Does anyone self-host any recipe/meal planner/shopping list software? I’ve been looking at Tandoor or Mealie but I am not too sure which one will best serve my needs. I would really like to be able to go through my saved recipes, easily plan out a weeks worth of meals and have that exported to a shopping list of some kind.
Most of the discussion I could find online appears to be somewhat dated (2-3 years) and I know that can be a long time for some projects. Does anyone host either if these two programs and if so, which one did you choose and why? I’m open to any other projects that may be better for my use case. It would only be used on my located network and maybe accessed via tailscale occasionally. I’m fairly new to self-hosting but this is one thing that my partner was excited about. Thanks in advance!
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+1 for Mealie
I tried Tandoor and Mealie. Currently I use Mealie because Tandoor crapped it’s pants on me and I lost everything I had there, Mealie is simpler and allows export/import to JSON or similar so I can keep a backup that can be converted into any other format I want to.
That being said I don’t use the list feature, and we use Bring at home, so KitchenOwl mentioned here also seems like a good idea for lists and I might check it out.
+1 for Mealie. Super easy to set up with Docker, and the UI is excellent. I don’t think I’ve had a single issue with it yet.
Mealie +1
I’ve tried Mealie, Tandoor, Paprika and KitchenOwl. Mealie was by far the best looking, easiest to navigate and most convenient. They revamped the shopping list recently and it has replaced my old Google Keep method.
That’s good to hear that they are continuing to improve the program. I think Mealie looks the best to me too.
For me it was KitchenOwl. It’s shopping list works and looks similar to Bring, which we had used before and made the transition for my wife easier.
I am currently using Mealie with docker, which being a containers noob seemed easier to setup compared to Tandoor. I have it behind tailscale as well.
Mealie works well for what I need to do, I don’t plan in advance yet, but I just import recipes and it works 9 out 10. I will need to try the shopping list features sooner or later.
There is no mobile app that I am aware of but the webpage works perfectly on mobile with a bookmark.
Also mealie supports SSO with OIDC so authelia/authentik can cover it and there is no need for separate accounts.
Also being a PWA on mobile instead of another electron app means that authentication in front of it doesn’t break anything.
There’s no mobile app, but the web app front end is a PWA, so you can select “install” from the page in a WebKit browser and get what is effectively a mobile app.
Yep this is what I meant, thanks for saying it in a proper way :)
in a WebKit browser
Yeah, but ewww.
I was about to suggest mealient as a mobile option, but apparently it was discontinued in November.
ManageMeals is still pretty new and being improved, especially the meal planner part, https://managemeals.com/.
I use mealie exactly as your use case describes. We meal plan each week using the recipes I have saved in it and then create a shopping list of those items added to the meal plan. It works great and with docker has been easy to maintain. I used to use Nextcloud Cookbook but I like the UI of mealie better.
I think Grocy also has that functionality: grocy.info
I like mealie for recipes. It has some shopping list planning but I haven’t used that.
Running it in docker is super easy.
Another for Mealie.
I mostly use it to import recipes, though some more complicated ones (or ones that I’m tweaking a bit) I’ll take pictures, which is handy for tracking the cha yes I’ve made.
I dont do any major meal planning with it though, most of our shopping are just kitchen staples and whatever looks good/is a good price that day.
I personally like Tandoor a lot. The parsing works pretty well and every ingredient can be adjusted. And there is a pretty good mobile app with https://kitshn.app/ which is also my main shopping list, as I can create custom categories and add articles to that with tandoor.
Hmm an app would be interesting. That might make it easier for my partner. Thanks for sharing the app!
I was happy with tandoor for a while. Didn’t try any others.
However one problem remains for me; my household is bilingual. Any real recipe manager like this (for me) needs to easily convert ingredients/recipes between two languages.
Anyone know of any solution for this (aside from manually running every recipe output through a translator)?
It looks like it’s an open request on Mealie. I don’t see one for Tandoor. Shame, because Mealie already has aliases for ingredients, it shouldn’t be too hard to extend that to respect the language setting.
I’ve tried them all and I found tandoori worked the best, especially if you want mobile apps. There are a couple options and untare works on both iPhone and Android. It’s what I use daily and my gd can add recipes she likes, and add items to the shopping list.
I tried both tandoor and mealie for recipe management and felt a little better about mealie, mostly because tandoor seemed to have more focus on shopping list and other things, and I didn’t want that at the time. Both are pretty easy to spin up on docker through a compose file.
Mealie is great for recipe management and the UI is nice. Tandoor was good also, but the UI felt less nice. (All personal preference).
Right now, I do grocery lists through listionic (I think) because i had it already and it handles oddball lists (gift ideas for s.o., gift ideas for kid, hardware store, etc). I do meal planning through a whiteboard with days of the week. I have four of them I rotate through.
I’ve been leaning towards mealie because I like the UI (ar least what I’ve seen from static images). Thanks for sharing your experience.
I am also looking for a note/list app too so I will definitely be checking that one out.
Sadly listionic is not self hosted. I haven’t yet found a self hosted shopping list app that can handle many lists without resorting to playing with aisles or similar. I don’t want a tag that says “wife, don’t look”
