Tips for Submitting Your Recipe to Allrecipes

Take your go-to recipe from favorite to famous!

Chances are you're reading this because you enjoy cooking and sharing food with others. Posting one of your own recipes on Allrecipes is a great way to share your creations with a much larger crowd!

Whether you improvise your way around the kitchen, tend to tweak ingredients to get the tastiest result, or follow steps methodically, a recipe is the common starting point. At Allrecipes, we get thousands of recipe submissions every year. Here are some top tips to help your recipe stand out from the crowd and get published on the site for everyone to find, try, and review!

Tips for Submitting a Recipe to Allrecipes

Title

Choose a clear title that tells the cook what to expect and includes search-friendly words. "Andouille and Chicken Creole Pasta" tells us more about the dish than "Mardi Gras Pasta." Since other cooks often search by ingredient, "Andouille and Chicken Creole Pasta" is more likely to pop up.

Description

Include a short but detailed sentence describing the dish that will get the cook excited and tell them what to expect. Check out AppleChef's description for Pan-Seared Tilapia for example:

"This pan-seared tilapia dish is a delicious and easy way to prepare seafood! Great for a quick weeknight meal accompanied with fresh veggies. Try this healthy dish full of flavor and nutrition!"

FUNKYSEAMONKEY's description for Best Toffee Ever - Super Easy includes an extra tip about which nuts to use:

"Chocolate and almonds top off a rich buttery toffee. A simple recipe that you could easily remember and whip up any time. I always get compliments and requests for more. Use any type of nut that you like in place of the almonds."

To help your recipe editor, please stick to basic text and avoid italics, bold type, excess punctuation, and emojis.

Ingredients

Include measurements
For other cooks to get the same result you did, it's helpful for ingredients to be as exact and descriptive as possible. Instead of "cheese, parsley to taste, and garlic," write "1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese; ¼ cup chopped fresh parsley, or to taste; and 1 clove garlic, crushed."

List ingredients in order
To make a recipe easy to follow, list the ingredients in the order they are used in the recipe.

Include ingredient prep
If a recipe requires chopped onion, shredded Cheddar cheese, and diced avocado, write that out in the ingredient list (like heathg did in this Breakfast Pita Pizza) rather than telling the cook to chop, shred, and dice in the steps below.

Directions

Be descriptive
Write out each step and be as thorough and descriptive as possible, using every ingredient that is listed. Instead of "mix everything together" write "Mix flour, milk, eggs, and sugar together in a bowl until batter is smooth."

Include temperatures
For recipes that use the oven, include a preheating step and give an exact oven temperature, e.g., 350 degrees F. For stovetop recipes, state how hot the burners need to be, e.g., medium heat, medium-high heat.

Give pan size and type
For baking recipes especially, the wrong size or type of cake pan can seriously affect the outcome of a recipe. Be descriptive and include exact dimensions for any pans used, such as: 9-inch round cake pan, 8-inch square baking dish, 9-inch springform pan, etc.

Include doneness tips
Let the cook know how to tell if the dish is done by including tips and/or temperature guidelines. For example, when baking a cake instead of "Bake for 30 minutes," this is more helpful: "Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted in the center comes about clean, about 30 minutes."

Need a great example to follow? Cindy's detailed, step-by-step directions for her Italian Lemon Cream Cake have earned the recipe 5 stars with loads of glowing reviews!

Time

Always add a prep and cook time when submitting your recipe. If your recipe doesn't require cooking, put a zero in the cook time section.

Photo

Snap a pic of your final dish to show everyone what it should look like and how appetizing it is!

Recipe Checklist

Here's a handy checklist for all the things you should include in your recipe to set it up for success: