Share a recipe, show your dish. The cookbook written by people like you.
How to use it — a 2-minute tutorial.
XecUchef is a social place for food — a cookbook written by people like you. Home cooks share their recipes, you browse the feed, and when you find one you like, you cook it. Every recipe can be rewritten into short, direct, clean instructions — the same style every time. You get the ingredients, the steps, and nothing else in the way.
Step 1 — Find a recipe. Take one from anywhere: a website, a cookbook, a photo of a handwritten card, or one a friend sent you. Copy the whole thing — the story at the top, the ingredients, the instructions, all of it.
Step 2 — Paste it in. On the XecUchef home page, paste the recipe into the big box. No account, no sign-up, nothing to install.
Step 3 — Pick the meal type. Choose Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Dessert, or leave it on Any meal. This sets the closing line of your rewritten recipe.
Step 4 — Hit "Rewrite it". XecUchef rebuilds it: a clean ingredient list, short direct steps in order, and a firm, warm closing line.
Step 5 — Copy it and cook. Hit "Copy rewritten recipe" and paste it wherever you keep your recipes.
After a rewrite, hit "Save to My Recipes". Your saved recipes live in the My Recipes tab, in your own browser on your device — view any of them again, or delete the ones you don't want.
Open the My Cabinet tab and add the ingredients you already have on hand — eggs, rice, garlic, whatever is in your kitchen. XecUchef shows you which meals you can make right now, and exactly what's missing for the rest. Tap "Add missing to shopping list" on any meal to send those items to your list.
After rewriting a recipe, hit "Check against my cabinet" to see whether you already have everything it needs.
The Shopping List tab holds everything you're missing. Tap an item to cross it off when you've bought it, and use "Clear crossed-off items" to tidy up. You can also add items by hand.
In the My Cabinet tab, tap the photo upload and take a picture of food you have (or pick one from your photos). XecUchef looks at the photo, tells you what it thinks it shows, and you tap to log each item into your cabinet — with your photo attached, so you can see at a glance what you have. If it guesses wrong, just type what it is instead. Your photos stay in your own browser on your device.
Whenever XecUchef finds ingredients you're missing — in a meal suggestion or after checking a recipe against your cabinet — it asks you how you want to get them: Add to shopping list or Order for delivery. Delivery items land in the "Order for delivery" list on the Shopping List tab, where you can copy the list into your delivery app or open Instacart, DoorDash, or Uber Eats. XecUchef doesn't place the order or take payment — you check out in the service you already use.
Open the Cook With Video tab and pick a dish. Every video there is free to use — hosted on Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons license, with credit shown. Hit "Cook along with video" and the app walks you through it: the video plays at the top, your ingredients are listed underneath (tap each one to check it off), and the steps come one at a time with Next step and Previous step buttons, so you can cook at your own pace.
The Community tab is the feed — the cookbook written by people like you. Browse recipes other home cooks have shared, and filter them by meal — breakfast, lunch, dinner, or dessert — and by the country they come from. Open any recipe to read it, or hit "Rewrite it" to run it through XecUchef's clean rewrite and save it to your own library.
To share one of yours, scroll to "Share a recipe, show your dish" and answer the quick questions: the recipe's name, whether it's breakfast, lunch, or dinner, what country it comes from, how many servings it makes, and the recipe itself. You can also attach an instructional video — a file from your phone or computer (up to 50 MB) or a link to one online — and you confirm it's your own recipe and video and you have the right to share it.
Every shared recipe is scanned by AI before it appears. If the scan flags anything, the recipe is held for the owner to review instead of going live. The owner can approve, hold, or delete any community recipe from the admin area (/admin on the app's address — the owner sets that password the first time they open it).
Stories sit at the top of the Community feed — short-lived posts, like on Facebook and Instagram. Each story is one photo of food someone made, with the recipe they used as the caption. Tap a cook's circle to watch their stories, one after another. Stories disappear after 24 hours. To post one, scroll to "Share a story — show your dish", add your photo and the recipe you used, and confirm it's your photo to share.
Before: "I remember standing on a chair in my grandmother's kitchen when I was little, watching her stir the pot for what felt like forever, and let me tell you, the smell alone was worth the wait…"
After: that story is gone. What you get is the recipe.
Before: "Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat, and once it's shimmering, add the onion and cook it until it's soft and translucent, which should take about 5 minutes, stirring every so often so it doesn't burn."
After: the sentence is kept, because it is a real step. XecUchef keeps the cooking and cuts the storytelling.
On the home page, paste a link into the "Import a recipe" box and hit Import. It works with recipe sites and with TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and YouTube links — XecUchef reads the recipe from the post or video description and rewrites it. You can also upload a photo of a cookbook page or a handwritten recipe card and XecUchef reads the text off it and rewrites it. Each import uses one of your AI rewrites for the month (free accounts get 10 a month; Premium is unlimited). If a site blocks the fetch, or a photo won't read, just paste the recipe text into the big box instead; that always works.
The Meal Plan tab is your week at a glance: Monday to Sunday, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Pick a saved recipe, a built-in meal, or a video dish for each slot. When the week is set, hit "Add this week's missing items to shopping list" and XecUchef checks everything against your cabinet and sends only what you don't already have to the list.
Your shopping list now sorts itself into aisles — Produce, Dairy & Eggs, Meat & Seafood, Bakery, Pantry & Dry Goods, Frozen, and Household & Other — so you walk the store in order instead of back and forth. Tap an item to cross it off.
After a rewrite, use the Serves buttons to change the serving size. The ingredient amounts adjust automatically — double it for a crowd, halve it for one. Copying or saving the recipe uses the adjusted amounts.
When you add something to My Cabinet, you can also add how much you have (an amount and a unit, like 500 g or 2 lb) and its expiration date. Both are optional — add them when you know them.
With amounts stored, XecUchef stops guessing: if a recipe needs 2 cups of flour and you only have 1 cup, it tells you you're short and by how much. Tap the pencil (✎) on any cabinet item to change its amount or date.
With expiration dates stored, the Use soon section warns you about anything expiring in the next few days (or already expired), and meals that use those foods get a "cook it soon" note — so nothing good goes bad in the back of the fridge.
After a rewrite, XecUchef shows about how many calories are in one serving — and saved recipes keep that number in your library. These are rough estimates from standard values for common foods, not exact nutrition counts and not nutrition advice. Change the Serves buttons and the per-serving number updates with them.
Create a free account from the top of the home page and your recipes, cabinet, shopping list, and meal plan follow you to any device — they sync to XecUchef's cloud whenever you change them. Without an account, everything stays in the browser on that one device.
Free accounts get 10 AI rewrites and 10 photo identifications a month, and keep 20 saved recipes. Guests without an account get 3 AI calls a month. When you run out, the app still gives you the basic rewrite — just without the AI.
XecUchef Premium ($4.99 a month or $39 a year) removes all of those limits: unlimited AI rewrites, unlimited photo IDs, unlimited saved recipes. Open the Premium tab to upgrade — payment is handled securely by Stripe. If you paid and your account still shows Free, sign out and back in.