Recipes 2.0, chapter by chapter.

Most recipes on the internet are a wall of text. The ingredient list sits at the top, the instructions sit below, and you spend the whole meal scrolling up and down trying to remember what goes in next.

Recipes 2.0 breaks a recipe into the same small pieces that a home cook already uses: little bowls of prepped ingredients, the pots and pans you cook them in, and the phases of cooking, like prep, then brown, then simmer.

The screen only shows you what you need right now. When it is time to brown the onions, you see the onions and the pan. When it is time to add the tomatoes, they light up. You do not have to remember what is coming next, the recipe does that for you.

You never have to build one from scratch, either. The AI builder can turn a recipe you paste in, or even a photo of a cookbook page, into a full Recipes 2.0 layout in about a minute.

Before we build anything, it helps to know the three words the app uses. They are just short names for things you already do in your kitchen.

A prep bowl is a small bowl that holds ingredients you have already measured out and chopped. Think of the little glass bowls a TV chef has lined up before they start cooking.

A vessel is any pot, pan, sheet tray, or mixing bowl that food goes into. The app keeps track of what is currently in each one, so if you pour the sauce into the Dutch oven, the app knows the Dutch oven now has sauce in it.

A stage is a phase of cooking. Most recipes have a few: get everything chopped and ready, then brown the meat, then simmer, then finish and plate. Each stage groups the steps that happen in the same window of time.

Open the app, tap the plus button, and choose New recipe. You will see two options: build it yourself, or let the AI do it.

If you have a recipe already, in any form, hand it to the AI. You can paste in text from a website, type it in from memory, or even take a photo of a page in a cookbook. The AI reads it, figures out the ingredients, the steps, the timers, and the stages, and hands you back a finished Recipes 2.0 recipe.

It is not always perfect on the first try. Read through it, tap on anything that looks off, and fix it. Most people spend a few minutes editing rather than an hour building.

Whether you or the AI built the recipe, the first section is always the full list of ingredients. Every quantity, every unit, every note.

Next to each ingredient is a little label saying which prep bowl it belongs to. Ingredients that go into the pan together belong in the same bowl. So the diced onion and the minced garlic that both go in during the same step belong in one bowl called, say, onion and garlic.

If the AI grouped something wrong, tap the ingredient and pick a different bowl. If you want to start over, tap the bowl name and rename it, or create a new one.

You do not have to bowl every ingredient. Salt and pepper for finishing usually stay loose. That is fine.

In the vessels section, you list every pot, pan, tray, and mixing bowl the recipe uses. Give each one a short, plain name, like big pot, small saucepan, or sheet tray.

This is what lets the cooking view show you which pan to reach for at every step. When it is time to sear, the big pot lights up on your screen. When it is time to bake, the sheet tray lights up.

The AI usually adds these for you when it builds the recipe. You just double check that the names match your actual kitchen. If you call it a Dutch oven at home, rename it Dutch oven so nothing is confusing later.

A stage is just a section of the recipe. Most recipes have four or five: get everything ready, cook the aromatics, add the main ingredients, simmer, finish and serve.

Inside a stage are steps. A step is one small action, like chop the onion, or brown the beef. Short steps are better than long ones. If a step has the word and in it twice, it should probably be two steps.

When you cook, the app only shows you one stage at a time. You tap through the steps as you finish them. The next stage opens when the last step is done.

Any step can have a timer. Simmer for twenty minutes, rest for ten, bake for forty-five. The AI adds timers when it sees them in the original recipe.

Tap a timer in the cooking view to start it. It runs on the real clock, so it keeps counting even if your phone screen turns off, or you get a phone call, or you open a different app.

When the timer runs out, a soft chime plays. If your phone was locked, it still chimes as soon as you unlock it, no matter how long ago the timer ended. You will not miss it.

When you are ready to cook, open the recipe and tap the big Cook button. Everything else on the screen goes away. You see one stage, a list of the steps in it, and the bowls and pans you need for that stage.

Tap a step to expand it. Any bowl or pan it mentions lights up. Follow the step, tap it as done, and the next one opens.

If you get interrupted, close the app. When you come back, it opens right where you left off. Nothing is lost.

Every recipe has a share link. Tap Share and copy the link, or send it in a text message, an email, whatever you prefer.

The person you send it to does not need an account. They open the link and see the Recipes 2.0 version, ready to cook from.

If you have both an old-style version and a Recipes 2.0 version of the same recipe, the shared link opens the 2.0 version by default. That is the one you want people to see.

Here is the honest advice: do not build a Recipes 2.0 recipe from scratch until you have cooked it at least once.

The first time you make something, you learn what really goes together, which pan you actually reach for, and where the recipe was unclear. That is exactly the information the AI builder needs to make a good 2.0 layout.

So the flow is: cook it from the original recipe, note anything you did differently, then paste that improved version into the AI builder. You will get back a 2.0 recipe that matches how you actually cook, not how the internet said to.

Come back and edit it after cook two. That is when it really starts to feel like your own.