things like dough, volume for liquids, or tray dimensions for bakes. Change the number and every ingredient amount updates instantly, including amounts written inside the step text.

Amounts are shown in your preferred unit system (metric or imperial; set it on your Profile page).

Timers

Steps can embed tap-to-start timers ("bake for 15 minutes" with a button right there). Running timers float at the bottom corner of the screen with a countdown, and you can pause or dismiss them. Several can run at once. When a timer finishes it beeps until dismissed and, if you've allowed notifications, sends one so you hear it from the couch.

Range timers ("4 to 6 minutes") ring at the lower bound and offer a one-tap extension to the upper bound, so you can check and decide.

Cooking Mode

Start Cooking opens a full-screen, step-at-a-time view designed for a propped-up phone or tablet. The screen stays awake while you cook.

• Move through steps with the buttons, arrow keys, or a swipe. A progress header shows where you are; tap a dot to jump.
• A collapsible panel keeps the full scaled ingredient list in reach.
• Links between steps ("see step 5") jump within cooking mode and offer a way back.
• The final step ends with Done: I cooked this, which takes the ingredients out of your pantry.

Planning, Cooking, and Sharing

• Plan this puts the recipe on your meal plan at the current scale, optionally for a specific day. Whatever your pantry can't cover appears on the shopping list. See Meal plan.
• Add missing to shopping list does the same from the ingredient list.
• The + button on a single ingredient line adds just that item, and only the amount your pantry doesn't already cover.
• I cooked this records a cook on the spot: ingredients come out of the pantry (oldest stock first), and if the recipe produces something (a dough, a stock), that goes in. If the pantry came up short, Foodex says so instead of quietly pretending.
• Share opens your device's share sheet, or copies the link.
• Print gives you a clean printout without the app around it.
• Collect files the recipe into one of your collections. See Collections & dishes.

Favorites, Forks, and Privacy

Favorites

The heart on a recipe bookmarks it for you personally; each household member has their own favorites. Filter the recipe list to favorites to get back to them quickly.

Forking

Fork creates your own copy of any recipe you can see, linked back to the original so you can always compare. It's the polite way to make your spicy version of someone else's pasta sauce: their recipe stays theirs, yours is yours.

Private Recipes

Recipes are shared across households by default. Mark a recipe private (on the edit form's Advanced tab) and only your household sees it, everywhere: lists, search, dish pages, and shared collections all respect it.