That time AI saved me from a recipe trainwreck
Recently I finally got around to rewriting a recipe we cook often that is a mess - like total chaos. Ingredients were listed inside the method (but not all of them), the method babbled on too much and just lacked overall logic.
Now, as a qualified chef I’ve written plenty of recipes over the years, and I know how to read between the lines when things are a bit vague. But this one? It was next-level terrible. It looked like someone had voice-texted it while wrangling a toddler and juggling hot pans.
Rather than throw my phone in frustration or start from scratch, I copied the mess and chucked it into ChatGPT to see what it could make of it.
And wow, it actually made sense of it. The AI stripped out all the nonsense, pulled the ingredients out of the method (where they definitely didn’t belong), put them into a proper list, and laid out the steps in a way that you could actually follow without having a meltdown.
Was it perfect? Not quite. I still gave it a quick polish and made sure the instructions were nice and clear, and gave it a bit of the ol’ Chef Mikey flair. But I didn’t have to spend ages retyping or sorting through someone else’s spaghetti-brain logic. The AI did the heavy lifting, and I just put on the finishing touches.
And honestly? I’ll be doing it again.
If you’ve ever found a “great” recipe online that reads like it was written during a power outage with no punctuation, give AI a go. It won’t replace your kitchen smarts, but it’ll definitely save you time and a few grey hairs.
Those scones were made by me at Beerenberg where Marty and I did their scone making class just for a bit of fun.