A recipe notes app that stays simple

Most people keep recipes in five places at once: a bookmark, a screenshot, a cookbook with a sticky note, a message from a friend and their memory. A recipe notes app promises to fix that, and the dedicated ones often bring their own clutter: imports, meal plans, nutrition charts, ads between the ingredients. A plain note per recipe is usually all you need, and it is the version you will still be using in a year.

One note per recipe

Give every recipe its own note. The title is the dish, in the words you use at home: "Grandma's meatballs", "Quick dal", "Lemon cake (the good one)". One note per recipe keeps each one short enough to read on a phone propped against the flour jar.

Resist the single note called "Recipes". It starts well and ends as a very long scroll with oily fingerprints.

Ingredients as a checklist

Write the ingredients as checklist items. That turns the recipe into a shopping aid and a cooking aid at the same time:

• At the shop: tick off what you already have at home, and the rest is your list.
• At the counter: tick each ingredient as it goes in, so you never wonder whether the salt is in.
• Afterwards: untick everything so the recipe is ready for next time.

Put the amount first on each line. "400 g chopped tomatoes" is easier to scan than "tomatoes, chopped, about 400 g".

Steps as a numbered list

Steps belong in a numbered list. Numbers make it easy to find your place again after you look away to stir something. Keep each step to one action. If a step says "meanwhile", that is often two steps.

A little bold helps for the things you must not miss: an oven temperature, a resting time, "do not stir". Use it sparingly or it stops standing out.

A star for favourites

Some recipes you make every week. Star them so they sit at the top of your notes. Stars work best when they stay few, so keep them for the dishes you actually cook, not the ones you intend to try someday.

Search by ingredient

One of the quiet advantages of keeping recipes as notes is search. Search looks at the title and the start of each note, so put the main ingredient where search can see it: in the title, like "Chickpea curry", or in a short first line. Then typing "chickpeas" finds the recipe on the evening you are staring at a half-used tin and no plan.

A first line such as "Chickpeas, spinach. Good for weeknights, freezer" does the job, and it doubles as a reminder of what the dish is.

Write your changes in

The best thing about your own recipe notes is that they can be wrong in the right direction. The original said 200 g of sugar; you use 150. The oven runs hot; you take it out five minutes early. Write that into the note, right where it applies:

• Change the amount on the ingredient line itself.
• Add a short note under the step that needs it.
• Keep a "Next time" line at the end for ideas you have not tried yet.

After a few rounds, the note is no longer a copied recipe. It is how you make it.

Keep the source

If a recipe came from a book, a website or a person, write that in one line under the ingredients. It is polite, and it helps when you want to check the original.

Archive the experiments

Not every recipe earns a place. When you try something and would not make it again, archive it rather than keeping it in your everyday list. It stays searchable if you change your mind, and your recipe notes stay a collection of things you actually cook.

This is minimalist note taking applied to the kitchen: one note per thing, a clear title, a checklist, and as little structure as possible around it. A simple notes app is enough.

When an agent helps in the kitchen

If you use an AI agent, it can do the typing. Ask it to write up a recipe you describe, with ingredients as a checklist and numbered steps, or to scale an existing note for six people. It works on the same notes you cook from.

A recipe box that stays simple

A recipe notes app does not need to plan your week or photograph your dinner. It needs to show you the ingredients and the steps when your hands are busy, and let you find the recipe again next month.

Very Simple Notes is a simple notes app that does that: bold, lists and checklists from one floating bar with no visible markup, a star for favourites, archive for the experiments, and search by title, synced wherever you sign in. It costs $0.99 a month, and the first month is free.