Add Your Own Family Recipes to Degchi

The recipe that lives in one person's head

Ask a family about their best dish and you will often hear, "Ammi makes it, but she never measures." The recipe exists as a taste, a handful of this and a pinch of that, and a few steps that only one person really knows. If that person is not in the kitchen, the dish does not get made.

Writing it down feels like a big job, so it keeps getting put off. Degchi tries to shrink that job. You can start with just the name.

Two ways to add a recipe

There are two places to begin. On the Home screen, a dashed card reads Add your recipe, with the line "Save a dish your family loves". The same list lives on the Me tab under My recipes ("Dishes you added yourself").

Tap Add recipe and a New recipe form opens. Here is how to choose how much effort to put in.

Quick save. Type only the Dish name, for example "Ammi's aloo gosht", and tap Save recipe. The empty screen tells you that is fine: "Just the name is enough to start." You can come back and fill in the rest the next time you cook it.

Full recipe. If you have the time, there is more you can add, and all of it is optional:

• Ingredients: search the list and pick each one, with a quantity and unit. Pick them from the list and Degchi can suggest the dish when your pantry has them. If an ingredient is not in the list, you can add it as text, which shows up in your recipe but cannot be matched with your pantry.
• Steps: write what to do in each step. You can add a Timer (min) to any step, and the timer is used in cook mode.
• Servings and time: how many it serves and the total minutes.

Cook your own recipe like any other

Open one of your recipes and the screen has Start cooking, Edit and Delete. If you added steps, Start cooking takes you into the same step-by-step mode as the built-in recipes, with your timers ready. Cook Mode in Degchi: Step-by-Step Timers That Ring explains what that looks like. If you have not added steps yet, Degchi reminds you to "Add steps to cook this in cook mode."

A good habit: the first time you cook a family dish after saving only the name, add the steps as you go. By the second time, you have a proper recipe.

Private by default, shared if you choose

At the bottom of the form there is a switch, Share with Degchi to help other families, with the explanation: "Our team reviews shared recipes. Turn off to keep it private." Your recipe's status is shown on its card: Private, Shared, Reviewed, In Degchi library or Not accepted. A recipe that is not shared stays yours.

If you are using Degchi as a guest, the app notes "Saved on this phone. Sign in to keep it in your account." Signing in with Google is what keeps your recipes safe if you change phones.

Sweet ideas to start with

Many families begin with a dessert, because everyone remembers who makes the best one. If yours is a rice pudding or a sweet rice dish, have a look at how the library handles payesh, kheer and zarda. Seeing how a finished recipe is laid out makes it easier to write your own.

Where your own dishes sit in the app

Many recipe apps are mainly for reading other people's recipes. Degchi lets your own dishes sit alongside the library, in the same screens. Add your ingredients from the list and your dish can show up in the "what can we cook today" suggestions, which How Degchi Works Out What You Can Cook Today explains in more detail. Add timers and you can cook it hands-free. The result is a small, private cookbook of the dishes your home actually makes.

Save your first dish

Degchi is free while it is in beta. Pick the one dish you wish someone had written down and join the Degchi beta with your Gmail address to save it before it is forgotten.