12 Yummly Features You Need to Know About
A Yummly insider shares her favorite ways to get the most out of your Yummly experience
All illustrations by Daniel Führer
When I’m planning a trip, I get tips from a friend who works for a tour company. My son, who’s a gamer, helps me get proficient (I wouldn’t say great) at his favorite video games. And I have a network of writer pals who keep me up-to-date on useful apps and practices. So I figure it’s time I share some of my own insider knowledge.
Which happens to be about using Yummly.
I’ve written more than 100 articles for the site, so while I’m not a Yummly employee, I’ve done some pretty deep dives into its many nifty features. The fine folks behind the scenes are always tinkering, constantly adding new ways to refine home cooks’ experience — so over the years I’ve learned some tricks you might not be aware of. And I’m ready to spill.
My top dozen Yummly features
By maximizing the tools Yummly provides, I can find just the right recipe in two or three minutes. And once I’ve cooked it, the app helps ensure I can find it again.
1. My recently viewed
This might be my favorite feature. When I’m searching for a recipe using, say, eggplant and feta cheese, I usually find a number of recipes that intrigue me — but I don’t necessarily save them to a collection. Let’s say I make a Greek eggplant dish for dinner, and my husband and I devour it. A few days later, I want to revisit a different recipe with Middle Eastern flavors, but I can’t remember exactly which one. On another recipe site I’d be sunk, but the Yummly app keeps track for me. All I have to do is scroll through my recently viewed recipes, and there it is.
2. Recommended for me
I love how intuitive Yummly is, the way it gets to know me better the more I use it. The clever programmers have developed what Yummly calls Food Genome and Food Intelligence technology, and while I don’t know exactly how it works, I do know it means that the “Recommended for you” section is bound to offer up recipes I might not have found on my own but that match my particular cooking style. Honestly, it’s like magic.
3. Endless ways to discover recipes
Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m looking for, just that dinner must be made. When I scroll down to “Explore more” on the app, it offers myriad ways to think about recipes. “Quick and easy” is often the first tab I click, or I might specify that I’m interested in a casserole under the “dishes” tab. And on days when I’m feeling stumped, the “kid friendly” category always offers up a few winners.
4. Recipe notes
I like to improvise in the kitchen, using a recipe as a jumping-off point. When I cook, I tweak the ingredients and even the instructions as I go. In the past, I’d print out recipes from various food sites and scribble notes, to make sure I could make the dish the same way again. The “My Notes” tab lets me record my tweaks on the recipe itself — no more digging through a giant folder of printouts to recall what I did.
5. All those helpful or inspiring articles
I may be biased since I write for Yummly, but I find the articles to be a great source of inspiration and information. In recent weeks I’ve learned how to make spectacular French fries in the air fryer, found a new favorite apple cake recipe for the Jewish New Year, and got tips for tear-free cooking with onions.
6. My collections
This is so much better than the usual online recipe box. When I find a dish I want to cook, I click the “Yum” button on the website (or the plus sign on the app), and choose where I want to save it — in one of Yummly’s pre-set collections by course, or in one of the collections I created for myself, like "Try Next" or "Adults Only." When I click through to find it again, all those individual categories make it much, much easier than scrolling and scrolling through one giant list.
7. Filter by ingredients
Open my pantry cabinet to see what I've got on hand, type into the app which of those ingredients I feel like using, and find the perfect recipe. This feature is every bit as easy-to-use as it sounds, and it saves me so much time.
8. Filter by cooking time
For the last month or two I’ve been dealing with some pretty relentless family stuff. I meal plan and think I know what’s for dinner each night, and then I get a phone call and have to dash off to take care of something. I get home hours later exhausted. I’m often tempted to order in — and I give into the urge roughly once a week — but I’d much rather eat something homemade and simple. That’s when I turn to this nifty filter. Let’s say I was planning to roast cherry tomatoes in olive oil, then use them as a sauce for pasta (which I highly recommend). When even cooking pasta sounds like too much effort, I enter cherry tomatoes and olive oil into the recipe search, then filter for recipes that take five minutes or less. Yes, I said five minutes or less. That search yields almost 200 possibilities! If I add one more ingredient — chickpeas — it whittles the list to a manageable 17 choices, and I’ve got an easy dinner idea.
9. Disliked ingredients
Whoever thought up this filter deserves allll the accolades. I grew up kosher and while I no longer observe (bacon is just too good to give up forever), I never developed a taste for shellfish. Before I discovered this feature, searches for quick recipes often yielded suggestions using fast-cooking shrimp. Once I added “shellfish” to my disliked ingredients list, they disappeared from the results. And that’s not the only reason I love this feature: As the mother of the World’s Pickiest Eater, I don’t always cater to his tastes, but I do try to ensure at least three dinners a week will appeal to him. The fact that a filter exists to eliminate recipes he’ll never eat is game-changing for me.
10. The shopping list by recipe
Before I finalize my grocery list, I always take a look at it, sorted by recipe. Usually I have at least a handful of ingredients already, and this makes it easy to see what I can cross off. My cupboard will never again be clogged with four bottles of soy sauce.
11. User reviews
I have a collection of trusted recipes I know will work — I imagine we all do. But I don’t always want to cook from that list. When I’m on the hunt for a new way to cook, say, chicken breasts, I’ll do my full search on Yummly, filtered for specific ingredients, cuisines, techniques, and time. From there, I rely on the experience of others to narrow down my options. On the app, I look first to see how many times a recipe has been saved, and if it’s popular I’ll click through. A five-star rating assures me that other Yummly home cooks have found the results to be reliably good. On the website I can go a step further, and drill down into reading user reviews. Once I make a final decision on a recipe, I go into the kitchen knowing it will work.
12. I never get bored
With almost two million recipes in the database, I could cook a new recipe every meal, every day, for the rest of my life. And then my kid could do the same for his entire life — even after he’s filtered out all the ingredients he doesn’t like.
Learn more about Yummly features
Curious to read more about the shopping list feature, or search filters, or the home feed experience? Check out these helpful articles about Yummly features.