Like many things, the world of cooking has moved on to TikTok and Instagram Reels. Before, you'd go to a website or someone's blog to find recipe inspiration. But these sites are now filled with long-winded stories, ads, and descriptions of the dish, which can make them a hassle to scroll.
In these trying times, cooking shows, personalities, and even enthusiasts have taken to TikTok and Instagram Reels for sharing recipes, tips and tricks. Because videos on these sites are only a minute long, the focus there really is on the dish. But here, you meet another problem. The videos are too damn short. And if you're not careful, you'll end up watching the same 45 second video in a loop for 17 times, just trying to figure out how this guy made Turkish eggs for breakfast.
Or may be you're like me and my partner, who see all these great recipes on Instagram, save them for later, only to never come back to them. This is where the third-party cooking app Pestle can help.
Pestle is a recipe organizer that automatically formats any recipe you share to it. This can be from one of those long winded blogs, or a recipe you've created yourself. Now, with the latest update, Pestle is using on-device AI to quickly convert Instagram Reels captions into full-fledged recipes that you can easily follow via the app's step-by-step cooking guide.
This will work as long as the recipe Reel has the ingredients list and the recipe steps written in some form or the other in the caption (or contains a link to a recipe). Your source video doesn't need to follow any specific format, which is thanks to the AI. Pestle will run the caption through its system, extract the recipe, and show it to you in a nice format that you can easily follow. The video will be added to the recipe, too.
Because the app is doing this on-device instead of pinging the cloud, the whole process is surprisingly fast. It all happens in just 5-10 seconds, after which your recipe will be ready in the app. I tested this out with five different videos, each with a different kind of recipe caption, and it worked every time.
Here's how it works. Tap the Share button from the video, then choose the Share To option. Choose the Pestle app. If you don't see it, go to the More section, then choose the Pestle app.
The Pestle app will ask you for a name for the recipe. Once that's done, it will automatically populate the ingredients and steps from the video caption. Go through it to make sure everything looks right. You can also tap the Edit button at the top to add or remove any part of the recipe. And that's it, the recipe will be stored in the Pestle app and you can now make a habit of opening the app every time you feel you don't know what you'd like to make tonight.
Pestle has a lovely interface where it will show you the steps for the recipe in huge font so it's easy to follow along as you cook. A really nice touch is that when an ingident is mentioned, you can tap on it to reveal the quantity as well. For example, in my Turkish Eggs recipe, tapping on the eggs text reveals that I need four free range eggs to pull off this recipe. In the cooking view, you can also switch to an ingredients list and check off items that you've got set for cooking. The app also has a voice mode for hands-free cooking, so you can say things like "Next" to switch to the next step, without even touching your iPhone or iPad.
The app lets you store 15 recipes for free, but for unlimited recipes, you can upgrade to Pestle Pro, which costs $1.99 per month or $19.99 when billed annually.
