How to save recipes from Instagram Reels

Instagram is where a lot of the best home cooks post, and where the recipe is most likely to be hidden. It might be in the caption behind “more”, in a pinned comment, in a link in bio, or nowhere at all except the creator’s voice.

This guide shows how to turn a Reel into a written recipe on your iPhone in a few taps, whatever the creator did with the details.

Save a Instagram recipe in four taps

1. 1

   Open the Reel and tap the paper-plane icon

   It sits under the comment bubble on the right. Instagram opens its own sharing tray with your recent contacts on top.

2. 2

   Tap Share to…, then choose ReelMeal

   Scroll the bottom row of the tray and tap Share to… to reach the iPhone share sheet, then tap ReelMeal. If ReelMeal isn’t visible, tap More and add it. Copy link and paste into ReelMeal works as well, and it is the way to go for posts in a carousel.

3. 3

   Review the recipe ReelMeal wrote

   In about fifteen seconds you get a title, the ingredient list with quantities, and numbered steps. ReelMeal listens to the audio, reads any on-screen text and looks at the frames, so it works even when the caption only says “recipe in the comments”. Fix anything you like, then tap Save.

4. 4

   Cook it, or shop for it

   Open the recipe and tap Start Cooking for a hands-free, step-by-step mode, or add the ingredients to your shopping list with one tap. The original video stays linked, so you can always watch the creator make it.

Why Instagram’s Save button isn’t enough

Saved collections on Instagram store the Reel and its caption, and that is all. Half the recipes you save have the ingredients in a comment that Instagram won’t show you offline, and the other half have them nowhere except the audio.

Collections don’t search inside recipes either. You remember there was a lemon orzo you loved, but Instagram only knows the creator’s handle and a caption full of hashtags.

Private accounts, deleted posts and muted audio can all take a recipe away. Once it is in ReelMeal, the ingredients and steps are yours to keep, scale and cook from.

Reels, posts and carousels

Reels work best because ReelMeal can listen to the creator. Photo posts and carousels also import: ReelMeal reads the caption and any text on the images, so a screenshot-style recipe card in slide three still becomes a proper recipe.

When the caption says “full recipe on my blog”, share the blog link to ReelMeal instead. Website imports skip the life story and keep only the recipe.

Many creators post quantities in the first comment. If the import misses something, open the comment, copy the text, and paste it into the notes or ask the sous chef to fold it into the ingredient list.

Once a Reel is in ReelMeal it behaves like any other recipe. Scale it from four servings to two and every quantity updates. Add it to a cookbook called Weeknights, share that cookbook with your partner, and the shopping list you build on Sunday already has the garlic, the lemons and the orzo on it, grouped by aisle.

Questions