350+ sites, the four big social platforms, plus paper
ReelsMeals reads recipes from structured recipe sites and food blogs, from Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Facebook video pages, and from photos of paper recipes. Here's the honest map of what works well and what's still messy.
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ReelsMeals recipe card
reelsmeals.com
What 'supported' covers today
Recipe sources you can paste
Updated May 2026
Structured recipe
- 350+ food blogs and recipe sites
- Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook video pages
- Major food publishers (NYT Cooking, BBC Good Food, Serious Eats, etc.)
- Photos of paper recipes and cookbook pages
Three ways to add a recipe
Paste a recipe link
Works for food blogs, recipe sites, and social video pages from Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook.
Photograph a paper recipe
Upload one or more photos of a cookbook page, recipe card, or magazine clipping.
Search the whole collection
Everything saved (web, video, paper) lives in one searchable library with tags.
What each source actually gives you
Some sources produce a finished card and some produce a starting point. Here is which is which.
Major recipe sites with schema.org/Recipe markup
What we do: Clean extraction: ingredients with quantities, steps, prep/cook times, image, source link.
Food blogs with non-standard formatting
What we do: Usually good. ReelsMeals reads page content directly. Occasionally needs a manual cleanup on paid and trial accounts.
Social videos with recipe in caption
What we do: Good results. Captions extract well, source link kept for replay.
Social videos where recipe is voiceover only
What we do: Partial card: title, creator, source link. Steps need to be added manually if you want a complete recipe.
Paper photos with poor lighting or messy handwriting
What we do: Variable. Accuracy depends on the photo. Always review before saving; multi-photo upload helps for spreads.
Recipes behind a paywall or private account
What we do: Not supported. ReelsMeals only reads publicly accessible content; it doesn't bypass paywalls or private settings.
Supported recipe sources
- Instagram Reels and image posts
- TikTok cooking videos and creator profiles
- YouTube Shorts and long-form cooking videos
- Facebook posts, Reels, and video pages
- 350+ recipe sites and food blogs
- Paper recipes, cards, magazine clippings, and cookbook pages
What supported means here
It depends on the source
Sites that publish structured recipe data extract perfectly. Sites that hide the recipe in prose take more guesswork.
Source links remain useful
Saved cards keep links back to the original page or platform whenever a link source was used. Useful for attribution, replay, and update checks.
Photos cover offline sources
When a recipe isn't online, scanning lets you add paper cards, cookbook pages, and clippings into the same searchable library.
Frequently asked questions
Something not covered here? Email me at [email protected].
- A cookbook built out of the recipes you already saved and never cooked. Paste a Reel, TikTok, YouTube link, blog post, or a photo of a paper card, and you get back a recipe card with the ingredients, the steps, and a link to the original. Everything ends up in one place you can actually search.
Paste the link. That is the whole thing.
ReelsMeals reads the caption, the description, and the spoken audio, then pulls out ingredients, steps, timings, and the creator's name. If the creator never said an amount out loud, it will not be on the card, so the original video stays one tap away.
Yes, with your phone camera or by uploading images. It reads handwriting as well as print, so your grandmother's recipe card works.
Recipes that span two pages are fine, add each page as a separate photo and they merge into one card. Scanning is included on trial and paid accounts.
- Stripe takes a card up front and the account unlocks immediately. Cancel before day seven and you are not charged. After that it is €7.99/month, or you can take the Founding Member option and pay once.
Your cookbook connects to Claude, ChatGPT, and other MCP clients through a personal API key you generate in Settings.
The assistant can then search your recipes, open them in full, plan a week of dinners, and build a shopping list, all from food you already chose to save rather than suggestions it invented.
It runs in the browser, and you can install it to your home screen from Chrome or Safari for an app-like experience.
On Android you can share a link straight from Instagram or YouTube into ReelsMeals. On iOS you have to copy and paste, because Apple does not support share targets for installed web apps yet.
Instagram Reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Facebook Reels and posts, photos of paper recipes, and over 350 recipe sites and blogs. Pinterest is next.
Missing a site you use? Tell me and I will look at adding it.
Bookmarks store a link. Two months later you cannot remember which of the four hundred had the honey glaze, and searching them is impossible because there is no text to search.
The other recipe apps mostly help you save the next recipe, one share sheet at a time. ReelsMeals will take your existing backlog in bulk, including an Instagram data export, and turn all of it into searchable cards at once.
- It happens, most often with voice-only videos and oddly formatted pages. Every card is editable, and the original link stays attached so you can check it. Send me the URL and what looked wrong and I can usually improve it for next time.
- Cancel during the trial and nothing is charged. If a Monthly payment has already gone through, or you bought Founding Member, email me within 7 days and I will sort out a refund.
Ready to save your first recipe?
7-day trial for €0. Card required.