CookEat help
Welcome to CookEat — the platform where real home cooking meets purpose. Whether you’re discovering new meals, creating your own recipes from photos, or planning your week, this guide will help you get the most out of every feature.
Getting started
CookEat is built around four main pages — Discover, Plan, Shop, and Create — plus Cook, where you follow recipes step by step.
- Discover. Head to Discover and explore — search by name, filter by cuisine, dietary needs, allergens, spice level, or cost. Like and save recipes that catch your eye.
- Cook. Open Cook to view your saved recipes with photo-synced, step-by-step instructions — perfect for following along in the kitchen.
- Plan. Drag recipes into your weekly grid to organise breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks across the week.
- Shop. Turn your meal plan into a shopping list — ingredients combined and grouped by aisle, ready to tick off and share.
- Create. Snap photos of a dish and let Sous Chef turn them into a full recipe with ingredients, steps, and nutrition. Or import a recipe from social media for personal use.
You can browse recipes without an account, but signing in unlocks saving, creating, planning, and sharing your own published recipes.
Home
The home page is your launchpad. It highlights what CookEat offers and gives you quick links to every section. If you ever get lost, the navigation bar at the top is always there — on any page, on any device.
Discover
Discover is where you find your next meal. Search thousands of recipes and narrow results with powerful filters until you find exactly what you’re after.
Filters at your fingertips
- Search — type a recipe name, ingredient, or keyword.
- Cuisine — pick from 24 cuisines (Italian, Japanese, Mexican, Indian, and many more), each with its own icon.
- Occasion & course — filter by meal time (breakfast, lunch, dinner) or course type (starter, main, dessert).
- Dietary & lifestyle — Vegan, Vegetarian, Gluten-Free, Keto, Kosher, Halal, and more.
- Free-From (allergens) — toggle any of the 14 UK major allergens: Peanuts, Tree Nuts, Milk, Eggs, Gluten, Crustaceans, Molluscs, Fish, Soya, Celery, Mustard, Sesame, Sulphites, and Lupin.
- Spice level — Mild, Medium, or Hot.
- Cost — Budget, Medium, or Premium.
- Servings — cooking for 1, 2, 4, or 6.
Your personal collections
Toggle the quick-filter buttons at the top to view only:
- My Recipes — recipes you’ve created.
- Favourites — recipes you’ve liked.
- Saved — recipes you’ve bookmarked for later.
Get the most out of Discover
- Combine multiple filters for precise results — for example, Vegan + Gluten-Free + Budget + Under 30 min.
- Like, save, or share recipes from the card actions (see Sharing recipes).
- Click any recipe card to open a quick preview panel, then View full recipe to open Cook.
Cook
Cook is your kitchen companion. Open it when you’re ready to start cooking — everything is laid out so you can follow along without scrolling back and forth.
Four-card layout
Every recipe is presented in four clear sections:
- Hero photo — the main image of the finished dish.
- Info & features — servings, prep time, cook time, difficulty, cost, dietary tags, allergen warnings, and a nutrition summary (calories, protein, carbs, fat, fibre).
- Ingredients — a clean, scannable list with quantities.
- Step carousel — swipe or click through step-by-step photos, each with matching instructions underneath.
Navigate your recipes
- Use the arrow buttons to move between recipes (shows "3 / 12" so you always know where you are).
- Use the same quick filters as Discover — My Recipes, Favourites, Saved — to narrow your list.
- Search within your collection by name or ingredient.
Get the most out of Cook
- Use the step carousel dots to jump to any step — each dot shows a step number badge so you can track progress (e.g. "Step 3 / 8").
- Allergens are highlighted so you can spot them at a glance.
- Like, save, rate, or share from the hero action row — you don’t need to go back to Discover.
- Scale servings to resize ingredient quantities for your household (sign in for saved household size).
- On your own recipes, use the publish eye to control whether others can discover the recipe, and quick edit for fast tweaks to photos or details.
Plan
Plan is where you build your own meal plans and discover plans from other creators. Organise breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks across the week with a drag-and-drop grid, then save your week as a reusable plan.
The weekly grid
The grid shows the seven days of the week as columns and four meal rows: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and Snack. Each cell is a drop zone — drag a recipe into any slot to plan that meal. Use the week arrows to move between weeks.
The strip — recipes or plans
The strip below the grid has a toggle that switches what it shows:
- Browse Recipes — your recipes to drag into the grid. Filter by search, servings, or cost, and tap a meal-row header (e.g. "Breakfast") to show only recipes for that meal.
- Browse Plans — meal plans from you and other creators. Filter by My Plans, Favourites, or Saved.
Saving your plan
When your week is ready, use the corner button to open the save panel, where you can:
- Give your plan a name and an optional description.
- Choose the cover — drag the numbered badges (1–6) onto the meals you want as the plan's cover photos, in the order they appear.
- Add it to a list or add it to your calendar.
A saved plan of yours shows a pencil to edit it again. Editing and saving updates the same plan; change the name and you'll be asked whether to rename it or save a new copy (a variation). Plan names must be unique to you.
Using a creator's plan
- Save it to a list to find it again later — the only action on another creator's plan, since it stays theirs.
- Drag it onto your week to cook from it. Adjust any meal and it becomes your own arrangement, ready to save as your plan.
Get the most out of Plan
- On mobile, long-press a card to start dragging it.
- Drag a recipe onto a filled cell to replace it, or click a filled cell to remove it.
- A small "by …" badge on a meal means that recipe is from another creator — handy for spotting which parts of a plan are yours.
Shop
Shop turns your meal plan into a shopping list so you know exactly what to buy for the week.
- Auto-generated lists — ingredients from your weekly plan, combined and grouped by aisle so you buy only what you need.
- Tick as you go — check items off while you shop; your progress is saved.
- Share — send the list to whoever's doing the shopping.
Create (Sous Chef)
Sous Chef is CookEat’s AI-powered recipe creator. Upload photos of a dish you’ve cooked and Sous Chef will analyse them to generate a complete recipe — title, ingredients, step-by-step instructions, nutrition, and more.
How it works
- Upload photos — drag and drop or browse to select your images. Supported formats: JPEG, PNG, HEIC, TIFF, WebP. You can upload as many photos as you need.
- Generate — Sous Chef analyses every photo, identifies ingredients, and writes step-by-step instructions matched to each photo.
- Review & edit — adjust the generated title, ingredients, steps, servings, prep/cook times, dietary tags, and allergen information until it’s exactly right.
- Save & publish — save to your collection as a private recipe, or publish it for the entire CookEat community to discover.
Tips for better recipes
- More photos = better results. Take photos throughout the cooking process — raw ingredients, mid-cook, and the finished dish.
- Good lighting helps. Clear, well-lit photos give Sous Chef more detail to work with.
- Include packaging. If you’re using branded or packaged ingredients, a photo of the label helps with accurate identification.
- Order matters. Upload photos in the order you cooked — Sous Chef uses the sequence to match each step to the right photo.
- Always review. AI is clever, but you know your recipe best. Check quantities, timings, and seasoning before publishing.
Import from social media
Save a recipe you found on Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, or a blog into your private CookEat library via Import recipe (also linked from Discover and My account).
How it works
- Paste the post or page URL, or paste the caption text if URL import is not available.
- CookEat extracts title, ingredients, steps, and images where possible (oEmbed, page metadata, and AI parsing).
- Review and edit, then save to My Recipes.
Important rules
- Imported recipes are for personal, non-commercial use — they stay in your library and cannot be published on CookEat.
- Import only content you are allowed to save for yourself. CookEat does not republish the creator’s original post.
- The original creator is credited where possible; Cook shows a link to the source post.
- When sharing an import, CookEat shares the original URL, not a CookEat recipe page.
- CookEat may add estimated prep/cook time, gram weights, and nutrition from ingredient databases. Ingredient and step wording from the post is not rewritten. Post calories or protein (if any) are for comparison only and are not verified.
See our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy for full details.
Membership
CookEat offers three tiers — Free, Premium, and Creator — so you can choose the experience that fits your cooking journey.
My account
Tap the profile icon in the top-right corner to manage your account. From there you can update your details, review your preferences, and manage your saved recipes.
Sign in / Sign up
Sign in with your Google or Microsoft account, or create an account with email and password. Signing in unlocks saving, creating, planning, and all personalised features.
Forgot your password? Use the reset link on the sign-in page — you’ll receive an email with instructions.