Guide

Getting started

What the app does

McLearen Kitchen keeps your recipes and helps you cook them. You can type recipes in, import them from websites and photos of recipe cards, cook them step by step with timers and Bluetooth thermometers, and turn them into a shopping list that knows what is already in your pantry.

Everything works offline and is kept on this device. The internet is used only when you ask for something that needs it, such as importing from a website.

Finding your way

The tabs are Recipes, Plan, Shop, Pantry, Cook and Settings. On a phone they run along the bottom; on a wide window, down the side, with the McLearen Kitchen mark at the foot — click it to visit the McLearen Kitchen website.

• Recipes — your library, the importers, meal groups and the cooks in progress.
• Plan — the meal plan: the week ahead, day by day.
• Shop — the shopping list and your stores' pages.
• Pantry — what you have at home.
• Cook — Timers (every running timer, from recipes or your own), Probes (pair and watch Bluetooth thermometers), Convert (a calculator for kitchen measures) and History (everything you have cooked), along the top. A narrow window shows the four as icons alone; holding the pointer over one names it.
• Settings — your preferences, your stores, and Help & About.

Your first recipes

There are four ways to fill the library:

1. Press Add Recipe on the Recipes tab (on the phone, + › “New recipe”) and choose how to start. “From scratch” is a blank recipe to type in; as you type an ingredient's name, the names you have used before are offered under it. “From what you have” finds the recipes that use what is in your kitchen (add them, or press “Use my pantry”) — your library's first, then the top-rated collection's — and opens the one you pick as a new recipe of your own, “… (my version)”, to change as you like: its notes say where it started, a site's link is kept so it is still credited, and the one it came from stays as it is. “A twist on one of yours” starts a new recipe from one of your recipes, “… (twist)”, and keeps the two linked: under the version history, each recipe's page names the other, and “Compare side by side” shows them next to each other — what changed, what was added and what was left out. “Say it” is a box to speak the recipe into with your device's voice typing (Windows key + H on a computer, the microphone on a phone's keyboard): say Name, Ingredient or Step before each part, and the recipe is sorted beside it as you speak; “Open in the editor” takes it from there. “From a recipe card” and “From a link or a post” are the imports below.
2. Import one from a recipe website (see Importing recipes).
3. Import one from a photo of a recipe card or cookbook page.
4. Add a ready-made collection from “Import recipes” › “Ready-made collections” on the Recipes tab: 620 top-rated recipes, 306 Scottish and Irish recipes, or 267 barbecue and smoking recipes.

Units and dark theme

Settings › Measurements shows recipes in Imperial (US) or Metric measures. Settings › Dark theme turns the dark colours on. Both are remembered. A recipe that gives an amount in both systems — 3 1/2 oz / 100 g — shows only the one you use.

Getting help

Long-press (or right-click) any step or ingredient to see what its cooking terms mean. Some screens have an orange help badge with a question mark that explains the screen.

Settings › Help & About has this guide, the questions and answers, the cooking glossary and the About page.

Recipes

The library

The Recipes tab shows every recipe as a card with its photo — or, if it has none, a picture chosen from its category — its category, and a heart for favourites.

The search box looks through names, categories and tags. Beside it, the quick filters — All, the favourites, your recipes, Top rated and the site — narrow the list at a tap, and “Filters” opens the rest: category (with how many recipes each has), origin, tag, Show archived and Find by ingredient, which lists what you can make from what you have. The number on “Filters” says how many are on, and “Clear filters” turns them all off. At the top, the import button opens “Import recipes”, and ⋮ holds the notepad, “Export library JSON” and “Refresh”.

Along the top, All Recipes shows the library, Meal Groups your groups of recipes, Cooking Now the recipes you are cooking, and Up next the recipes you plan to cook.

Up next is a short queue for the days ahead: choose “Add to Up next” from a recipe's menu (the card's ⋮, a right-click, the recipe page's ⋮, or a long-press on a phone), or add a whole meal group with the bookmark beside it. The queue keeps its order (drag the handle to change it); tap a recipe to open it, × to take it off, and “Add all to shopping list” to send every queued recipe's ingredients at once. A recipe leaves the queue by itself when you finish cooking it. Queued recipes carry a small bookmark on their tiles.

On a phone the library is a wall of photo tiles, with the controls at the bottom where a thumb reaches. The pill holds the view menu (All Recipes, Meal Groups, Cooking Now, Up next), the search, + to add a recipe, the “View” button and ⋮; above it the strip has “Filters”, All, the favourites, your recipes, Top rated and the categories in use. “View” opens the view sheet: “Tiles”, “Photo grid”, “Cards” or “List” (the ★ marks the one the screen opens with), “Sort” — “A to Z” or “Newest first” — “Tiles across” (2 to 4; sideways shows twice as many), “Hide the bars while scrolling”, and “Add-recipe tile first”. Scroll and a handle appears at the right edge: drag it to run through the whole library, and a bubble shows the letter (or, by newest, the first word) you are passing. A long press on a tile opens the recipe's actions.

The phone opens on the categories: a picture tile for each category in use, with how many recipes it holds, and Favorites, My recipes, Top rated and All recipes above them — nothing else is drawn until you choose. Tap a category for its recipes; its sections appear next to it in the strip, and “Categories” at the strip's start (or the phone's back button) goes back. Typing in the search looks through the whole library, and emptying the box goes back to the categories. In Settings, “Open with this filter” can open on “All recipes” instead.

A recipe's page

At the top are the photo, the description and chips for the version, category, origin, servings and times. Then come the ingredients with their amounts — a tick shows what your pantry already has — and the buttons for the shopping list (and, for a smoker recipe, the smoke planner). The steps, your notes and the Cooking History follow. The category chip changes the recipe's category (“Choose a category” when it has none), and “Add keyword” adds keywords — several at once, separated by commas — which show as #tags. A recipe with no photo of its own shows its category's mark and name at the top until it has one. On a wide window the page keeps to a centred column, with each amount right beside its ingredient.

“Start cooking” opens Kitchen Mode at the first step, or “Resume cooking” where you left off.

Making more or less

Press “Scale” and choose 0.5x to 5x, or type a new amount into any ingredient's box and press Enter; the other amounts change by the same ratio. Kitchen Mode and the shopping list use the amounts you chose.

An ingredient whose Scaling rule in the editor says not to scale — a pinch of salt, one bay leaf — stays as it is. Cooking times and temperatures never change, so watch the food when you cook a much bigger or smaller batch.

Nutrition

A recipe's page can estimate its calories and nutrients a serving from FoodData Central, the US government's food database. The look-up button matches each ingredient to a food there (it needs the internet; the matches are kept, so each ingredient is looked up once), and the card then shows about how many calories a serving has, with the protein, fat, carbohydrates, fiber, sugar and sodium. Weights count exactly; cups and spoons go by the food's own measures (or as water when it has none, which the card mentions), and counts such as 2 eggs by the food's sizes. What could not be matched or weighed is named. “Check the matches” lists what each ingredient was matched to: tap one to pick another of the answers, or to leave it out. When a recipe gives no servings but its yield counts pieces — 36 cookies, 3 dozen — a serving is one of them, and the card says so.

The shared demo key allows 30 look-ups an hour. For more, get a free key at api.data.gov and put it in secrets\retail.env as FDC_API_KEY. An estimate is not a label: use the package for exact values.

Editing and versions

Open the recipe's menu (the ⋮ button, or right-click its card) and choose “Edit / create new version”. Change anything, say what changed in "What changed in this version?", and press “Save recipe”.

Each save keeps the old version and adds a new one (V1.1, V1.2…), and the Cooking History shows which version each cook used. Duplicate recipe makes a separate copy to change freely.

Filing a recipe

In the editor, a recipe has one category (with a sub-section), an origin such as Scottish or Mexican, and any number of tags. “Suggest” offers a category or origin from the recipe's own words.

A recipe's ⋮ menu (on its page, on its card, with a right-click or a long-press) comes in four parts: the recipe itself (Edit / create new version, Duplicate recipe, Add to group, Mark as my recipe, and on its page Paper for this recipe), planning (Plan for a day…, Up next, and in the library Send all ingredients to Shopping List — the page has its own button for that), “Share and export…”, then Archive and Remove. “Share and export…” opens every way the recipe leaves this device or is saved as a file: “Ready to share?” first, then Send (“Share…”, the send queue), Save as a file (a McLearen Kitchen file, interactive HTML, recipe JSON) and Recipe sites (“Copy for a recipe site”, “Save to MyRecipes”). From the recipe's menu, Mark as my recipe puts it under My recipes, and Archive recipe hides it without deleting it (Show archived brings it back into view).

Meal groups

A meal group gathers recipes you make together — a holiday dinner, taco night. On the Recipes tab, open Meal Groups and press “Create Group”, then use Add to group from any recipe's menu. A group can send all its recipes to the shopping list at once, put them on Up next (the bookmark) or on the meal plan (the calendar button).

The meal plan

The Plan tab shows the week ahead, day by day (on a phone the Recipes tab's ⋮ › Meal plan opens it too). Press + on a day to plan a recipe for it: your Up next recipes come first, then the whole library, with a search. A recipe can go on more than one day; its ⋮ moves it to another day, and × takes it off. A recipe's own menu has “Plan for a day…” too: pick one of the next two weeks. A meal group can go on the plan as well: pick it from the Meal Groups list under Up next, and all its recipes go on that day. On a meal group's own page (or its card), the calendar button puts them all on the plan — “All on one day” or “One a day” in the group's order, from a day you pick — and then asks whether to take them out of the group; they stay unless you say so. Tick “Remember my answer” to stop the question, and change it in Settings › Recipes screen › After planning a meal group.

Under each recipe the plan says what the pantry has for it — “The pantry has everything”, or what is still to buy — and a tick marks the recipes you finished cooking on their day.

“Shop the week” sends the ingredients of every recipe still to cook this week (from today on) to the shopping list in one go: all of them, or only what the pantry does not have, which the pantry then holds for each recipe. The arrows move between weeks, and the plan's ⋮ puts the week's recipes on Up next or clears the week.

Recipes inside recipes

An ingredient can point at another recipe in your library — a rub, a sauce, a stock. Press the link button on the ingredient's row on the recipe page and pick the recipe; a "Recipe: …" chip then opens it.

When you add the recipe to the shopping list, the app asks whether to shop for that ingredient as the other recipe's own ingredients, scaled to the amount used. In Kitchen Mode the chip appears on the step that needs it.

A linked recipe is made first, too: the recipe page lists it under Steps as “Before you start”, with its steps at the amount this recipe needs, and a new cook in Kitchen Mode starts on those steps, one screen for each linked recipe, before the recipe's own first step (“Previous” on that first step goes back to them). A line made beforehand (garlic mashed potatoes, already prepared; prepared beef gravy; homemade butter) offers the recipe in your library that makes it, or shows “Made beforehand? Link its recipe”; the list that opens also has “Import a recipe” for one you do not have yet.

McLearen Kitchen comes with base recipes of its own: gravies, mashed potatoes, butters, sauces and creams, stocks, doughs, rubs and brines. A line made beforehand that no recipe in your library makes offers the one that does (“Use our base recipe: Beef Gravy?”); a tap puts it in your library, tagged Base recipe, and links it. The list that opens from the link button has them all under “Our base recipes”.

Sharing

From the recipe's menu, “Share and export…” › “Export interactive HTML” makes a web page you can send, print or open in any browser, and “Export recipe JSON” a file another copy of the app can import. “Copy recipe to clipboard” on the recipe page copies it as text.

“Save as a McLearen Kitchen file”, in the menu on the recipe's page and in the library's (under “Share and export…”), makes one .mkrecipe file that another copy of the app opens with every version of the recipe and its photo. It asks who the file is for. For someone else it holds the recipe alone; your notes, cooks and favorites stay here. For your own other phone or computer it also carries your finished cooks with their notes and cook logs, and if that device already has the recipe from this one, the file updates that copy: a changed recipe arrives as a new version, and only the cooks it does not have yet are added. On Windows you choose where to save the file; on Android it goes to Downloads › McLearen Kitchen. Send it however you like — email, a USB stick, Quick Share — and open it on the other device with “Import recipes” › “Import from a file”. Each recipe is listed with what the app found (new, your copy, or one with the same name) so you can add it, update your copy, keep both or skip it.

“Share…”, under “Share and export…” in a recipe's ⋮ menu (on its page and in the library), in the send queue and in “Select recipes…”, sends straight to your device's share sheet instead of saving first: Quick Share, a message, email, Drive or any app that takes files. Choose “A McLearen Kitchen file” (it asks who it is for, as above), “A file for other recipe apps” (a Paprika file, which AnyList, Plan to Eat and Recipe Keeper also import) or, for one recipe, “The recipe card”, a page that opens in any browser on any phone or computer. On Windows the share window is Windows' own: Nearby sharing and the apps that accept files.

For a friend who does not have the app yet, Help & About › About shows a QR code for the website's Download page: they point their phone's camera at it and the page opens.

“A link anyone can open”, in Share… for one recipe, puts the recipe on the McLearen Kitchen website for 30 days and shows the link with its QR code: a friend points their phone's camera at it, or you send the link in a message. The page has the recipe alone — not your notes, cooks or photo — and recipe apps that import from a web address can save it; in McLearen Kitchen that is “Import recipes” › “Import from website”. “My shared links”, at the foot of the Share… window, lists the links this device made, shows each code again and takes a link down for everyone. Each page has a button to report it; a page reported from three places is hidden.

“A private link”, also for one recipe, seals the recipe on this device before it goes anywhere: the key is in the link itself, after the #, so the McLearen Kitchen website keeps it without being able to read it. Choose “Just the recipe” or “With my notes and cooks”. Anyone with the whole link can open it in a browser for 7 days; McLearen Kitchen, with “Import recipes” › “Import from website”, brings it in with the notes and cooks through the same review as a McLearen Kitchen file; shared to the app from a message, it waits in the import queue with “Open the private link”. Other recipe apps cannot read it. It is listed in “My shared links” with the others.

Several recipes go the same way. On the Recipes tab, ⋮ › “Select recipes…” lists them all with a search box: tick the ones you want (or “Select all shown”), then save them as one file or put them “To the send queue”. The send queue (⋮ › “Send queue”, or “Add to the send queue” under “Share and export…” in a recipe's menu) holds recipes until you send them together, and empties once the file is saved or shared unless you switch that off. For everything at once, ⋮ › “Export library JSON” › “McLearen Kitchen file…” saves the whole library — for someone else, without the archived recipes. With several recipes you can leave the photos out to keep the files small; a large library is saved as several files of at most 24 MB, and opening one of them on the other device brings the others in the same folder into one review, which can skip everything at once or go back to its suggestions.

Before a recipe goes anywhere, “Ready to share?” in its menu (and at the top of the editor) — the first line under “Share and export…” — lists what to look at: ingredients with no amount, ingredients no step uses and foods a step names that are not listed, servings and times, the spelling of cooking words, the category, a photo of its own and a possible duplicate — and nutrition and store prices once you use them. It changes nothing; each line says what it found. “Compared with similar recipes” sets the recipe beside the ones like it — the same dish in your library and the top-rated collection — for butter and sugar against flour by weight, and the cook time, and says where it is far from most of them, naming the recipes it compared with.

“Copy for a recipe site”, also in the menu under “Share and export…”, shows each part of the recipe ready to paste into a recipe site's own form (Cookpad, Food.com, a blog): the title, description, ingredients one per line, steps numbered or plain, servings and times in minutes, notes and the source to credit, each with its own copy button, plus “Copy all”. On Windows it saves the photo as a file to upload. A recipe that came from another site says so, since Cookpad asks you to name the source.

Kitchen Link: your phone and your PC

Kitchen Link brings recipes from your PC to your phone over your home Wi-Fi, with your notes, cooks and photos, and nothing in between: no website and no account.

1. On the PC, open Settings › Kitchen Link, switch “Kitchen Link on this PC” on and press “Link a phone”. A code appears, as a QR code and as text; it works once, for ten minutes.
2. On the phone, open Settings › Kitchen Link and press “Scan the PC's code”. Google's scanner opens; point it at the code. (A phone without Google Play services can use “Paste the code instead” with the text sent from the PC.)
3. On the phone, “Import recipes” › “From my PC” lists the PC's recipes. Search, tick the ones you want and press “Bring recipes”; they go through the same review as a McLearen Kitchen file, so a recipe you bring again updates the copy it came from.
4. Either way, Share… › “Send to my other device” sends the recipes you picked, with their notes, cooks and photos. From the phone they go straight to the PC's import queue. From the PC they go to your sealed mailbox (below), and the phone collects them the next time McLearen Kitchen opens on it (or press “Collect what the PC sent” in Settings › Kitchen Link); they arrive in its import queue.
5. On the phone, “Keep recipes in step” in Settings › Kitchen Link (on once linked) keeps both libraries the same at home, with the shopping list and the pantry: edits, new recipes and items, cooks and photos go both ways. The first sync starts when you press “Sync now”; after that it runs each time McLearen Kitchen opens on the phone at home, and “Sync now” runs one right away. A recipe edited on both keeps both edits as versions, the newer one current on both; one deleted on one device goes on the other unless it was changed there since. On the shopping list a line bought on either device is bought, and an open line added on both for the same thing becomes one, the amounts added (the very same line on both stays one line); the same item in both pantries keeps the newer amount and the earlier date. A list emptied on one device by mistake gets its items back from the other, while one cleared on purpose clears both. The meal plan, Up next and your meal groups go along too: a recipe planned, queued or put in a group on either device is there on both, one taken off on one device comes off the other unless it was changed there since, and a group made on both with the same name becomes one. They follow the recipes, so a recipe planned on one device shows on the other once the recipe itself has gone over; the plan goes back 59 days. A sync that would delete many recipes asks first.
6. While something is cooking on either device, the other one watches it at home: with McLearen Kitchen open on the phone, Cooking Now and the cook bar show the PC's cooks with their steps, its timers counting down and its probe readings, under the PC's name, and the PC shows the phone's the same way. The cook bar leads with whichever timer ends first, on either device. When a timer on the other device ends, or a probe there linked to a cook's timer reaches the cut's pull temperature, this one beeps and the cook bar turns red; tap it to see Cooking Now. It is only to watch: pause, change or finish a cook on the device it runs on. The phone asks the PC every 15 seconds while something is cooking (every minute otherwise), and only on the home Wi-Fi.

Away from home, Kitchen Link uses your sealed mailbox on the McLearen Kitchen website: a phone that cannot reach the PC sends through it, and the PC sends everything for the phone through it (keeping it itself if the website cannot be reached), so recipes arrive wherever the other device has internet, when McLearen Kitchen opens there. Each sending is sealed on the device with a key only your two linked devices hold, so the website cannot read it; it is deleted when collected, or after 14 days.

The PC has to be on, with the app open and Kitchen Link on, and both devices on the same Wi-Fi. The first time Kitchen Link is on, Windows asks whether McLearen Kitchen may use the network: allow it on private networks. Guest Wi-Fi, and networks Windows treats as public, keep devices apart. Settings › Kitchen Link on each device lists what to check, and “Test the connection” on the phone says whether the PC answers. Everything between the two is encrypted; only phones you linked can connect, and the PC lists them with a button to remove each one.

Importing recipes

From a website

On the Recipes tab, open “Import recipes” (the import button; on a phone, in the + menu) and choose “Import from website”; paste the recipe's address and press “Read recipe”. Most large recipe sites publish their recipes in a standard form the app reads directly: name, ingredients, steps, times, servings and photo.

Look over the import review, then press “Review in recipe editor”, make any changes and save. Nothing is stored until you save.

A page that lists many recipes instead of holding one — a roundup of copycat recipes, a site's collection or ideas page — is recognised when you press “Read recipe”. The app shows how many recipes the page links to and offers to read them all; they are then imported together like a batch file, tagged with the page's title and their site, and can be put in a meal group of that name. Links that are gone, refused or not recipes are listed instead of stopping the import, and a recipe already in your library from the same page is skipped.

When a site will not import

Some sites block automated readers, and the app says so. Press “Open in browser”, select the recipe on the page (Ctrl+A, then Ctrl+C), come back and press “Paste from clipboard & parse”.

When recipe pages open inside the app (Settings › Links), “Open in browser” shows the page there instead: press “Import this recipe” and the app reads the page as you see it.

Browsing the web

“Browse the web” on the Import screen is a small browser inside the app for finding a recipe anywhere. Type a site's address in the box at the top, or what you are looking for — words that are not an address are searched on DuckDuckGo — and follow links as in any browser; the arrows go back and forward, and the house returns to the start page (so does Back, from a page). When the recipe is on screen, press “Import this recipe”: the app reads the page as you see it, and the import review comes next as always.

The start page lists your sites (Settings › My sites) and the sites you visited here lately; “Clear” empties that list. A site is listed once its page has stayed on screen a few seconds; the list keeps the sites only, never the pages, and stays on this device. An address that is not a web page (javascript:, file:, mailto: and the like) is refused.

From a photo or recipe card

In “Import recipes” on the Recipes tab, choose “Import from recipe photo”.

1. On Android, take a photo — the document scanner finds the card's edges and trims it — or choose one from the gallery. On Windows, press “Select recipe image” and choose a file.
2. Trim the photo to the recipe and straighten it.
3. The text is read on this device; nothing is sent anywhere. Correct any misread words in the text box.
4. Press “Parse recipe”, check the review, then “Review in recipe editor” and save.

A sharp, flat, evenly lit photo reads best.

With an AI assistant

For handwriting, decorative fonts or a stubborn website, an AI assistant you use (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude…) can do the reading. Press “Copy AI transcription prompt”, give the assistant the prompt with the photo or page, and paste its reply into the app's text box. The app sends nothing itself.

Checking an import

The review counts what was found — ingredients, steps, timers and temperatures — and marks lines that need a look.

• Red, “Fix required”: something likely to affect the quantities, such as an amount that could not be read. Fix it before saving; “Save anyway” is there if you are sure.
• Amber, “Check suggested”: worth a glance but never in the way — a cook's measure like "a handful", a spice with no amount, a garnish that may be served alongside (“Serve alongside”), a package word left in the name.

“Show only items needing attention” and “Next check” step through them.

The spell check

Every import is checked against an English word list, the cooking-term library, the glossary and your own words. A confident fix is made for you and can be undone; otherwise you get suggestions. If a word is right, add it to your own terms and it will not be flagged again.

Measurements on import

Imports are converted to your Settings › Measurements choice as they come in, before the spell check, so a metric recipe arrives in cups and ounces if that is what you use.

Ready-made collections

“Import recipes” › “Ready-made collections” on the Recipes tab imports three collections, each tagged with its source: 620 top-rated recipes from ten major sites, 306 Scottish and Irish recipes, and 267 barbecue and smoking recipes. A recipe whose name is already in your library is skipped, so running one again is safe. “Import from a file” on the same screen imports a recipe batch file of your own — the shape those collections use — from Documents › McLearen Kitchen › batches or from any file you pick, and a library file exported from the app as well. The file is described before anything is written: how many recipes, from which sites, and the tag they will carry. Recipes that name the collections they were saved in can also be filed in a meal group per collection. Two recipes of the same name from different sites in one file are both kept, the second with its site in brackets. When any batch import finishes — a file, a ready-made collection or your Allrecipes saves — the app asks whether to download the new recipes’ photos now or later (later: App diagnostics › Download missing photos).

From another recipe app

“Import recipes” › “From another recipe app” brings in the recipes you keep in another app. Export them there first — from Paprika a .paprikarecipes file, from Mela a .melarecipes file, from Crouton a .crumb file (or a zip of them), from Plan to Eat your recipe book as a .csv file, from Recipe Keeper or Copy Me That the .zip file their export makes (a page of recipes with their pictures) — then pick the file here. MealMaster (.mmf) and Cooklang (.cook) files work too, and so does recipe data from websites: .json files from RecipeSage, Tandoor or Mealie, or a saved web page. Each recipe comes in with its notes, rating and photo, tagged with the app's name, and the categories it was filed under can become meal groups. A recipe already in your library (the same name or the same web page) is skipped, so it is safe to run again. “Import from a file” reads the same files, including ones left in Documents › McLearen Kitchen › batches.

From your Allrecipes saves

Settings › Accounts › Allrecipes and MyRecipes links the account behind Allrecipes, Simply Recipes, Serious Eats, EatingWell and the other Dotdash Meredith sites. Sign in on the page shown there (the Google button works), and the app links the account on its own. “Import my saves” then reads every recipe you have saved — ingredients, steps, photo and rating — and files each under its collections: a tag with the collection’s name, and a meal group of the same name when you leave that switch on. Every imported save is tagged “My saves”. The import posts nothing to the account, and running it again adds only what is new.

“Save to MyRecipes”, in a recipe's menu once the account is linked (under “Share and export…”), adds the recipe to your saves on the account; a meal group's page has the same for all its recipes. Each recipe's web page goes to the MyRecipes recipe clipper, one at a time, from the account's own page. A recipe already in your saves counts as saved, a page the clipper refuses is listed with the site's reason, and recipes with no web page (your own, from a card or a file) or only a video post are named and left out before anything is sent. The app carries MyRecipes' own list of the sites it takes, so “Save to MyRecipes” leaves out recipes from sites it refuses before anything is sent. “Check which sites it takes”, on the account's page, shows that list and asks MyRecipes about sites not on it, one at a time — your library's sites first — using a page with no recipe on it, so nothing is saved; the answers are kept between runs and, on Windows, saved to Documents › McLearen Kitchen › research.

Sharing a recipe to the app

On an Android phone or tablet, McLearen Kitchen is in the share list of every app: in TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Facebook or a browser, press Share on a recipe and pick McLearen Kitchen. A small message says it was added to the import queue, and you stay where you were. The next time the app opens or comes to the front it reads the queue in the background: a web page through the website importer, text through the pasted-text reader.

The queue is “Import queue” in “Import recipes” on the Recipes tab, with a count of what waits; the import button shows the same count. Each card shows what the reader found. “Review” opens the recipe in the editor; “Import” saves it straight to your library; “Import all ready” saves every read recipe at once and then asks about their photos. A link that is a page of recipes rather than one — a roundup — has “Read the page”, which opens it in the website importer. “Open” shows the post or page in its own app or your browser, and “Remove” drops the card.

A TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest or Facebook post is read on its own: the app fetches the post's caption or description (and, for a pin, the page it points at), finds the ingredients and the steps in it however they are written — emoji bullets, a "What you need" heading, numbered steps with no heading — and makes the recipe, with the post's picture as its photo and the site and the creator as tags. No account is needed and nothing is sent anywhere but to that site. A caption that holds no recipe — "recipe in the comments", "link in bio" — leaves the card saying Needs the recipe's text, with what was read already in the paste box: open the post, copy the missing part if you can, and press “Paste the recipe”. On Windows there is no share sheet, so “Add a link or text” on the queue puts a link or a copied recipe in the same queue.

Files come the same way. Share a McLearen Kitchen file (.mkrecipe or .mkrecipes) or another recipe app's export to McLearen Kitchen from Files, Gmail or Quick Share — or open it with the app from a file manager — and it waits in the import queue as a card that says what it looks like. “Open the file” shows what it holds: a McLearen Kitchen file opens its review, another app's export its confirm. Several files can be shared at once; the parts of one library brought in together are recognized as one. On Windows, “Import from a file” also lists the recipe files in your Downloads folder and in Downloads › Quick Share, where Quick Share puts what a phone sends, newest first.

Cooking and Kitchen Mode

Starting a cook

Press “Start cooking” on a recipe's page. Kitchen Mode opens at the first step with the amounts you scaled to. A cook stays open until you finish it, so you can leave and come back. When you leave Kitchen Mode, the app asks whether to keep the cook in Cooking Now or remove it; removing drops it and its timers without counting it as cooked. “Home” (the house at the top left of Kitchen Mode) is the quick way out: no questions, the cook stays in Cooking Now at its step, and you are back on the main screen.

The Kitchen Mode screen

Each step fills the screen in large type: its title, its instructions with the amounts filled in, a "Recipe: …" chip if it uses another recipe, and the target temperature if it has one. On a wide window — a computer, or a tablet on its side — the step is set larger still, “In this step” beside it lists what the step uses, and while no timer runs the panel on the right lists all the recipe's ingredients, scaled, with a tick on what your pantry has.

• “Done / next” moves on; “Finish cooking” appears on the last step.
• A step with a timer has a “Start” button for it, and the cook's timers are listed below.
• “What is this?” explains the cooking terms in the step.
• With more than one cook going, the recipe's name at the top has a small ▾: tap it to switch to another cook, at its own step; listening carries over.
• “Read aloud” reads the step to you, and “Read ingredients” the ingredient list, with this device's own voices; press it again to stop. A Spanish recipe is read in a Spanish voice when the device has one.
• “Listen” (the microphone at the top of a recipe, and in Kitchen Mode the big microphone between “Previous” and “Done / next”, which turns red and says “Listening” while it listens) takes spoken commands while you are in that recipe and its Kitchen Mode: “start cooking”, “next”, “back”, “repeat”, “read the ingredients”, “start the timer”, “pause”, “resume” or “stop” — and in Kitchen Mode “go home”, “next recipe”, “previous recipe”, “which recipes” or “switch to (recipe name)”, where any distinctive word of the name will do. Start each command with “Kitchen assistant” — “Kitchen assistant, next” — or say “Kitchen assistant”, wait for the beep, and say the command within eight seconds. The edge of the screen glows orange at the same time; a phone set to silent or vibrate only glows, otherwise the beep plays at the media volume. To use other words, change them in Settings › Voice commands › Wake words (they then work in English and Spanish). While the app reads aloud it keeps listening, but only for the wake words with “stop” — “Kitchen assistant, stop” — so its own voice is not taken for a command; other commands wait until the reading is done. Anything else it hears is ignored, and the same command heard twice in a moment counts once. “Kitchen assistant, stop listening” turns it off. It also turns off when you leave the recipe; opening the same recipe again asks whether to listen again. It uses the device's own speech recognition, which may send what you say to the device maker's online service; on Android it starts listening again after every pause, and so the phone's speech beep is not heard each time, the app quiets the phone's system, notification and ringer sounds for a moment as it does (never the reading voice or the timer alarms; a notification in that moment is silent). Hold the pointer over the microphone (or press and hold it) for the list of what you can say there; a button with a small red “V” is one a spoken command also presses, and holding the pointer over it shows what to say. While it listens, the small bars beside the microphone in the listening bar move with the sound it picks up, and the bar shows what it is hearing, what it heard, or that it did not catch it. On Windows it listens on the computer itself, for the commands only. If the app ever stops with a Windows error, what happened is written to native.log in the app's logs folder (Documents › McLearen Kitchen › logs); an error while the app is closing no longer shows an error box.
• The light-bulb switch keeps the screen awake; the bulb is lit while it does.
• The top bar opens the cook log, the notepad and the conversions calculator.

Notes and the cook log

Kitchen Mode has a note box for this batch; what you write is saved with the cook when you finish. The cook log records how it went — stars and what to do next time, and for a smoker recipe the wood, the fuel, the weather and how the pit ran.

Finishing

“Finish cooking” saves the cook in the recipe's Cooking History and takes the recipe's ingredients out of the pantry. A regular-use item that runs out goes on the shopping list; anything else used up is marked “Used up” on the Pantry tab, and its menu has “Add to shopping list”. Choose “Cook log” to note how it went before Kitchen Mode closes.

Cooking Now

Recipes tab › Cooking Now lists every cook in progress with its timers. “Resume cooking” returns to the step you were on; “Finish” ends one cook, “Finish all” every one. A cook started on another day says when, and once one is more than a day old “Finish the old ones” ends those and leaves today's. “Clear” drops a cook you did not make: nothing is taken from the pantry and anything held for its recipe is free again. The menu beside “Finish all” has “Clear all” and “Select cooks”, which lets you tick several and clear them together. The microphone beside “Finish all” listens here too: say “Kitchen assistant, resume cooking” and the recipe's name — any distinctive word of it will do — to go back into its Kitchen Mode (listening goes along, and comes back here when you return), “finish” or “clear” and the name to end or drop that cook, “finish all” or “clear all” for every one. You can pause between the command and the name — the app waits a few seconds for it, and the listening bar asks “Which recipe? Say its name.” Finish and clear ask first, as the buttons do; say “yes” or “no”, or tap. Settings › Voice commands › “Confirm spoken finish and clear” turns that question off, so a spoken command acts at once. With one cook going, “finish” or “clear” alone means it; when a name fits several cooks, the list opens for you to tap the one you mean.

While a cook, a timer or a probe is going, the cook bar runs along the foot of every screen: the next timer counting down, what is cooking and the step it is on, and each probe's temperature (on a phone the first one, with a +2 for two more). Tap it to go back to the cook in Kitchen Mode — or to Cooking Now when several are going, to Timers when no recipe is cooking, and to the probes when only a probe is on. It steps aside in Kitchen Mode, which shows all of this itself, and while you type; a cook left open for more than a day does not keep it up unless one of its timers is still going.

Nothing leaves the pantry while a cook is open. “Add only the missing ingredients” holds what you have for the recipe, shown as “Held for …” on the Pantry tab; finishing the cook takes the ingredients out and lets the hold go; clearing it only lets the hold go.

Everything you have cooked

Cook › History is the whole kitchen's cooking history, newest first, with today's and yesterday's cooks under their own headings. Each line names the recipe, the time it began, how long it took, whether it finished — and, if it did not, the step it stopped at — along with its notes and what the cook log says. Tap one to open its recipe.

The search runs over the recipe names, your notes and the cook log, so a cook can be found again by something you wrote at the time rather than by the day it happened; the chips above it narrow the list to the finished or the unfinished. A recipe's own page keeps showing only its cooks, and that is still where a cook log is written.

Smoker cooks

On a smoker recipe's page, “Plan the smoke: ready by…” works back from when you want to eat — when to light the smoker, put the meat on, expect the stall, pull it and rest it — and sets reminder timers.

In Kitchen Mode, a timer linked to a probe gets the cook watch: how fast the meat is climbing, when it should be done, “I wrapped it” when it stalls, and “Pulled” with a rest timer at the end. The meat is done when it is probe tender, whatever the clock says.

The Smoker’s Only Club

The Smoker’s Only Club is the app's room for smoked meats, the grill, cigars and classic cocktails. Open it with the fire button beside the panes on the Cook tab, from the ⋮ menu on the Recipes tab, or on a wide window from the button above the crest at the foot of the side rail. “Back to the kitchen” (the arrow at the top left) returns you to where you were. Its own bar has five rooms:

• Club: what to do next (resume a cook on the fire, plan a smoke, or bring in the bundled BBQ recipes), what is on the fire now (your running timers and the readings of your paired probes) and the four pursuits.
• Smoke: your barbecue recipes by the library's barbecue sub-sections, and the rubs; the clock beside a recipe opens its smoke plan. “Cuts and temperatures” lists the smoke planner's cuts with their pit and pull temperatures, the wrap and the rest. “Pits and grills” tells how each kind of smoker and grill holds its heat (pellet, gravity-fed charcoal, electric, kamado, water smoker, drum, offset, kettle, gas and coal pit) and what the smoke planner should expect of it, with tips and well-known models; “Wireless thermometers” marks the ones McLearen Kitchen reads itself: the Govee H5198, and Inkbird’s Bluetooth thermometers, which should pair but have not yet been tried. “Woods” rates each smoking wood mild, medium or strong, with what it suits and what to watch, the forms wood comes in (logs to sawdust) and the pits that burn each, and what never goes on the fire. “My smoker” describes your own pit, or starts from a model: once it is saved, a new smoke plan starts at the temperature it runs at and every plan is timed at its pace, the pit alarms take its band (where it runs, give or take its swing), and each probed cook you pull on the cook watch teaches it how fast it really cooks; “Start learning over” forgets that. “Techniques” explains low and slow, hot and fast, the reverse sear, cold smoking, the two-zone fire, the snake and the Minion method, the Texas crutch, spritzing, injecting and dry brining; “Temperatures and times” gives every planner cut its USDA safe minimum beside the temperature it is done at, the wrap, the rest and about how long it takes, timed for your smoker once it is saved. In the smoke plan, “Technique” sets the pit for the cut: low and slow or hot and fast. “Cook journal” lists every barbecue cook with its log — the smoker, the woods, the fuel, the techniques, the weather, how the pit ran, the stars and what to change next time — and adds up the cooks, the hours on the fire, the wood and the technique used most and the average rating; the cook log also asks which smoker it was cooked on and which techniques you used. “Sauces and rubs” has McLearen Kitchen’s own regional barbecue sauces (Kansas City, Eastern Carolina vinegar, Lexington dip, South Carolina mustard, Alabama white, Texas mop, Memphis and Texas) and rubs; “Save to my recipes” brings one in as a base recipe, so a line that calls for a homemade one links to it. At its foot, “Top rated elsewhere” lists the best-rated sauces it found on other recipe sites — the name, the site and the rating, never the recipe itself — each imported from its own page; the website’s Sauces page prints ours in full beside the same index. “Club collection” does the same for smoking, grilling and drink recipes, and the website’s Smoker’s Only Club page carries the Club’s reference — pits, thermometers, woods, techniques, pairings — with that collection.
• Grill: your grilling recipes, how to build a two-zone fire, the hand test, doneness temperatures with the USDA's safe minimums, and quick flip and rest timers that run with your other timers (Cook › Timers).
• Cigars: your humidor notes (name, maker, size, wrapper, strength, stars, what you paired it with and your tasting notes) and pairings by wrapper. They are kept on this device with the rest of your kitchen's data.
• Pour: the cocktails in your library and ten club classics. “Save to my recipes” puts a classic in your library under Drinks › Cocktails & alcoholic, tagged Smoker’s Only Club, where it scales and goes on the shopping list like any recipe; after that, “Open my copy” opens it. “For the table” adds four more — a Michelada, a Ranch Water, a Whiskey Smash and an Arnold Palmer without alcohol, which is saved under Drinks › Non-alcoholic. “Pairings” (in Pour, and in Smoke) suggests a beer, a whiskey, a wine, the Club’s cocktails, a drink without alcohol and the cigar to light after for each kind of smoked and grilled food, with your own cigars of the right wrapper from your humidor notes.

The sun-and-moon button at the top right picks the Club's look: “Same as the app” follows Settings › Dark theme, or choose “Day” or “Night”; the choice is kept.

Timers and probes

Timers from a recipe

A step with a timer has a “Start” button in Kitchen Mode. Every running timer shows in Kitchen Mode, on the Cook tab and under Cooking Now — they are the same timer, so changing it in one place changes it everywhere.

Your own timers

Press “Add timer” on the Cook tab (Timers) for anything that is not part of a recipe — eggs on, laundry, a nap.

When a timer ends

A finished timer sounds its alarm and flashes; the Cook tab shows a badge until you deal with it. “Stop alarm” silences it, “Reset” starts it again, and “Remove timer” takes it away.

Changing a timer

Use a timer's edit button, or long-press or right-click it, to change its name, total time or time left. Time left follows the new total unless you type it yourself.

If the app was closed while timers were running, it asks what to do with them when it opens again.

Bluetooth thermometers

Two kinds of thermometer work. Find them with the scan button on the Cook tab's Probes (or “Connect Bluetooth” in Kitchen Mode) and press “Pair”. The note on how scanning works shows until a probe is paired; after that the (i) at the top brings it back.

• Govee H5198 — four probes, read from the temperatures it broadcasts over Bluetooth. Nothing to connect to and no Govee account; keep it within Bluetooth range. It shows Listening… until the next broadcast, and again if it goes out of range for two minutes.
• Inkbird iBBQ probes — the app connects to them and logs in the way the Inkbird app does.

Over Wi-Fi these thermometers talk only to the maker's internet service, so the app reads them over Bluetooth.

• “Link to timer” puts a probe's temperature beside a timer.
• “Edit target” sets the temperature to watch for; you are alerted when it is reached.
• “View temp” opens a full-screen temperature watch with its chart.

Each probe's reading is shown large and heavy in a coloured box, with a word for where it stands: “On its way”, “Almost there”, “On target” or “Over”. On the Probes screen that is against the target of the timer the probe is linked to (a probe that is not linked, and probes 2 to 4 of a four-probe thermometer, keep a plain box — the timer link belongs to probe 1); in Kitchen Mode's cook watch it is against the pull temperature.

Probes and timers start separate; Settings › Reconnect probes to timers automatically remembers your links. The Govee H5198 has been read from a real thermometer; Inkbird support has not yet been tried with one. On a wide window a four-probe thermometer shows its charts two to a row. While a probe is reading, a small tab on the right edge of every screen opens your probes from wherever you are.

Shopping list and pantry

The pantry

The Pantry tab lists what you have, with quantities. Add item records a name, amount, unit, category and notes. Tick Regular use item for staples you always keep, such as flour or olive oil.

Restock puts every regular-use item that has run out on the shopping list. An item a recipe is counting on shows "Held for" that recipe. Two rows of the same thing in the same kind of measure become one, and anything else that has run out (not a regular-use item) gathers at the end under “Used up”.

Putting a recipe on the list

On the recipe's page, “Add all ingredients to shopping list” adds everything except regular-use items you have in stock and things assumed on hand, such as salt and black pepper.

When the pantry already covers some ingredients, “Add only the missing ingredients” adds the rest and holds what you have for this recipe. If you change your mind, choose Free from (the recipe) in the item's menu on the Pantry tab.

The shopping list

It is the Shop tab (the Shopping list button on the Pantry tab opens it too). Amounts for the same thing are added together; the line's notes keep the details, and a "+N" badge shows how many recipes asked for it.

• Tick a line once you have it; mark everything purchased from the top of the list, with “Undo”.
• Move purchased to pantry stocks the pantry; Clear purchased takes them off the list (the Purchased heading has it too).
• Add item puts anything else on the list.

What the list buys

The list names what you buy: measuring and preparation words (packed, chopped, softened) go, and a choice between kinds (light or dark, red or green) moves into the notes. Plain water (water, warm water, agua) never goes on the list or into the pantry from a recipe; only water you type in yourself does. Settings › My ingredient names & aisles tells the app which names mean the same thing, and where you like things filed.

Shopping in aisle order

Choose your Kroger-family store in Settings › Stores › Kroger. The store button at the top of the shopping list then sorts the list by that store's aisles. The app asks before looking anything up (“Look up”, or “Always look up new lines” from the menu at the end of the line), shows its progress, can pause, and keeps going if you leave the list. If a line is matched to the wrong product, choose “Wrong store match” from its menu.

What a recipe costs

With a Kroger store chosen, a recipe's page shows what its ingredients cost there, below the shopping buttons: about $14.20 at your store, a pack of each, and how much of that is for what the pantry does not have. The prices come from the store's own answers; the check-prices button asks the store about the ingredients with no price yet (or a price more than a week old). It is an estimate: a recipe that uses a teaspoon from a jar still counts the jar, and an ingredient the store does not carry is named instead. The meal plan shows the same for the rest of the week.

Shopping online

Each store gets a page on the shopping list. “Shop all at Kroger” sends every open item on My list to your Shop all store (the arrow beside it picks another), “Send to a store…” sends the items you tick to the store you choose, and a line's menu sends just that line. A store's page lists what you sent there: the arrow button on a line searches that store for it, “Open Kroger cart” opens the store's cart, and you tick each item once it is in your cart there. When the order is placed, press “Order done”: the items you leave ticked go into the pantry and off the list, and the rest stay on the page. “Add to pantry” in a line's menu does the same for one item bought anywhere. The app cannot see a store's orders, so “Order done” is yours to press. The store's site opens inside the app, in one page that every search, the cart and your store's page reuse — beside the list on a wide screen, its own screen on a phone — so a second search does not open a second page; “Open in your browser” on it hands what it shows to your own browser. On the Kroger page, “Add all to Kroger cart” puts the page's items straight into your Kroger cart, for pickup or delivery, as the products your store matches for them, and ticks them. The first time, it asks you to link your Kroger account: Kroger's own sign-in, where you allow McLearen Kitchen (“Link my Kroger account” on the Kroger card in Settings › Stores does the same, and “Unlink” undoes it on this device). On a computer, “Sign in with your browser instead” does the sign-in in your own browser, where you may already be signed in to Kroger. Your password goes only to Kroger; the app keeps a key to your cart in the device's secure storage. Lines Kroger has nothing for are named, to search by hand. You still pick the time slot and pay at Kroger: Kroger lets apps fill a cart, not place an order. Settings › Stores chooses which stores are offered and keeps your ZIP code and the store you use at each. Each store's pencil there holds its search address and, once you have joined that store's affiliate program, its tracking link: the link your affiliate network gives you, with {url} where the store's address goes. The app then sends every search, and your store's page, through it. Exported recipe pages always link to the stores' plain addresses.

Settings and your data

Settings at a glance

• Get started — a short checklist for a new install: your recipe sites, where your lists go, the accounts you save to, and a few shortcuts. It also sits as a card at the top of the Recipes tab until each item is done or skipped; the card can be hidden and shown again here.
• Dark theme and Measurements — how the app looks and which units it shows.
• Language — the device's language, English or Spanish for the app's own words; recipes stay as written.
• Links — how a web page opens, for each kind of link.
• After planning a meal group — whether putting a group on the meal plan asks to take its recipes out of the group, keeps them, or takes them out.
• My sites — the recipe sites you import from most: they appear as shortcuts on the website import screen (each opens inside the app, with “Import this recipe” waiting), go first in the MyRecipes site check, and show whether MyRecipes takes them.
• Voice commands — the wake words, and whether a spoken finish or clear asks first.
• Reconnect probes to timers automatically — remembers probe links.
• My ingredient names & aisles, and Assumed on hand — how the shopping list reads ingredients.
• Stores — where you shop: your Kroger store, your Instacart retailer, your store pages, and which stores the shopping list offers.
• My cooking terms — words the spell check accepts.
• Help & About — this guide, questions and answers, the glossary and the About page.
• Send feedback — a note to the development team: your mail app opens with the message, the app version and the last lines of the log filled in, and nothing goes until you press Send there.
• App diagnostics — checks, photo downloads, tidy-ups, the app log, and Remove all recipes.
• Allrecipes and MyRecipes — the linked account whose saves the app can import, and where “Save to MyRecipes” adds recipes.

The McLearen Kitchen mark at the foot of the page opens the McLearen Kitchen website.

How links open

Settings › Links decides how the app opens a web page, for each kind of link: recipe pages, social and video posts, store pages and the rest. Recipe pages open inside the app unless you pick another way, with “Import this recipe” at the bottom: the app reads the page as you see it and opens the recipe for review, just like a website import. On Windows a page can also open in a window of its own — Edge's app window (Chrome's when Chrome is your browser), signed in like your browser — or as a tab in your browser. On a phone or tablet a post or a store page opens in the site's own app when it is installed (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Kroger…); otherwise the page slides up as a sheet over the app — from the side on a tablet held sideways — and closing it brings you back. When the way you picked cannot open a link, your browser opens it. On Windows, hold Ctrl as you click a link in the app, or on a recipe page open inside it, to open it in your default browser instead.

Where your data lives

Everything is in one database file on this device. On Windows it is mclearen_kitchen.sqlite in your Documents folder; on Android it is in the app's private storage, which uninstalling removes. Help & About › About shows the exact place.

Backing up

On the Recipes tab, ⋮ › “Export library JSON” saves all your recipes, with or without their photos, to one file; “Import recipes” › “Import from a file” reads it back on this or another device. Keep the file somewhere safe. “For another app…” in the same dialog writes them for another recipe app instead: a Paprika file (.paprikarecipes, which AnyList, Plan to Eat, Flavorish, Pestle and Recipe Keeper also import), a Mela file (.melarecipes), or recipe data (.json) that RecipeSage, Tandoor, Mealie and Crouton read, notes and photos included. On Android it offers the recipe data. The export does not include the pantry, the shopping list, timers or settings.

Online backup of recipes and settings, kept on a McLearen Kitchen server, is planned for a later version.

App diagnostics

App diagnostics checks the database, downloads recipe photos that are missing, tidies recipes imported by older versions, and shows the app log. If something goes wrong, “Open log folder” or “Copy path” and send the latest log with a few words about what happened.

Removing all recipes

Settings › App diagnostics › Remove all recipes clears the whole library while keeping your settings, notepad and theme. It asks you to confirm and cannot be undone, so export the library first.