How to save TikTok recipes so you actually cook them
TikTok bookmarks were never built for cooking. Here are four ways to save TikTok recipes and still find them on the evening you actually want to cook one.
Food & Drink
Marmite
Marmite: extract ingredients from any recipe link in seconds
Marmite is the iPhone app that lets you extract ingredients from a recipe link on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube or any cooking blog, in about ten seconds.
Free iOS 18+ On the App Store
View on the App Store
Free for 50 recipes and 2 cookbooks. Pro is €3.99 a month or €29.99 a year to lift the limits.
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10 s
to get the full ingredient list
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0
video pauses, zero scraps of paper
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4 sources
TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, blogs
01 Where it started
Three hundred saved recipes, none of them cooked
I had been saving cooking videos for years. The gesture had become automatic: a dish shows up, I tap the bookmark, I scroll on.
Then comes the evening you actually want to cook. Three hundred bookmarks. You replay the video and write the ingredients on a scrap of paper, pausing every four seconds because the person talks fast and the amount of flour flashes on screen for half a second.
Blogs are their own sport: eight paragraphs about the author's childhood and three cookie banners before you reach the shopping list.
The copying part is exactly the kind of work a machine should be doing.
02 Import
Extract ingredients from a recipe in ten seconds
The whole idea fits in one sentence: you paste a link, the app hands you a card.
Three things happen underneath. Marmite pulls the content of the link, whether that is the text of an article or what is said and shown in a video. It then spots what looks like an ingredient list: a name, an amount, a unit. Finally it lays everything out cleanly, with the steps separated from each other.
03 Ingredients
The real fight was over units
Here is what you get. Every ingredient has its picture, its amount and its unit. No pausing, no scrap of paper.
The hardest part was never the parsing, it was the units. A recipe saying a pinch of salt and another saying 2 g mean the same thing, but a computer does not know that. I spent more time on this than on the rest of the app combined.
Go from 4 to 6 guests and 250 g of flour becomes 375. Everything recalculates at once.
04 Collection
Finding a dish again six months later
Once extracting is fast, you extract a lot. So the recipes had to be storable, and above all findable again.
Search covers titles and ingredients alike. You remember there was mackerel in it but not what the dish was called? That is enough to find it.
05 Cookbooks
Sorted by craving, not by category
Marmite borrows the idea of the cookbook. You create Weeknight dinners, Desserts, Things the kids will actually eat, and you drop recipes into them.
That is much closer to how people really look for a dish, which is by craving, than any classification by ingredient type.
06 Places
The restaurants spotted in videos
This one came from a habit I had not planned for. Plenty of the videos I saved held no recipe at all: they were restaurants, bakeries, coffee shops.
Marmite handles those too. When a place is mentioned, the app picks it up and drops it on a map that belongs to you. Walk through that neighbourhood a year later and it is still there.
What it does
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One link, one complete card
TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube or a blog post. If the page holds a readable recipe, Marmite can structure it.
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Amounts follow the guest count
One tap on the plus button and every quantity recalculates, including the ones written in spoons.
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Cookbooks, like in a real kitchen
Sort by craving rather than by category, and find a dish again in two seconds.
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Places on a map
Restaurants and bakeries mentioned in videos land on your own personal map.
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Everything stays on your iPhone
No account to create, no server holding your recipes. They live with you.
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Nothing but the recipe
No ad banners, no holiday anecdote before the shopping list. The recipe, and nothing else.
What comes next
A consolidated shopping list, adding up the ingredients of several recipes into one, is the next step. Weekly meal planning and widgets come after that.
If you use Marmite and a recipe comes out wrong, send me the link. That is how I fix the cases I had not anticipated, and there are always more of them.
Frequently asked questions
How do you extract ingredients from a recipe with Marmite?
Copy the link to the video or the article, paste it into the field on the home screen, then tap Extract. Marmite reads the page or the video and shows the ingredient list with quantities in about ten seconds.
Which sites and networks are supported?
TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and most cooking blogs. If a page holds a readable recipe, Marmite can usually structure it.
Does it work on a video with no written description?
Yes. When the caption is empty, Marmite relies on the content of the video itself to rebuild the ingredient list. That is the most common case on TikTok.
Do I need an account?
No. You can extract your first recipe without signing up, and your recipes are stored on your iPhone.
Is the app free?
Yes for normal use: 50 recipes and 2 cookbooks. The Pro version, at €3.99 a month or €29.99 a year, lifts those limits.
Which version of iOS do I need?
Marmite requires iOS 18 or later.
Download
Marmite is on the App Store.