There is a specific kind of defeat in standing at the hob with your phone propped against the kettle, scrubbing a 38 second video backwards for the fourth time because you missed how much stock went in. The video was never built to be cooked from. It was built to be watched.
So the job is to turn the video into a recipe: a list of ingredients with real quantities, and steps in the order you do them. Here are both ways to do that, starting with the one that costs nothing.
The manual way, which works today
No app required. This takes about three minutes per recipe and it is worth knowing even if you never install anything.
- Read the caption first. A good half of cooking creators paste the full ingredients list under the video. Tap "more" to expand it, because Instagram truncates aggressively and the quantities are usually below the fold.
- Then check the pinned comment. This is where the list goes when it was too long for the caption, or when the creator added it after people asked. On TikTok it is often the creator's own reply to the top comment.
- Watch once with captions on. If the quantities were only spoken, turn on auto-captions and watch it through without cooking. Write down the numbers as they appear. Auto-captions mangle "two hundred grams" into strange things, so sanity-check anything that looks wrong by an order of magnitude.
- Screenshot the on-screen text. Many creators flash the list up for two seconds at the start or the end. Pause on that frame and screenshot it.
- Write it somewhere you will look again. This is the step everybody skips, and it is the only one that matters. A note, a document, a piece of paper on the fridge. Include the link back to the original so you can credit the creator later.
The catch is obvious. Three minutes times every recipe you liked this month is an evening, and the moment you get lazy the recipe goes back to living in a saved folder you never open.
The faster way
Manjo does the same job from the link. You paste the URL of the Reel or the TikTok, Manjo reads what is publicly there, and you get back a structured recipe: ingredients with quantities, steps in order, timings pulled out where they were mentioned.
Then the useful part starts, because now it is a recipe rather than a video:
- Send the ingredients straight to a shared shopping list.
- Twist It rewrites it for five people when it was written for two, so you are not doing the arithmetic in your phone's calculator.
- Cook from it hands-free, with the steps read out and timers already set, so your screen never needs a floury thumb.
- Drop it into a cookbook that your partner or your flatmates can also add to, which is the whole reason people who cook together end up wanting this.
Video import is in beta and improving weekly. The free plan includes three video imports a month; Pro removes the cap. Everything else about capture, including links, screenshots, photos of cookbook pages and pasted text, is on the free plan too. The pricing section has the full split.
What works, and what honestly does not
Extraction is good and it is not magic. Being straight about the edges saves you a frustrating evening.
Usually fine:
- Public Reels, TikToks and YouTube cooking videos with a caption or spoken quantities.
- Recipe blogs and cooking sites, including the ones with 900 words about a holiday first.
- Screenshots and photos of a printed page or a handwritten card.
Still hard:
- Videos that never say a quantity out loud and show none on screen. Nothing can extract a number that was never there, so those come out as steps with the amounts left for you.
- Private accounts, expired stories and paywalled sites, which are not readable at all.
- Handwriting that even a relative struggles with.
Whatever comes back, every field is editable. Fix the one thing that came out wrong, and the recipe is yours from then on.
Is it allowed?
Worth saying plainly, because people ask. Saving a recipe so that you can cook it is completely normal. A list of ingredients and a bare set of instructions is not something anyone gets to own, in the EU or elsewhere. What does belong to the creator is the video, the photography and the writing around it, including the story and the jokes.
So: cook it, save it, send it to your sister. Keep the link to the original, which Manjo stores with the recipe, and credit the person who made it if you post the dish. Do not lift their words wholesale and publish them as yours. That is the entire rule.
Common questions
Can you save a recipe from an Instagram Reel?
You can save the Reel itself with the bookmark button, which keeps the video but leaves you scrubbing for quantities every time you cook. To keep the recipe as a recipe you either copy the caption out by hand into a note, or paste the link into an app that extracts the ingredients and steps for you.
How do I get the ingredients list out of a TikTok video?
Check the caption and the pinned comment first, because a lot of creators put the full list there. If they have not, the quantities usually only exist in the spoken audio or on-screen text, and you either transcribe it yourself or use a tool that reads the video.
Is it OK to save someone else's recipe?
Saving a recipe for your own cooking is normal and fine. A list of ingredients is not something anyone can own; the video, the photos and the writing around it belong to whoever made them. Keep the link to the original, credit the creator if you share the dish, and do not republish their words as your own.
Does Manjo work with private or paywalled accounts?
No. Manjo can only read what is publicly reachable, so private accounts, stories that have expired and paywalled sites will not import. For those, a screenshot or pasted text works instead.