Soup Up Yummly With Your Personal Recipes
Create your own virtual cookbook! Easily save all your recipes in one place, including your own secret sauce — or cookies. Make finding recipes, planning meals, and shopping easier.
Personal recipes on the Yummly app. Art direction by Seth Zavgano.
Did your mom or grandma have a recipe box? Mine sure did. Back in the day, home cooks jotted down favorite recipes on 3x5 cards and stashed them in a cute box so they’d be handy. Now we’re living in an age when our recipes are scattered everywhere — from physical cookbooks, cards, and splattered printouts to a cornucopia of online sources cluttering our browsers. Finding exactly what you’re looking for can be frustrating.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could keep everything organized in one convenient place? Well, now you can. On the Yummly® app and Yummly.com, you can add your own personal recipes,* whether they’re ones you create, or get from friends, cookbooks, or other online sources. Your personal recipes are for your eyes only, so feel free to save your family’s secret sauce — or cookie recipe!
*Note: Only paid subscribers can add personal recipes to Yummly. See Yummly Subscription Terms for details.
Having all your recipes at your fingertips isn’t the only benefit. Your personal recipes work with multiple Yummly features, including Meal Planner, Shopping List, and collections — and they sync across all your devices.
Think of Yummly as your personal recipe box for the modern age. Ready to learn more?
Jump ahead to:
Why personal recipes are so useful >>
How to create a personal recipe on Yummly >>
Where to find your personal recipes >>
Note: The Yummly Meal Planner is available to paid subscribers. See Yummly Subscription Terms for details.
What’s a personal recipe?
A personal recipe is a private, saveable, and reusable recipe that you create on Yummly. It can be simple (say, quantities for your family pizza night) or more complex. You can create as few or as many personal recipes as you like. They all live on Yummly in your own collection called All Personal Recipes.
Why personal recipes are so useful
At Yummly we’re excited about personal recipes for a number of reasons.
1. Streamline and organize your recipes
Everything in one place! You can bring all your recipes together — from those you find online, to handwritten note cards, to cookbooks.
2. Personalization
Let’s say you tried a recipe for marinara sauce and decided it’s even better using Italian sausage instead of ground beef, double the quantities of garlic and dried basil, and the addition of fennel seeds. Go ahead and jot down the recipe with all the ingredients the way you like, and keep it handy. Now it’s your own secret sauce.
3. Convenience
As I mentioned, your personal recipes on Yummly integrate with other useful Yummly features, and they sync across all your devices. You can schedule that secret sauce for a Meal Plan, add the ingredients to a Shopping List, and even order groceries* for the recipe.
*Grocery ordering service available in select U.S. locations.
Now, back to collections. Whenever you create personal recipes, they automatically land in a private collection on Yummly called All Personal Recipes. But you can also add your personal recipes to other collections that you create. For example, I’ve made collections called Weeknight Dinners and Family Favorites, and the secret sauce would be perfect there.
How to create a personal recipe on Yummly
Have I tempted you yet with the peeks at Sybil’s Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls? Believe me, you want this dreamy recipe.
Sybil is a dear 93-year-old family friend of mine who made amazing treats when I was growing up, and her dense, chocolate-covered peanut butter balls were legendary. Way back when, she shared a 3x5 card with me for her recipe, which I have since tinkered with a bit.
Your own personal recipes will be private to you, but just for kicks I’m sharing a personal recipe I made for Sybil’s dessert so you can see how to create a personal recipe. (No one will know if you decide to copy it for your own use!)
1. Head to your collections
Open the Yummly app on your phone and tap on the heart icon in the bottom navigation bar. For simplicity, we’re focusing here on your phone, but you can also access personal recipes on Yummly.com. All the recipe collections you’ve created when you save recipes on Yummly will appear. There’s a bonus collection for All Personal Recipes, which Yummly automatically creates for you. Tap on that.
2. Open personal recipes and start typing
When personal recipes opens up, tap “Create Your Own Recipe” to get started. It’s pretty intuitive, but here are a few tips:
• Add a title. It’s the only required field. In fact, you could just type in "Pizza night," save it, and you'd have an item you could plug into a Meal Plan — maybe for this Friday!
• From the Ingredients tab, type in ingredients one at a time. Here’s the full ingredient list for Sybil’s Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls!
• Navigate to the Directions tab and type away. Here are the directions for Sybil’s Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls. You’re welcome.
3. Add a photo if you like
If you have a photo of your recipe (I don't have one for the peanut butter balls), it's easy to add on the Overview tab. Simply tap the photo icon and allow access to your camera roll.
4. Tap Save Recipe
Once you’re finished creating a personal recipe, be sure to hit Save Recipe!
5. Edit your recipe
If you want to make a change in the recipe, tap on the three dots in the upper right corner to open the editing field.
6. Add a link to a url
Maybe your recipe inspiration exists outside of a trusty hand-written recipe card, and you'd like to link to the online source that inspired you. The "Add Link URL" field in the Overview tab lets you save a relevant link for your personal recipe, be it to the original recipe or a complementary recipe. (I bet Grilled Chicken Cutlets pairs well with margaritas!)
Where to find your personal recipes
To get to your personal recipes on the Yummly app, all you do is tap the heart icon on the bottom navigation of the app, and you’ll see your collection of All Personal Recipes.
Personal recipes sure are convenient and useful, but they’re also fun! I love having my friend Sybil’s fabulous peanut butter balls recipe right at my fingertips. Now, even if I'm away at the beach, Sybil's recipe is only a tap away, and I can easily add it to a Meal Plan and Shopping List along with my Sheet Pan Seafood Boil.
Tag @yummly on social media and let me know what personal recipes you create.
Get the most from Yummly
We’re on a mission at Yummly to make home cooks’ lives easier and tastier. Learn more about what Yummly can do for you in these next articles.