What Imports Well: Recipe Sites, YouTube, Photos and Apps

Well Stockd can bring a recipe in from a link, a photo, pasted text or another app’s export file. Some of these copy the whole recipe. Others get only part of it, and the editor shows you what’s missing before you save. Importing one link at a time is free on every plan; importing several links at once is part of Pro.

How well each kind of import works

• Recipe websites (most reliable). Many recipe sites and food blogs publish their recipes in a standard format inside the page. When a page has it, the name, ingredients, steps and servings come across as the site wrote them, along with times and nutrition when the site lists them.
• Recipe pages without that format (check every field). If a page has no recipe data, AI reads the page’s text and writes a draft. AI can misread or miss things, so compare each field with the page. This uses your AI allowance.
• YouTube videos (needs a linked recipe page). Well Stockd reads the video’s description through YouTube’s official API, only to find a link to a recipe page. It doesn’t watch the video or read its subtitles, and it keeps nothing from the description. If the description links to a recipe page in the standard format, that page is imported and the video link is kept in the recipe’s description. If it doesn’t, copy the recipe from the description and paste it into the caption box. Import YouTube links one at a time.
• Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Facebook and Threads posts (caption only). Only the post’s public caption is read: not the video, the audio or the comments. The caption needs the ingredients and the method under their own headings, such as “Ingredients” and “Method”. If they aren’t there, the import stops and you can paste the recipe instead. Captions rarely give servings or times, and an ingredient with no amount shows 1, so set those yourself. For a Pinterest pin that links to a recipe site, import the site’s link instead; it usually brings in much more.
• Photos and cookbook pages (good, but check it). Take a photo or a screenshot, or several photos in order for a recipe that runs over more than one page. AI copies the text it can read into a draft. It can miss or misread words, so check every line. Each photo uses your AI allowance. Free reads up to 2 photos per recipe, Pro up to 10.
• Pasted text (reliable when it has headings). Paste a recipe into the caption box under More ways to import, with the ingredients below a line that says “Ingredients” and the steps below one that says “Method”. It’s read as written, without AI. Servings and times are left for you to fill in.
• Files from other recipe apps (reliable). Export your recipes from Paprika, Recipe Keeper, Mealie, Tandoor, Nextcloud Cookbook, Plan to Eat, MyRecipeBox, Copy Me That, Chowdown or Cook’n, or use a file exported from Well Stockd, and choose it under More ways to import. Well Stockd works out which app the file came from and reads the recipes in it, each with its photo when the file includes one. You review each recipe before saving the batch.
• Several links at once (Pro). Paste up to 25 links, one per line, and each becomes a recipe to review in a batch. This works for recipe pages in the standard format and for social posts with a full caption. YouTube links and pages without recipe data are skipped; import those one at a time.

What you check before saving

Nothing is saved until you press Create recipe. After an import from a social caption or a page that AI read, the editor says what it found, such as 8 ingredients and 5 steps, and lists what it couldn’t find: missing ingredients or steps, ingredients with no amount (they show 1), servings the source didn’t give (shown as 1) and a cooking time. Fill those in on the form, then create the recipe. Every recipe needs a name, at least one ingredient and one step. If an import doesn’t work, paste the recipe into the caption box or take a photo of it instead.