About CookSimple

CookSimple is a recipe site built around one idea: open a recipe, immediately see what you need, and cook it.

How it works

• Every recipe starts at the top of the page: title, times, ingredients, then the method. No introduction to scroll past.
• Serving scaler. Pick a number of servings and every amount updates, including quantities mentioned in the steps.
• US and metric. Switch units at any time. Your choice is remembered in this browser.
• Cook Mode shows one step at a time in large type, keeps your screen awake where the browser allows it, and has built-in timers.
• Checklists, shopping lists, saved recipes, notes and your meal plan are saved in your browser, never on a server.

Where the recipes come from

All 224 recipes are original, written for CookSimple. We do not copy recipes, photos or text from other websites or books. If we ever publish a recipe from another source, it will be one we have permission to use or one with an open licence, and the recipe page will credit it. The illustrations are original artwork made for this site.

Diet labels (vegetarian, vegan) are only applied when every ingredient in the recipe qualifies, and they are checked automatically. We don’t make health or nutrition claims.

How scaling works

Amounts are multiplied by the ratio between the servings you choose and the servings the recipe was written for. Results are rounded to measures you can actually use: teaspoons in eighths, tablespoons in halves, and cups in quarters and thirds. When a scaled amount falls between those, it is written as a combination such as “¼ cup + 2 tbsp”.

• Eggs and other things you can’t split are rounded to whole numbers, and the recipe shows what they were rounded from.
• A few amounts don’t change with batch size, such as the water for boiling pasta. They are marked “not scaled” and the recipe explains why.
• Cooking times and temperatures are not scaled. A much larger batch may need a bigger pan or more time; recipes say so where it matters.

How conversions work

Conversions use the exact definitions: 1 US cup = 236.59 mL, 1 tablespoon = 14.79 mL, 1 teaspoon = 4.93 mL, 1 ounce = 28.35 g and 1 pound = 453.59 g. Metric amounts are rounded to the nearest millilitre or gram.

• Volume and weight are different things. A cup is a volume; an ounce (oz) is a weight; a fluid ounce (fl oz) is a volume. We only turn a cup into grams for ingredients that are commonly weighed and have a stated weight per cup, such as flour (125 g per cup), sugar and butter. Everything else stays in millilitres, because a cup of chopped onion and a cup of honey weigh very different amounts.
• Teaspoons and tablespoons stay as spoons in metric mode, with millilitres alongside, because metric kitchens use measuring spoons too.
• Oven temperatures are converted and rounded to the nearest 5°C (425°F becomes 220°C). Doneness temperatures, such as 165°F for chicken, are rounded to the nearest degree (74°C).
• Lengths and pan sizes are converted to centimetres.

Free-from labels

Dairy-free, egg-free, gluten-free and nut-free labels are worked out automatically from the ingredient list. A recipe only gets a label when none of its ingredients, including optional ones, contain that ingredient or commonly do depending on the brand (for example, some broths contain wheat and some plant milks are made from nuts). These labels are a guide, not a guarantee: if you have an allergy or coeliac disease, always check the labels of packaged ingredients.

Nutrition estimates

Nutrition figures are estimates per serving, calculated from USDA FoodData Central values for each ingredient at the amounts listed. They leave out optional ingredients, to-taste seasoning and things you don’t eat all of (such as oil for greasing a pan or water for boiling pasta). Real values depend on brands, portion sizes and how much fat renders away, so treat them as a rough guide. If an ingredient has no reliable data, the recipe shows no estimate rather than a guess.

Offline use

Once you have opened a recipe, it keeps working without an internet connection on the same device. Saved recipes are stored for offline use automatically. The shopping list, meal plan, checklists and timers all work offline.

Photos

Some recipes show a photo of the dish alongside our illustration. The photos come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences and are credited on each page; they show the dish in general, not the exact recipe on the page.

Privacy

There are no accounts and no analytics. Your unit choice, ingredient checklists, timers, saved recipes, notes, meal plan and shopping list are stored with your browser’s local storage on your device. They are never sent to us or anyone else. Clearing your browser data removes them.

The one exception is advertising: recipe pages show a small banner ad from the Adsterra network below the recipe. The ad runs in its own small frame, separate from the recipe page’s code. Adsterra and its advertisers may use cookies and similar storage in your browser, and receive the usual information any web request carries (such as your IP address and browser type), to choose, limit and count ads. Your recipes, notes and lists are never sent to us; they stay in your browser. See Adsterra’s privacy policy.

Advertising

Ads keep CookSimple free. They stay small and out of the way: one slim, labelled banner below the recipe, never covering or interrupting ingredients or instructions, never in Cook Mode or the print view, no autoplay video, no pop-ups and nothing designed to be clicked by mistake.

Source code

CookSimple is a small static website. The code is on GitHub.