Organize Your Recipes Like a Pro (2024)

How do you organize your recipes? Do you have a way of organizing them or do you have some or all of them stored in a box somewhere and you keep telling yourself, someday you’ll get into that box and sort those recipes?

Well, organizing them can seem pretty daunting if we have a whole bunch of recipes and don’t know where to get started. And let’s not forget about all the different recipes you’ve saved online. Do you remember where they all are?

I’m here to share with you how I have found the best way to organize my recipes. It’s quick, simple, and highly organized that meal planning takes me no time at all.

So what are we waiting for? Let’s get started on the best and most efficient way to organize your recipes.

First, let me say that the best way I have found to organize recipes is with Evernote. They have a website and an app which makes adding and finding recipes a breeze.

If keeping your recipes online isn’t for you, I’ll be doing a post soon on how to organize recipes physically. Stayed tuned for that.

In the meantime though, keep on reading and you may find that when organizing recipes digitally, it’s the better way to keep all your recipes organized and you may just love how easy it is to find them.

I know when I started organizing my recipes, I stored them all in a binder. But what I found difficult was trying to be satisfied with the different categories I chose and then figuring out from there where each recipe fit into a category. Sometimes, recipes looked like they fit into 2 different categories so how do you decide what is the best category for each recipe?

Well, when it comes to organizing recipes digitally, you don’t need to worry about what categories to use and figuring out which category fits best. And that is what I love most about Evernote. The ease of organizing and finding recipes when I need them.

Notes and Notebooks

Now, let’s discuss Evernote. Everything you add to Evernote starts as a note. And you can add anything you want into Evernote. It doesn’t just have to be recipes. You could have 500 notes in Evernote and they could be on all kinds of different topics. But we’re just going to focus on organizing recipes for this post.

So, how do you keep organized with lots of different notes (or recipes)? Well, the first way to organize notes is with notebooks. So, for my recipes, I have 2 notebooks – Recipes I’ve Tried and Recipes to Try. Now when I add a recipe (note) to Evernote, I add it to one of these notebooks. And, just like notes, you can have as many notebooks as you want.

Tagging

The other way to organize your recipes is through tagging. Tagging is the way to label and describe your recipes to help you find them easier. Let me give you an example using this recipe, Chicken Tortilla Soup (shown below). When I added this recipe, I wanted to add tags that would help me find it later. So I tagged chicken, soup, and crockpot. Now, when I need a chicken recipe, I select my tag for chicken and this recipe will come up as well as any other recipe that I tagged chicken.

The same thing goes for crockpot and soup. You can select either of these tags and see the recipes that you’ve tagged with them.

As you can see above, I tagged chicken and found this recipe (see the purple arrow to the left). The tags I gave this recipe are under the blue arrow, chicken, soup, and crockpot.

And when it comes to tags, you can add anything you want. Use any word you can think of to describe your recipe. Here are some ideas for tagging. Tag the meat or no meat (chicken, beef, meatless, etc), tag the type of dish (Italian, Mexican, Seafood, etc), tag the method of cooking (crockpot, oven, one-pan meals, etc), tag if it’s a quick or easy meal (15 min meal, 30 min meal, kid-pleasing). The choices are endless.

Think also of how you like to structure your week for meal planning. Do you do a certain type of dish each night (Mexican one night, meatless one night, soup one night, etc)? Or if you don’t meal plan, think of how you would like to if you could and tag your recipes pertaining to that. The more you can accommodate your meal planning when using tags, the easier meal planning will become using Evernote. No one wants to spend 30 minutes a week planning their meals. But I bet you would love 5 minutes! That’s so doable when you’ve organized all your recipes in Evernote.

Lastly, there is also a search function in Evernote. So, if you have a specific food that you need to eat up, you can type that into the search field. For example, say you have a bunch of zucchini to eat up. You can put zucchini into your search field and every recipe that has zucchini in it will come up for you.

Recipes Already in Your Home

Now, let’s talk about how to add recipes to Evernote. Let’s start with recipes that are already in your home. This could be recipes that were passed down and recipes that you got from magazines. You have a couple of options to add these to Evernote.

You can start a new note and type your recipe into Evernote. Or you can scan it into your computer or you can take a picture with your smartphone. Then, either drag the file into a new note from your computer or if using your smartphone, use their app to add the recipe. And don’t forget to add it to the right notebook and add your tags.

Recipes Online

Now, let’s talk about how to add recipes that you find online. There is a simple, clever tool that does this for you and this tool is called the Web Clipper.

This web clipper is an extension for Chrome. Once you’ve added the extension, you’ll see a little elephant in the upper right-hand corner of your computer screen.

Do you see the green elephant in the upper right by the arrow? That’s what it will look like on your computer.

Now, when you want to add a recipe from online, just click on the “elephant” and this screen will pop up (next to the teal arrow).

Select one of the ways to clip the recipe (I’ve selected Simplified Article), pick the folder you want it in (I’ve picked Recipes to Try), add tags that you want to include (or add a new one), and add a remark if there is something more you want to say. Then save it and it will be added to Evernote. It’s that simple.

Use any of these options to add recipes. Once added to Evernote, make sure it’s tagged properly and in the right folder and you’re all set. Keep adding in all your recipes and enjoy the benefits of Evernote.

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Setting Up an Account

Now that you understand how Evernote works, it’s time to set up an account so you can get started adding in all your recipes. To do this, go to their website. From here you can create a free account or setup a Business account. You can also add the web clipper (found in the features menu} that I discussed before. They also have an app so don’t forget that for easy use.

Now, you’re all set. You’ve set up your Evernote account, started adding recipes, and organized them with tags and notebooks to find them at a later time. The next thing left to do is enjoy your new, organized recipes. Have fun meal planning!

What do you dread most about meal planning?

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