My Kitchen reads the recipe and builds the card for you. The clearer the source, the better the card — here's exactly what works best.

• Real text PDFs (exported from a document or web page) read most accurately — not scans of paper.
• A clear title at the top, then an Ingredients heading, then a Method or Steps heading.
• One ingredient per line, quantity first — e.g. 2 cups flour or ½ tsp salt.
• One recipe per file gives the cleanest result.

Some PDF tools number every line — like this:

Ingredients:
1 2 1/4 cups flour
2 1/2 tsp baking soda
3 1 cup butter

My Kitchen handles this automatically. But if your PDF does not number the lines, write quantities without a leading number — otherwise 1 tsp salt stays correct, but a bare tsp salt (with no quantity) will import with an empty quantity. The safest format:

Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup unsalted butter, melted
2 eggs
2 cups chocolate chips

Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 175°C.
2. Mix dry ingredients.
3. Combine with wet ingredients.
4. Bake 10–12 minutes.

• Accepted: JPG, PNG, HEIC, WebP. Use the Scan option for these.
• Good lighting, the page filling the frame, text in focus and right-side-up.
• Handwritten works if the writing is legible — print is more reliable.

The recipe always opens in the editor so you can check and fix anything before saving — nothing is locked in until you confirm. If something comes out rough, the Write Manually editor is always the reliable fallback.

Documents are the most reliable way to import — they read on your device, with no AI needed. The clearer the structure, the cleaner the card.

• Put the recipe name on the very first line — that becomes the title.
• Add an Ingredients heading, then a Method (or Steps / Directions) heading. Those two words are how the sections are found.
• One ingredient per line, quantity first — e.g. 2 tbsp white miso paste.
• Number the steps 1. 2. 3. — the numbering is tidied up automatically.
• One recipe per file. Cook time and servings aren't read from text, so just pop them in during the review step.

Miso Butter Salmon

Ingredients
2 salmon fillets
2 tbsp white miso paste
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp grated ginger

Method
1. Heat the oven to 200C.
2. Mix the miso, butter, honey, soy and ginger into a paste.
3. Spread over the salmon and roast 12–14 min until glazed.

• A tagged .json file maps field-for-field, so it's the closest thing to a flawless import.
• Ingredients use q (quantity) and n (name). Steps are a list of plain strings.
• Unlike text, JSON does carry cook time and servings straight in.
• Recipe exports that follow the common recipeIngredient / recipeInstructions shape are understood too.

{
  "name": "Miso Butter Salmon",
  "time": "25 minutes",
  "serves": 2,
  "ingredients": [
    { "q": "2", "n": "salmon fillets" },
    { "q": "2 tbsp", "n": "white miso paste" },
    { "q": "1 tbsp", "n": "butter" }
  ],
  "steps": [
    "Heat the oven to 200C.",
    "Mix the miso butter and spread over the salmon.",
    "Roast 12–14 minutes until glazed."
  ]
}

Every document opens in the editor with an Imported draft banner so you can check each section and fix anything before it's saved. Word files (.docx) read best when they're mostly plain text — heavy tables or images of text can come through rough, in which case Copy & Paste or the manual editor is the dependable fallback.