How to Save Recipes from Instagram and TikTok
You save a reel because the food looks good. Two weeks later you want to cook it, and you are scrolling a folder of forty videos with no titles, watching each one back to find out what was in it.
Saving inside Instagram or TikTok is collecting, not keeping. The post is a video with a caption, so you cannot search it by ingredient, you cannot add it to a shopping list, and it stops existing the moment the creator deletes it.
Getting it out takes about five seconds.
The fastest way: the Share button
This works from Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, Safari, or any app with a Share button.
- Open the post you want to keep.
- Tap Share.
- Choose AnyRecipe.
That is the whole thing. The recipe is read out of the post, split into ingredients and steps, and saved to your cookbook with the photo attached. You do not have to leave the app you were in, and nothing is copied and pasted.
The first time, AnyRecipe may not appear in the share sheet. Scroll the row of apps to the end, tap More, and switch it on. iOS remembers it after that.
If you would rather not use the share sheet, copy the link to the post and paste it into the import screen in the app. Same result, two more taps.
What you get that a saved folder does not
The point is not tidiness. Each of these is something a saved post cannot do.
You can search by ingredient. “That pasta thing with the lemon” becomes a search for lemon.
The shopping list writes itself. Ingredients from everything you plan to cook merge into one list, so three recipes calling for onions produce one line, not three. That is the part that saves money, because you stop buying what you already have.
The quantities scale. A reel that serves two becomes a dinner for five without you doing arithmetic over a hot pan.
It survives. Creators delete posts, accounts go private, and platforms change. Your copy is yours.
You can edit it. Cut the sugar, note the tray size, record what actually worked. Reels are not editable. Your version of the recipe is the one worth keeping.
When the caption does not have the recipe
This is the honest part, because it happens often and no app can fully solve it.
The recipe is gated behind a comment. “Comment RECIPE and I’ll send it” is a common way to farm engagement. There is genuinely nothing in the post to read. AnyRecipe tells you when it has hit one of these, and names the keyword to comment where it can find it, so you know the next step instead of staring at a failure message. Comment, wait for the DM, then import the text you are sent.
The recipe is only spoken in the video. Nothing written, nothing to extract. Screenshot the moment the ingredients are on screen and import the screenshot instead. AnyRecipe reads recipes out of images, which is the same path that works for cookbook pages and handwritten cards.
The post links to a blog. Common on Pinterest, where the pin is a picture and the recipe lives on a food site. Open the link and share that page instead. Blog pages are the easiest thing to import, because most of them publish structured recipe data.
The caption is a story with the recipe buried in it. This usually works, but check the result before you cook. Captions are written for people, not parsers, and a line like “a good glug of oil” has no number in it to find.
After it is saved
An imported recipe is a starting point, not an archive entry.
Add it to a day in the planner, and its ingredients join your shopping list with everything else you are cooking that week. Cook from it in step by step mode so you are not scrubbing a video back with wet hands to see the oven temperature again.
If you are moving a larger collection across, do it as you cook rather than as a filing project. Import the recipe the evening you make it, and within a month you have the collection you actually use. The full comparison of ways to organise recipes covers the alternatives if an app is not what you want.
Worth knowing before you start
AnyRecipe is free to download, so you can move your saved folder over gradually and see whether the habit sticks.
Your cookbook syncs through your own private iCloud. There is no account and no sign up, which also means nobody, including me, can read what you cook.
AnyRecipe is free on the App Store, for iPhone and iPad.
Frequently asked
Can I save an Instagram recipe without screenshotting it?
Yes. Use the Share button on the post and pick AnyRecipe. The recipe is pulled out of the caption and saved with its ingredients and steps separated, so you can search it and shop from it later.
What if the recipe is only spoken in the video?
There is no text to read in that case. Screenshot the moment the ingredients appear on screen and import the screenshot instead, or write the ingredients into a note and import that.
Why do some posts say the recipe is in the comments?
Creators often gate the full recipe behind a comment or a DM to boost engagement. AnyRecipe tells you when it hits one of these, and names the keyword to comment when it can find it, so you know what to do rather than seeing a vague error.
Do saved recipes disappear if the creator deletes the post?
Not once you have imported it. The copy is in your own cookbook, which is the main reason to import rather than rely on a saved folder.
