docs.tandoor.dev

What is Tandoor Recipes?

Tandoor Recipes is a self-hosted recipe manager for people who have accumulated a large digital recipe collection and want it organized, searchable and shareable with family or friends. According to its documentation, it is built for "power users": you get a fast recipe editor, full-text search with fuzzy matching, batch tagging, and tools to merge or rename ingredients, tags and units. Meal planning, shopping lists, cookbooks and a basic permission system round out the core.

What you can actually do with it

• Store and edit recipes, including importing them from thousands of sites that publish structured recipe data.
• Plan multiple meals per day and generate shopping lists from the plan or directly from a recipe.
• Group recipes into cookbooks and share them with a household or small group.
• Sync files with Dropbox or Nextcloud, and import collections from other recipe managers.
• Use it on a phone, in multiple languages, with themes and printing views.

Who it suits, and the trade-off

It fits a technically comfortable household that wants to own its data rather than rent space in a commercial recipe app. The documentation is explicit that it is not intended as a public website, so it is a poor fit for a food blog or an open community recipe portal. Installation paths include Docker plus examples for Kubernetes, Unraid, Synology and similar setups, which tells you the expected audience: someone willing to run a server.

A practical next step

If you are deciding whether to commit, try the hosted demo first and import a small batch of your own recipes. That quickly reveals whether the search, tagging and meal-planning workflow matches how you actually cook. For background, see Tandoor Recipes documentation; the project also links a community chat from its docs if you want to ask existing users about their setups.

How do I install Tandoor Recipes using Docker?

Docker is the recommended way to run Tandoor Recipes; the project ships Docker-based setup examples and also documents Kubernetes, Unraid, and Synology paths for people who prefer those platforms.

The general shape of a Docker install is:

1. Install Docker and Docker Compose on the host (a small home server, NAS, or VPS).
2. Create a project directory and a .env file holding your database credentials, secret key, and host/port settings.
3. Add a docker-compose.yml that defines the Tandoor application container plus a PostgreSQL database container and a persistent volume for media/static files.
4. Run docker compose up -d, then check the logs for migration and startup errors.
5. Open the mapped port in a browser, create your admin account, and confirm you can add a recipe.

Practical notes: keep the database and uploaded images on named volumes or bind mounts so container recreation does not wipe your collection, and back up the database before upgrading images. Because Tandoor is built for private use with family and friends rather than as a public site, avoid exposing it directly to the internet without a reverse proxy and authentication in front of it.

For the exact compose file, environment variables, and platform-specific instructions, start with the official documentation at Tandoor Recipes and the project's installation guide.

Can I import recipes from other websites and recipe managers into Tandoor Recipes?

Yes. Tandoor Recipes is built with import in mind, both from the open web and from other recipe managers.

From websites: The documentation states Tandoor can import recipes from thousands of websites that support ld+json or microdata — the structured data formats most recipe blogs and food sites embed in their pages. In practice, you paste a recipe URL and Tandoor pulls out the title, ingredients, steps and often the image, so you avoid retyping.

From other recipe managers: The feature list includes importing an existing collection from many other recipe managers. This matters if you already have years of recipes in another app and don't want to start from zero.

What to check before you commit

• Confirm your current app's export format (CSV, JSON, HTML, or a proprietary file) and whether Tandoor lists it as supported.
• Test with a small batch first — say 20 recipes — and check that ingredient lines, units and tags survive the trip.
• Expect cleanup: imported ingredient text often needs merging or renaming, which is why Tandoor includes batch tools for merging and renaming ingredients, tags and units.

H3: Who this suits A household moving from paper cards, a spreadsheet, or a single-user recipe app will get the most value, since Tandoor is designed for a personal or family collection rather than a public recipe site. Its permission system is basic by design.

H3: Next step Open the demo linked from Tandoor Recipes and try importing one recipe from a site you use often. If the result looks clean, export a small slice of your existing collection and repeat.

How does the meal planning feature work in Tandoor Recipes?

Tandoor Recipes treats meal planning as the link between your recipe collection and your shopping list. You assign recipes to specific days and meals, and the plan can then generate a shopping list for the ingredients involved. The documentation lists "Plan multiple meals for each day" and "Shopping lists via the meal plan or straight from recipes" as core features, so the intended workflow is: browse or search recipes, place them on the calendar, then turn that plan into a list of what to buy.

What you can do with it

• Plan more than one meal per day, so lunch and dinner (or additional sittings) can each hold different recipes.
• Build shopping lists from the meal plan, or directly from individual recipes if you only need one dish.
• Collect related recipes into cookbooks, which is useful when a week's plan draws on a themed set rather than scattered favourites.
• Share plans and recipes with family or friends, since collaboration is one of the stated core features.

H3. Who it suits This fits a household that already keeps digital recipes and wants to decide what to cook ahead of time, then shop from that decision. The project describes itself as made for people who want to share a collection with family and friends or simply store it in an organised way. It is not designed as a public-facing site: there is a basic permission system, but the documentation explicitly says it is not meant to be run as a public page. If you need a public recipe blog with meal planning attached, this is the wrong tool; if you need a private shared planner, it is the right shape.

H3. Practical trade-offs The planning side is only as good as your recipe data. Shopping-list generation depends on ingredients being entered and structured, which is why the documentation highlights batch tag assignment, merging and renaming of ingredients, tags and units, and import from sites using ld+json or microdata. Expect to spend some time cleaning imported recipes before plans and lists become reliably useful. Hosting is another consideration: installation is documented for Docker, Kubernetes, Unraid, Synology and similar setups, so you need somewhere to run it, or you use a hosted instance if one is available to you. The payoff is that scaling, fractions or decimals, printing views and supermarket-oriented lists are all handled once the data is in place.

H3. A concrete scenario Suppose you plan Sunday to Thursday dinners for four people. You add five recipes to the relevant days, check that each serves four, adjust quantities where needed, then generate the shopping list from the plan and tick items off in the shop. If a recipe is missing an ingredient or lists it ambiguously, fix the ingredient in the recipe first, because that correction improves every future plan that uses it.

Next step: open the demo linked from Tandoor Recipes and try placing two recipes on the same day, then generating a shopping list from that plan. That single test tells you whether the ingredient data you already have is clean enough for the workflow.

How do I set up syncing with Dropbox or Nextcloud for Tandoor Recipes?

Tandoor Recipes documents syncing with Dropbox and Nextcloud under its "Storages and Sync" feature area. The practical approach is to configure the storage connection first, then enable the sync behavior you want, rather than treating it as a one-click cloud backup.

H3 How the pieces fit together

• Storage connector: You register your Dropbox or Nextcloud account as a storage backend in Tandoor's system settings. This is the credential and endpoint layer.
• Sync behavior: Once the storage exists, Tandoor can push or pull recipe files and related exports against it. The docs group this under "Storages and Sync," so expect separate configuration for the storage itself and for what gets synced.
• Import/Export: Tandoor also has dedicated import and export features. If your goal is a one-time migration or a portable archive, those may be simpler than continuous sync.

H3 Choosing between Dropbox and Nextcloud

If you run Tandoor in Docker on a home server, Nextcloud keeps everything in one place you control. If Tandoor runs on a VPS and you just want offsite copies, Dropbox is less to maintain.

H3 Practical next step

Open the "Storages and Sync" page in the documentation and follow the storage-specific setup for your provider, then test with a single recipe or a small export before syncing your whole collection. For broader installation context, the project's main documentation is at Tandoor Recipes.

A reader scenario: you have 400 recipes in Tandoor on a Synology NAS and want them mirrored to Nextcloud on the same box. Configure Nextcloud as the storage, run one manual sync, confirm the files appear, then enable scheduled syncing. If anything looks wrong, you have only one sync to undo instead of hundreds.

What are the system requirements and migration steps for Tandoor Recipes?

Tandoor Recipes is self-hosted, so "system requirements" depend on which installation path you choose. The documentation's own framing is that it is a Docker-first application: the docs list Docker plus example setups for Unraid, Synology, Kubernetes, KubeSail/PiBox, TrueNAS, Portainer, WSL, ArchLinux, HomeAssistant and manual installs. If you pick Docker (the recommended route), treat the requirements as "any host that runs Docker plus enough storage for your recipe database and images" rather than a fixed spec sheet. For a concrete decision: a small home server, NAS or Raspberry Pi-class device is the typical target for a personal collection, while a shared family instance with heavy image imports benefits from more RAM and disk.

Migration has two distinct meanings in Tandoor, and mixing them up is the most common mistake:

The steps that matter, in order:

1. Decide your install method and follow the matching installation page (Docker, Unraid, Synology, Kubernetes, TrueNAS, Portainer, WSL, HomeAssistant or manual).
2. If you already run Tandoor and are moving it, take a backup using the documented Backup procedure before touching anything.
3. If you are changing database engines, use the "Migrate sqlite to postgres" guidance rather than copying files by hand.
4. After the instance is up, handle content separately: use the import/export and connector features to pull in recipes, and set up Dropbox or Nextcloud sync if you want files mirrored.

Two planning points from the docs that affect requirements more than raw CPU: the app is "not meant to be run as a public page" — it has only a basic permission system, so size your host for family and friends, not open registration. And it is optimized for mobile use, so most users interact through a phone browser, which keeps client-side demands low.

For the exact commands and per-platform steps, work from Tandoor Recipes documentation; the installation and backup pages are the ones you actually follow line by line.