Why you never cook saved recipes, and what helps

Why don't you cook the recipes you save?

Because saving is easier than cooking, and because a saved recipe rarely fits the evening when you have to choose. Saving feels like a decision: you've seen something, it looked good and now it's safely kept. But a saved recipe isn't a plan for Tuesday yet. Usually it gets stuck on one of five things:

• You can't find it. It's somewhere among all those other posts, with no name or filter. How that happens is in Find saved Instagram recipes.
• It doesn't fit tonight. You have twenty minutes, less appetite for chopping than the recipe assumes and a pan it won't fit in.
• You're missing something. One ingredient you don't have is enough to push the recipe to tomorrow, and tomorrow it's the same story.
• It's for the wrong number of people. It was written for four, you're cooking for two, and you can't be bothered to do the sums.
• You don't know whether it's worth it. It looked good. Whether it tastes good you only find out when you've cooked it, so it stays put.

Something else plays a part. Anyone who saves recipes is also saving a bit of an idea of themselves: the person who makes fresh pasta on a Tuesday. That idea is free, but you can't eat it.

Each of those five can be solved, and it takes small things.

How do you find a recipe that fits tonight?

Don't search for what you want to eat, search for what works tonight. The questions a pile of posts doesn't know are exactly the questions a saved recipe has to be able to answer. In Smaquli you filter on Total time (from Up to 20 min to Up to 2 hours), Difficulty, Chopping, Veg, fish or meat, Method (oven, air fryer, one pan or no oven) and Ingredients (At most 5, 8 or 12). Ingredients you have set as Always in stock don't count there. You can also filter on stars, on recipes you haven't made yet and on the ingredient that needs using up. Take a Tuesday with twenty minutes: you choose Up to 20 min, under Method one pan and under Ingredients At most 5, and what's left is cooking.

Smaquli estimates difficulty, chopping, type and method itself, so you never have to label anything, and your own choice wins. A recipe such as creamy spinach pasta falls in the quick and vegetarian corner, and is the kind of recipe you want to find on a Tuesday. All the filters are on Find recipes.

How do you take the hassle out of shopping?

Put the recipe on the list with one tap, for the number of people who are eating. What you already have at home and what is Always in stock isn't on it, so you only fetch what you're missing. A recipe that threatens to fail on one ingredient is then just one line on a list. The list is organised by supermarket aisle, works without a signal and syncs afterwards. How such a list is put together is in Shopping list by aisle.

If you're cooking for a different number of people than the recipe says, change the number of people, from 1 to 20. The quantities in the steps scale too, and salt and spices go up more carefully than the rest. How that works is in How to scale a recipe.

How do you know which recipes are worth it?

By keeping track. Tap 'Cooked!' after cooking: Smaquli counts how often you cook something, everyone in your household gives their own stars and a 'why', and a top list comes out of that. After a few months you know which recipes you keep cooking and which you only liked the look of. The Not made yet filter is an honest little mirror: it shows how many of your saved recipes you've never touched. Put in a note what you'll do differently next time, such as 'less chilli next time'.

While you cook, a timer on every step that has a time helps, and with 'Keep screen on' your screen doesn't go dark while you stir. That takes away the little irritations that make a recipe fall by the wayside on a busy evening.

What else helps?

A smaller pile. Throw out what you'll never cook, because you're more likely to cook your way through a pile you believe in. A recipe you still haven't cooked after three months can go in the bin. Deleted recipes stay in the bin for 30 days, in case you regret it. Give yourself a rule as well: one recipe from the saved pile this week, and only save a new one once you've cooked one.

Also choose two recipes that share ingredients. Then you buy less and less is left in the fridge, and the list adds it up for you. And don't move everything over to Smaquli at once. Each week, take the recipe you want to cook that week, and leave the rest until its turn comes.

What doesn't Smaquli do?

Smaquli doesn't make a weekly menu and doesn't choose for you. It doesn't send reminders by email either. It only makes choosing easier: you find the recipe, see how much time and chopping it takes and have the list made in a moment. What it will be tonight stays your decision. On Free you can import 5 recipes a month; typing, adjusting servings, the shopping list and searching are unlimited. More about the prices and what you can do with Free and Premium is on Pricing. The app is in Dutch for now. English is on its way.