Im a foodie. I like to cook. I collect recipes from all over the web.
Have been using evernote to store recipes for a long time but Im just over evernote changing, regressing and making my workflow obsolete. So I am looking for options, the top two being DevonThink and Apple Notes. I am wondering what peoples thoughts are on “general notes” type apps versus specialized apps like Paprika Recipe manager.
Does anyone collect recipes in any of these apps? Anyone use Paprika? Would love some opinions and experiences.
Been a Paprika user for years. I really like the import feature from websites. Always does a great job including importing a pix of the food item. If I need to enter a recipe manually I usually use my Mac for the better keyboard. It the syncs to my iPad for use in the kitchen. Before Paprika I just used Word or text files but organization became a problem.
One feature I like is being able to export all my recipes as a web page. That way I can easily share recipes with friends and family.
I cannot recommend Paprika enough. My wife and I have used it for the past seven years. I’m on some platforms she’s on windows and android. It’s fabulous. I can’t imagine using anything else.
I really, really liked Paprika and I still think it’s a great app but as soon as Crouton releases a Mac version I’ll be switching. In the past the Paprika developers have been extremely responsive to feedback, it took a while but they eventually implemented two of the features I asked for; unfortunately, that is no longer the case.
Their stopped using their Twitter account nearly two years ago and they have yet to respond to an email I sent them in November. They are still releasing updates so they haven’t just vanished but they don’t seem be taking support for existing customers very seriously and that makes me worry for the company and their sustainability. I love the app but it’s difficult to feel confident about their future, at least for me.
Darn, this is bad news! I hadn’t noticed the support slowdown but also haven’t asked for any. It’ll be a good test to see if they make a native M1 app.
Hopefully they just have limited resources right now while they get through all of this like the rest of us but abandoning Twitter well before 2020 came through is what concerns me that there’s a larger issue.
Meanwhile I asked the Crouton devs if they had the feature I requested from Paprika and they immediately that they didn’t but it was a great idea and they would look into it.
I was looking for a basic deep linking feature to get directly to a recipe.
Slightly off topic: If you have a lot of cookbooks, 100 or more, a service called www.eatyourbooks.com is invaluable. If you enter all of your books by title or IBSN you can then can look for recipes that contain for instance “Squid.” It will give you a list of recipes across all genres, Italian, Vietnamese, Persian, etc. The list contains the name of the recipe, ingredients, and most of the time page number in the book. It costs $30/year.
I don’t think it is. I just import recipes from wherever I encounter them. Its like building your own cookbook. You can tag each recipe with multiple tags ex: Italian, Side Dish, Pasta
I do both. Since I have the hard copy cookbook collection and still add to it, “Eat Your books is invaluable”. I download recipes from the Internet to Mela and Paprika and have about 500 tagged recipes in those places which is also valuable.
I’ve tried and rejected Paprika. Reason: if you follow recipes mostly and use it to handle shopping I think it might be great. But in my case nearly all of my recipes are general guidelines not strict recipes with amounts and times and other details so the advantages of Paprika don’t help me.
I’ve never use Apple notes, so no info there.
My tool used to be DEVONThink. Advantage is I can keep a recipe in any form I want. I can add notes about how I made it, any issues I might have had and any variations I’ve tried and whether we liked them or not.
Now I use Obsidian for all that. I have a food MOC note with general ctegories for the areas I have recipes for and then each recipe is a separate note. I may include pictures of the dish and any story behind it as well.
Here’s an example of one of my recipes.
My Instant Pot take on the Babylonian stew recipe from Milk Street.
Sent in as an entry in the 2021 CO Wool Growers Recipe Contest.
![[Babylonian_Mutton_Stew_Recipe-01.jpg]]
**Babylonian Mutton and Turnip Stew**
**Submitted by Oogie McGuire**
The oldest recipe known is one that was written in cuneiform on a clay tablet from Babylonia that is over 4000 years old. There have been several versions bringing the recipe forward in time with more modern techniques and ingredients. This is my variation on the one published in Milk Street magazine in the Nov-Dec 2020 issue.
I've opted for the traditional mutton but added the newest cooking tools of an Instant Pot. The original uses shanks but for an easier preparation you can use stew meat or boneless shoulder roast.
This is a hearty stew with lots of flavor. I am not a fan of turnips but it works in this recipe. The best turnips are small white Japanese ones. We've also made it with potatoes instead and that's good too.
Ingredients
4 pounds of Mutton Shanks or 3 pounds Boneless Shoulder cut into 2 inch cubes. Stew meat also works.
Salt
Ground Black or White Pepper
2 large white onions or 3 medium yellow onions, halved and thinly sliced
3 leeks halved lengthwise, rinsed, both white and green parts thinly sliced
2 bunches of fresh cilantro, stems minced and leaves roughly chopped reserved separately
6-8 garlic cloves, minced
4 tablespoons ground coriander
2 tablespoons ground cumin
12-16 ounces of beer, either a lager or a wheat beer but not a sour beer
1.5-2 pounds of either white turnip or potato cut into 1/2-3/4 inch cubes
1-2 cups arugula, chopped. Use less if you don't like the flavor but more if you do.
1/4 cup fresh chives, finely chopped
olive or peanut oil
2 cups coarse bulgur
Put 1-2 tablespoons of oil into the bottom of an Instant pot. Brown the shoulder cubes or shanks using the saute setting until browned. Take them out and set aside. Put the onions and leeks into the pot and saute until the onions are translucent stirring often. You may need to add a bit more oil. Add the chopped cilantro stems, garlic, coriander and cumin and stir until the spices are fragrant.
Add the beer and stir to scrape up any browned bits. Put the meat back into the pot and seal it up. Pressure cook on high for 30-35 minutes. (More for shanks, less for shoulder.)
Release the pressure. If you used shanks pull them out and remove all the bones. Return the meat to the pot. If necessary add a bit more water, just enough so the liquid comes up to the top of the meat. Add the turnips or potatoes, Seal and cook on high for 5 minutes. Let the pressure release naturally for 5 minutes then release it all the way.
Serve over steamed bulgur. Garnish with the cilantro leaves and chives. This makes a rich hearty stew with a unique flavor.
Variations:
We've used quinoa instead of bulgur. Parsnips or other root vegetables work instead of turnips. Potatoes are our usual option if we can't find white turnips. Ordinary ones seem too harsh to our taste. One translation rendered turnips as a red beet but I've never tried that.
For me the link between shepherds that raised sheep 4000 years ago and today is part of what makes this special. Like the sheep we care for I see the link between sheep and shepherd and the products those sheep provide is that is still present today.
Edited, here is the picture that is transcluded in the note above
I just bought the iOS version of Paprika and it’s way better than my old setup (PDF’s stored on iCloud). Anyone here bought the Mac OS version? I was wondering why it’s so much more expensive than the iOS version.
+1 for Mela. It does the best of any I have tried of parsing recipes from web pages, and the RSS feed handling is a lot more useful than I expected (follow your favourite recipe web site, see them all as recipes (not a-bloated articles) and capture the ones you want. It’s beautiful too.
I held out just using the iPad and iPhone versions for a long time, but I finally got it about a year ago. I wonder why it’s more $ too. Is it more costly to develop for Mac?
Since getting the M1, I seldom use my iPad, so I “had” to get it.
My favorite part is the instant disappearance of the crazy ads when I send the recipe to Paprika.
It let’s your preview the ingredients and directions within the Paprika interface and decide whether to keep it and makes searching for recipes on the MacBook more pleasant.
