Ever want to make a custom version of a BigOven recipe to suit your own tastes, techniques, diet or allergy preferences?   Starting today, BigOven PRO members can create custom recipes easily!

Potential uses

Cooks are always adapting ideas from others. 

Often, a recipe is a great starting point of inspiration but… you’d like to bring down the calorie count by reducing sugars.  Or increase the salt because you’re watching your sodium intake.  Or bake it a little longer, spice it up a little, remove an ingredient you’re allergic to, or create a vegan, vegetarian, or diet-friendly adaptation.  You can now do it in seconds, without having to retype in the whole recipe!

Or you might want to simply save time in data-entry.  If you want to type in a chocolate chip cookie recipe that’s altered just a bit from your favorite one, why not start with one of the classic chocolate chip cookies recipes and modify from there?

How to Customize a Recipe

When you customize a recipe, BigOven makes a copy of it for you, and then lets you edit it directly, just as though you posted it. 

To keep the duplicates down for recipe searchers, and to pay due respect to the original poster, the cloned recipe is made Private, which means it is visible only to you, and only when you’re logged in. 

Let’s say I want to spice-up this Pad Thai recipe that’s already on the site.

Step 1: Find the recipe on www.bigoven.com from a desktop web browser

Recipe customization is easy, but it cannot currently be done from our mobile apps.  It must be done on www.bigoven.com. Find the recipe, then simply click “Customize It”, in the right-hand bar.  You’ll see this list of options when you log into www.bigoven.com.

 

Step 2

BigOven brings up a simple dialog to explain the feature and confirm your choice.  Click “Customize!”

 

Step 3

Make your customizations!   You can add or remove ingredients, modify the instructions and more.  When you’re done, click the button that you’ll see at the bottom of the form. 

 

Step 4

That’s it!  Your customization is done! 

Notes/Tips

A customized recipe is a brand new copy and belongs to you. 

• Changes you make to this recipe will not alter the original recipe in any way.
• The recipe is private.  Only you can see it, and only when you are logged in.  (Yes, you can make this recipe public, but it requires a manual exception to do so.  We do not want general searches flooded with duplicate recipes.)
• You can create variations of your own recipes or anyone else’s that you see on the site.
• You can create variations of recipes you post or RecipeScan.
• You can use it during data entry to save time.  If you have 3 cake recipes, for instance, you might consider entering the master cake recipe first, then use the “Customize It” feature to create two variations.
• The recipe is created with the original title plus your username in parenthesis.  That is to help you “disambiguate” between the original recipe and your (private) version in search results.
• Remember, you can also search for recipes by entering a fragment of the title and your username in general keyword search – so, for instance, I’d quickly find this recipe by typing “pad thai stevemur”.  (You won’t see it, as it’s private only to me.)
• The customized recipe contains the original photos, because we thought you’d like to have them as a reference.  You can add your own images, and they’ll only go on this copy.   If you’d like to remove one or more existing photos, jot us a note with the recipe ID number and the photos you’d like removed, and we’ll be happy to help manually.  Right now, there are no user-tools for this, simply due to schedule.  It’s on our list for the future.
• The recipe shows up in your “Recipes I’ve Posted” list, and also by searching on your username in keyword search. 
• On mobile devices “Recipes I’ve Posted” may need to be refreshed to see the new recipe.  Note in particular that on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod, there’s a local cache and you’ll need to explicitly force a refresh to see the new recipe – simply swipe down on the “Recipes I’ve Posted” list to refresh it.

 

 

Your Top Feature Request!

Customizing recipes was our top feature request in a recent survey we sent to PRO members.

BigOven is a complete recipe organization system for you in your kitchen and on-the-go.  Take any recipe and customize it to suit your tastes and needs. 

Thank you for your feedback – you are helping us build a better and better recipe organization system for you!