These are the best recipe apps I’ve found for meal and dinner planning: keeping track of our go-to recipes, organizing ingredients we’ll need for upcoming meals, and helping to create a meal plan that we can actually use. Perfect for getting organized for a more structured back to school routine!
Just a note on the title — I’m not throwing any shade at Pinterest whatsoever. I love Pinterest so much but I think most people know about Pinterest, so these are a few apps you may not know about that can help streamline your meal planning and dinner making routine. Not gonna act like sometimes my meal plan isn’t “freezer scroungetown” but these help me get some more legit meals on the table. I did a bunch of googling and I can’t find a way to link directly to the app from the post, but I did a test search to make sure you could easily find them when you search the app store if any of these interest you.
Dinner planning made easy with recipe apps
Recipe Gallery
Details: Free for iOS and Android
Best for: Your go-to favorites and heirloom recipes
My take: All of my best go-to recipes were carefully handwritten in a notebook, but the more recipes that I accumulated, the more impossible it was to find the one that I wanted when I wanted it. Plus, if anything happened to that book most of the recipes would be impossible to replace. Recipe Gallery makes everything easy to find and it’s saved in the cloud. Kind of like a digital recipe box. Also if I’m at the store, I can quickly pull up my recipe and instructions to make sure I grab the ingredients I need. Bonus: my go-to recipes are always the ones people ask for, so you can easily screenshot your recipe and send it as a text.
Cozi
Details: Free for iOS and Android and paid upgrades are available
Best for: Making a dinner plan for the week and creating a shared store list
My take: This has eliminated a lot of stress in our household. You can share access with household members, so my husband and I can both see the meal plan, the store list and our shared family calendar. Store list items are easy to create, check off and move around so they’re in whatever order you choose. I find that shopping is the least stressful when I put the ingredients in the order of the store, so you’re not at the checkout and only just noticing that you missed milk. Nothing gets my stress levels higher than having to leg it out across Walmart.
There isn’t a specific section for meal planning, but I’ve made a “to do” list with each day of the week that shows what I’ve planned for the day. Because I 100% will forget all my plans, typically even an hour later.
Bonus: The shared calendar option is a game changer. No more argu-frank discussions about who did or did not tell the other about an upcoming event, hehe.
Evernote
Details: free for iOS and Android and paid upgrades are available
Best for: Recipes you’d like to try — I use this a ton for recipes I come across in magazines or cookbooks
My take: So I got crazy when Amazon had a $5 magazine promo and I now subscribe to many, many recipe magazines. My past m.o. was to flip through them, dog ear the pages of the recipes I wanted to try, then never go back and eventually declutter the magazine. It was quite the system. Or alternatively take a picture of a recipe and then never be able to find it if I actually wanted to use it. I already used Evernote for work and it has lots of other capabilities that could be a whole separate post, but I created a recipe notebook in Evernote where I save any recipes on the fly and then can easily search for them later. I’ve found a lot of magazines don’t get their pins up on Pinterest right away, and I always forget to search again. This way you’ve got it saved and searchable immediately.
Any other apps you love for finding/storing recipes or meal planning? I’d love to hear in the comments!
Need some go-to recipes to fill up your new apps? 🙂 You might like:
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Photo by Jennifer WareHi, Friend! I’m so glad you’re here. I’m Carissa ~ wife, working mom of two boys and someone who’s always looking for ways to make things just a little bit easier...Read More
Downloading recipe gallery now!! Thanks for the info!! This will be so helpful!
Yay! Hope you love it!
Magnificent items from you, man. I have take into accout your stuff previous to and you’re simply too fantastic. I actually like what you have got here, really like what you’re stating and the way wherein you assert it. You’re making it entertaining and you continue to care for to keep it wise. I can not wait to learn much more from you. This is really a terrific web site.