Getting Started with Sizzle
Sizzle is a privacy-first, local-first recipe manager that solves three real problems: scattered recipes, the daily "what's for dinner?" debate, and shopping lists you build by hand. All your recipe data lives on your device by default — no account required.
What Sizzle Does
- Imports recipes from any URL — paste a link from Bon Appetit, Reddit, a food blog, or TikTok and Sizzle strips the filler, life stories, and ads, leaving just the clean recipe with structured ingredients and numbered steps
- Ends dinner decision fatigue — the Dinner Spinner is an animated prize wheel that randomly picks from your saved recipes, optionally filtered by cuisine, cook time, or tags
- Builds smart shopping lists — select any combination of recipes and Sizzle combines all ingredients, deduplicates overlapping items (two recipes calling for onions become one combined quantity), and organizes them by store aisle
- Rewards your cooking habit — streaks, achievement badges, and celebration overlays track your culinary progress through the Fun Shell gamification system
First Launch
When you open Sizzle for the first time, an anonymous session is created silently — no sign-up screen, no friction. You'll see a two-screen welcome:
- "Your recipes, your rules" — introduces recipe import and Sizzle's privacy-first approach: no account tracking, no data exploitation
- "Can't decide? Spin it!" — previews the Dinner Spinner
The final onboarding screen offers an "Import Your First Recipe" prompt. Paste any recipe URL to get your first recipe into your collection immediately. If you'd rather explore first, tap Skip and you'll land on the Home tab.
Importing Your First Recipe
- Find a recipe on any cooking website and copy the URL
- On the Recipes tab, tap the + button or Add Recipe
- Paste the URL and tap Import
- Sizzle extracts the title, photo, structured ingredients (quantity, unit, name), and numbered steps — all filler is stripped
- Review the import preview and tap Save
The recipe is now in your local collection. The original source URL is preserved and tappable if you ever want to reference it. If a site doesn't embed structured recipe data, Sizzle falls back to its server-side parser automatically — you don't need to do anything differently.
Adding Recipes Manually
No URL? Tap Add Recipe and select Enter Manually. Add a title, ingredients row by row, numbered steps, a photo from your camera or gallery, and tags. This is the right path for family recipes, handwritten cards, and anything without a web presence.
Key Screens
| Screen | What It's For |
|---|---|
| Home | Cooking streak, recent recipes, upcoming achievements, and suggestions |
| Recipes | Your full collection — browse, search, filter by cuisine/cook time/tags, grid or list view |
| Spinner | The Dinner Spinner — apply filters and spin to pick tonight's dinner |
| Shopping | Combined shopping lists organized by store aisle, check off items as you shop |
| Profile | Account, settings, achievement gallery, gamification toggle |
Free vs. Plus vs. Pro
| Feature | Free | Plus ($2.99/mo) | Pro ($9.99/mo) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unlimited local recipes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| URL import | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Dinner Spinner | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Shopping lists | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Cooking streaks and achievements | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Ads | Yes | No | No |
| Cloud sync across devices | No | Yes | Yes |
| Meal calendar | No | Yes | Yes |
| Household sharing | No | Yes | Yes |
| Cooking timers | No | Yes | Yes |
| Data export | No | Yes | Yes |
| AI video import (TikTok/YouTube) | No | No | Yes |
| OCR recipe scanning | No | No | Yes |
| Pantry inventory | No | No | Yes |
Lifetime purchase options are available: Plus for $49.99, Pro for $149.99. The free tier fully solves the core problem — recipe chaos, dinner decisions, and shopping — with no time limit.
Next Steps
- Import 5+ recipes so the Dinner Spinner has enough options to be useful (minimum 3 required to spin)
- Try spinning the Spinner around 5 PM when the daily "what's for dinner?" question comes up
- Select a week's worth of recipes and generate your first combined shopping list from the Shopping tab
- Check the Home tab to see your cooking streak and progress toward your first achievement badge
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