ChefBookThe ChefBook Blog
Saving recipes, planning the week, and deciding what to cook tonight.
- Are ChatGPT recipes good? What AI gets right and wrong in the kitchen — AI chatbots are great for dinner ideas and swaps, and shaky on baking ratios and food safety. How to use AI recipes well, and when to trust a tested one.
- How to meal plan on a budget (and actually spend less) — How to meal plan on a budget, step by step — start from what you own, cook overlapping ingredients and plan for leftovers so less food goes in the bin.
- Christmas dinner planner: menu, shopping and a cooking schedule for the whole week — Plan Christmas dinner for Friday, Dec 25, 2026 — menu, guest list, shopping in two waves, a make-ahead schedule and an oven plan for the day itself.
- How to convert a European recipe to American measurements — Grams to cups by ingredient, millilitres to cups, Celsius and fan ovens to Fahrenheit, gas marks, and the UK ingredient names that don't match US ones.
- Dinner rotation: build a list of meals you'll actually repeat — A dinner rotation ends the nightly "what's for dinner" debate. How to build one from the meals you already cook, add theme nights and keep it from getting dull.
- How to get a recipe from a YouTube video — Where creators hide the written recipe, how to use YouTube's transcript when there isn't one, and how to keep the recipe without rewatching the video.
- How to make a family cookbook (that people actually cook from) — Collect the recipes, chase the relatives, fix the vague measurements, then share or print it. A step-by-step plan for making a family cookbook.
- How to make a grocery list that gets you out of the shop in 20 minutes — How to make a grocery list in five steps — plan meals first, check what you own, combine duplicates and sort by store section so you shop once.
- How to organize recipe screenshots (and stop losing the ones you meant to cook) — Your camera roll is not a cookbook. Find every recipe screenshot, delete the dead weight and turn the keepers into a searchable library you cook from.
- How to scale a recipe up or down without ruining it — The scaling factor, why grams beat cups, how to halve three eggs, and what never scales in a straight line: salt, leavening, pans and time.
- Ingredient substitutions: what to use when you're missing one thing — Out of buttermilk, eggs or cornstarch? Ten ingredient substitutions with exact ratios, plus the recipes where each swap quietly fails.
- How to keep your iPad screen on while cooking — Stop your iPad locking mid-recipe: the Auto-Lock setting, Guided Access, and recipe pages that keep the screen awake on their own — with the catch for each.
- What to do with leftover turkey (safely, and without eating sandwiches for a week) — How long leftover turkey keeps, how to store and freeze it, and 12 ways to use it up, from carcass stock to fried rice, plus planning so none gets wasted.
- How to meal plan for one person without eating the same thing all week — How to meal plan for one person — shrink recipes, cook once for two meals, freeze in single portions, and shop so half a cabbage never goes to waste.
- Meal plan for two: how couples plan dinners without arguing — A meal plan for two that works: divide the planning, handle different tastes, cook in double batches, and turn a four-serving recipe into two dinners.
- Meal prep for beginners: a first week that won't burn you out — Meal prep for beginners without the 40 identical boxes: what to cook on Sunday, how long it keeps, and a first-week plan that fits real life.
- How to organize recipes in Google Docs (and when to move on) — A Google Docs recipe system that actually stays tidy, with a Sheets index, headings and naming rules, plus Notion and Keep, and where a recipe app does better.
- A pantry staples list that actually gets dinner made — A practical pantry staples checklist by category — grains, tins, oils, spices, sauces, fridge and freezer — and the meals each one makes possible.
- How to get the recipe without the story — Skip the life story on recipe blogs. Four ways to get straight to the ingredients and method, from the Jump to Recipe button to saving a clean copy.
- How to reduce food waste at home: habits that actually stick — Most household food waste comes from buying too much and forgetting what's open. Nine habits — and what date labels really mean — to waste less food.
- How to save recipes from Pinterest (so they're still there next year) — A Pinterest board holds links, not recipes. How to save the actual recipe behind a pin, and what to do about the pins that already lead nowhere.
- Thanksgiving dinner planner: a backward timeline from the table to today — Plan Thanksgiving dinner backwards from the time you eat. A day-by-day timeline for Thursday, Nov 26, 2026, with turkey thawing, shopping and oven schedule.
- What to do with old recipe cards (keep them, copy them, cook from them) — Inherited a recipe box? How to store old recipe cards so they last, digitise them so nothing is lost, and turn them into recipes you can cook.
- Yummly alternative: where to keep your recipes now — Yummly shut down in December 2024. What to look for in a replacement recipe app, and how to rebuild your saved recipes so it never happens again.