Creating a custom recipe is a great way to quickly enter meals into your diary. For example, if you often eat a breakfast oatmeal consisting of quick oats, raisins, brown sugar, cinnamon, and milk, it can be time consuming to always enter all five of these ingredients every day. Instead, you can create a 'My Breakfast Porridge' recipe which contains these ingredients. Once created, you can just search and add your recipe to your diary.
As a Pro, you also have the option to share recipes with your clients.
Learn about:
- Manually creating a new recipe
- Importing a recipe from a website
- Deleting a recipe
- Sharing a recipe with a client
Create a New Recipe
1. Click on Foods > Custom Recipes
2. Click on + Add Recipe
3. Enter a name for your recipe
4. Add ingredients by clicking on + Add Ingredients
5. Add a Serving Size
Determine the serving sizes of your recipe as either servings based or weight based.
Servings Based
If your recipe can be divided into a set number of servings, e.g. 1 full pizza provides 8 servings, then you should select Servings Based.
You can then enter the serving size as a fraction of the full recipe, e.g. 8 slices of pie per recipe.
Weight Based
If it is easier to portion your recipe based on weight you should select Weight Based.
The gram value will automatically default to the weight of the full recipe.
You can choose to add additional serving sizes by turning the Advanced Serving Sizes toggle on and then clicking + Add Serving Size.
Note 1 oz = 28.3 g
6. Add ingredients
To add your ingredients, click on + Add Ingredients. Remember to enter the appropriate serving size for each ingredient based on a full recipe
From here you will be able to search for the ingredient and add the serving size that matches your recipe.
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If you have created a weight based recipe, ensure you have chosen ingredients with weight based serving sizes. If you have chosen an ingredient with a volumetric serving size, you may encounter problems when entering your recipe into your diary.
7. Set a Cooked Recipe Weight
When you prepare a recipe, water lost during cooking may cause the weight of your final recipe to be different than the sum of the ingredients you added in Cronometer. Set a cooked recipe weight to accurately log your portions in your diary.
After cooking, weigh your recipe and click the green text Set Cooked Recipe Weight to enter in the actual weight of your recipe.
This will open a dialog where you can enter or edit the cooked weight. Click Save.
8. Add notes to the recipe
This is a great place to add cooking instructions! Drag the bottom right corner to make this area larger to view more text.
9. Save Changes
You can now search for your recipe by name and add it to your diary just like any other food. To search for a custom food or recipe more easily, search using the Custom tab in the Search dialogue.
Import a Recipe
Upload a recipe with ingredients and instructions from a website.
1. In the Foods tab, select the Custom Recipes tab.
2. Click the Import Recipe button at the top of the screen.
3. Copy the website URL > Click the Paste URL button in the dialog > Click Import.
We’ll upload the recipe name, serving size and ingredients. Look over the details and make any adjustments you’d like.
If you have any trouble importing a recipe or you'd like to add Grandma Jane's recipe she emailed you, copy the ingredients list and paste them in the Manual Ingredient Submission box. Use the Paste Ingredients button, or manually paste them directly in the box.
Enter one ingredient on a line so we can match them for you.
4. Add instructions in the Notes field. Expand the field in the bottom right corner to see all the recipe instructions.
5. Click on an ingredient to compare with the original ingredient called for in the recipe, as well as the serving size to validate the match. The importer attempts to read the webpage to find ingredients and map them to foods in our database. They aren't 100% perfect, so review is recommended before saving. We are learning from your corrections to improve ingredient matching through machine learning.
If we are unable to find a match for an ingredient or serving size we’ll mark the item to bring it to your attention. You must resolve these items before you can save your recipe.
6. When your recipe is complete, click the Save button at the top of the screen.
Deleting a Custom Recipe
To delete or retire your recipe, open the recipe in the Foods tab. Click on the three dots in the top right corner of your page.
- Retiring a recipe will remove the meal from your foods list but retain any diary entries you have already made.
- Deleting a recipe deletes the recipe and all diary history.
You can also use this menu to create a copy of the recipe to edit, or export your recipe to a CSV or JSON file.
Sharing Custom Recipes with Clients
1. In your Professional account, go to Foods > Custom Recipes
2. Select one of your Custom Recipes
3. Click on the three dots in the top right corner > Share with Clients
4. You can decide to share your meal with a single client, multiple clients or client groups, or use the toggle below your client list to share it with all your clients.
You can also toggle on if you'd like to share this recipe automatically with all future clients.
Note: To share multiple Custom Recipes with your clients at once, visit the sharing option in the client menu.