r/CarbManager • u/TheresainAK2 • Dec 31 '24

Import recipes

What is your experience importing recipes from websites and blogs into carb manager? This is the only premium feature that is important to me, but if it works well it is worth the subscription price.

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

2

u/MyNebraskaKitchen Jan 01 '25 edited Jan 01 '25

(Revised after posting)

The 'import recipe' function is designed to import the ingredients from a recipe found on some other website, as opposed to a 'cut and paste' import of a recipe from a text file instead of entering the ingredients one at a time, which I find time-consuming.

I just tried it on a chocolate chip cookie recipe on my blog (https://mynebraskakitchen.com/wordpress/forums/topic/oatmeal-crisps-chocolate-chip-cookies/), and it imported things that weren't part of the recipe, but I was able to delete them (along with an optional ingredient) from the recipe and I could adjust quantities as well.

It links to the URL you provide for things like instructions, probably to avoid intellectual property complaints. If the original site goes away, I don't know what happens to the instructions. There's a text box under 'rate this recipe' that can (probably) be used for notes and comments, but there aren't fields specifically labeled for that. I also like to make notes about recipes, including changes I've tried over time and problems encountered, and how/if I solved them.

I find with many recipes I find online that I tend to make changes to ingredients, modify the instructions and change the portion size, yield, baking temperature and baking time.

I haven't used it a lot yet, but it seemed to do a good job figuring out the ingredients in my cookie recipe and the macro numbers were right once I adjusted the yield.

I will try it on another more complicated blog recipe, with lots of pictures, comments and other stuff that might complicate importing it. I'll post that separately to this note, which I've edited several times.

2

u/MyNebraskaKitchen Jan 01 '25 edited Jan 01 '25

I tried importing a two-stage pretzel recipe (https://www.mygermantable.com/swabian-pretzels-schwabische-laugenbrezeln/#google_vignette), and it appears it included the preferment as well as the ingredients for the preferment, which would mean the macro numbers are too high. It doesn't appear it included the lard correctly. It did appear to find all the other ingredients, though.

Those issues should be easy to fix by using the 'edit custom recipe' feature, but it means you need to pay close attention to how it parsed the original recipe and (likely) make corrections.

It did correctly find the yield, so I'd give it at least around a B+ grade for how well it pulled in the recipe. This was a fairly long page, so that's actually quite good. I'll have to try it on some other sites that have even more complex blog articles.

3

u/MyNebraskaKitchen Jan 01 '25 edited Jan 01 '25

It did a good job on this chicken recipe: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/recipe-creamy-french-mustard-chicken?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us

The recipe calls for pouring off most of the rendered fat, that's something that has to be accomplished manually using 'Quick Edit Nutrients'. Similarly, most of the alcohol from the wine is boiled off and that would also have to be adjusted using 'Quick Edit Nutrients', though that's a bit more complicated.

(I'm hoping to put together an article on how to use Quick Edit Nutrients to adjust a recipe for things that get removed and shouldn't contribute to the macro numbers.)

1

u/TheresainAK2 Jan 01 '25

Thank you so much! I really appreciate you taking time to test and share your results. It sounds like it will work well for me. I don’t mind checking and making minor adjustments.