If you love cooking and want to organize and access your favorite recipes easily, Notion is a great tool.
Using a Notion recipe template, you can plan meals, manage ingredient lists, and have your recipes on hand whenever you need them.
In this article, I’ll explain how I built my Notion recipe database from scratch. Plus, I will also list some of the best Notion cookbook templates to help you streamline your cooking workflow.
How To Create a Notion Recipe Database
Balancing a demanding work schedule with personal responsibilities often left me rushed and disorganized in the kitchen. I didn’t want to waste time deciding what to cook or checking ingredients availability every time I stepped into the kitchen.
Given how much Notion had helped streamline my work, I wanted to see if it could also help bring structure to my meal planning process. And yes, it turned out to be the best decision.
Developing a meal planning template in Notion has brought much-needed organization to my cooking. For maximum usefulness, I have organized it into three main sections
- a recipe database to help me quickly browse and select recipes
- an ingredient database to check the ingredient’s availability
- a meal planner calendar to schedule my meals for upcoming weeks
Let’s learn how you can also create it from scratch easily.
1. Recipe Database
The first thing we’ll do is create a recipe database to store all your recipes. For the recipe database, a gallery view works best. It displays the recipes in an attractive, easy-to-browse layout.
Within the gallery, you can set up different filtered views to organize recipes by meal type. This way, when it’s lunch time you can quickly find something to cook without searching through everything.
Once the gallery view recipe database is created, let us look at the properties you can add to individual recipe cards.
- Grocery Database (Relation Property) – The first property is a “Grocery Database” relation property. This will connect the master ingredients database to all of the ingredients needed for each recipe. You’ll be able to set this property only after you’ve created the Ingredients database, so you can ignore it for the time being and add it later.
- Category (Multi-select) – Next, add a “Category” multi-select field to choose options like appetizer, main course, and more. This allows you to easily filter recipes later by type when deciding what to cook.
- Multiple Tags (Select) – Add different selection options which will allow you to better organize recipes through additional categorization such as cuisine type, difficulty level, status, and your rating of each dish.
- Source (Url) – A “Source” URL property is good for bookmarking websites of recipes you want to try. That way you always have the originals handy.
- Total Time (Formula Property) – It’s also convenient to include a “Total Time” formula that calculates prep plus cook time. This helps you evaluate how long your recipe will take so you can choose faster options when short on time.
Not only that, but you can also create a premade template named “Recipe Details” that can automatically set up ingredient tables for you to input exact measurements and provide a section for step-by-step instructions or any tips to remember.
Once you’ve got these basic properties set up, let’s move further and learn the other two databases as well.
2. Ingredients Database
The Ingredients Database will make your grocery shopping and running errands much easier. It will tell you which ingredients are available in your pantry and which ones you need to restock. The best part is that the recipes you created will now already be reflected here, so you don’t have to create another database.
To make it more functional, you can add the following properties:
- Related Recipe: Similar to the Grocery Database relation property, also add a Related Recipe Relation property to interconnect both databases.
- Categories/Availability (Select Property) – You can add different categories for ingredients like vegetables, fruits, dairy products, or more to sort them. You can also add an availability option to select whether the ingredient is out of stock, in stock, or needs to be added to the shopping list. This way, when you go grocery shopping next time, you don’t miss any ingredients!
- Store (Multi-Select Property) – This property also comes in useful while running errands. You can add supermarket or store lists from where you tend to buy that specific product.
- Purchase (Checkbox Property) – Use a checkbox property to know whether the ingredient that went out of stock has been purchased or not, so you don’t buy any extras. This way you can keep track of everything.
Finally, let’s discuss the third database, which is the meal planner.
3. Meal Planner Database
The Meal Planner database can help you plan your meals in advance for a week or a month. It’s best to use a calendar database so that it is easier to view what is planned for breakfast or lunch on each date.
For the meal planner database, you can add the following properties:
- Date Property: To add a date when planning a specific recipe.
- Recipes (Relation Property): Select the recipe from the list you’ve already created.
- Ingredient (Rollup Property): This will show the ingredient list based on the recipe you select.
The final meal planner for the upcoming week will look like this.
That’s all! You can customize these databases further by adding images, cover pages, and navigation buttons. Over time, as you enter your own meal plans and recipes, the database will become a personal meal planning tool tailored just for you.
Best Notion Recipe Templates for Easy Meal Planning
If you don’t want the hassle of creating the template from scratch, you can duplicate the prebuilt templates below to start organizing your meals.
1. Notion Recipe & Meal Planner Template
The Notion Recipe and Meal Planner template is designed to make meal planning a breeze. This template uses the exact same approach demonstrated above to organize your recipes, create grocery lists, and decide on meals all in one place.
The template includes a navigation sidebar on the left for easy switching between different categories. You can also add your custom view using the Add New Gallery View button.
For example, if you want a new view that exclusively shows your favorite recipes, it will show only those recipes with just one click. The template reduces the effort involved in setting up customized views, allowing you to sort the recipes in multiple ways with just a single click.
- Creator: Swaliha Baza
- Price: $11.99
Key Features
- Pre-built recipe template with fields for ingredients and instructions.
- Customizable views for recipes and meal plans.
- Ingredients database linked to recipes.
- Grocery budget tracker for cost management.
- Custom grocery list creation.
- Weekly and Monthly Meal planner.
➡ Get Notion Recipe & Meal Planner Template
2. The Happy Kitchen PLUS
The Happy Kitchen PLUS takes the guesswork and stress out of meal preparation. I like how in just a few clicks, you can create a customized meal plan template and have your entire week’s worth of meals planned out.
- Creator: Notion Things
- Price: 32
Key Features
- Calorie and macronutrient information for precise meal planning.
- Daily hydration goal tracking.
- Starter pack of 100 plant-based recipes with nutritional info.
- Automated grocery list generation.
- Pre-programmed calendar days through 2025.
3. Meal Planning
Marie Poulin’s Meal Planning template helps you create weekly meal plans, save your favorite recipes, and keep track of the groceries you need to prepare your meals.
- Creator: Marie Poulin
- Price: Free
Key Features:
- Create a weekly plan of your meals.
- Save your favorite recipes from different sources including Pinterest.
- Keep track of groceries needed to prepare meals.
➡ Get the Meal Planning template
4. Stressless Meal Planner
Stressless Meal Planner is a simple one-page Notion template to help you plan your weekly meals in 5 minutes.
- Creator: Abdul Rafay
- Price: Free
Key Features
- Plan your meals for the week or month in advance, with a calendar view and a board view.
- Organize your recipes by categories, course, and tags, with images and ratings.
- Track ingredients by adding them to your grocery list.
- Organize recipes into collections.
➡ Get the Stressless Meal Planner
5. Recipe & Shopping List Manager
Recipe and Shopping List Manager simplifies both meal planning and grocery shopping with its pre-made templates.
- Creator: FlorianW
- Price: $2
Key Features
- Pre-built templates for managing recipes
- Collect guest reviews and ratings for each recipe
- Sort recipes by popular categories, including ‘to try’ and ‘favorites’
- Update the quantities of ingredients required based on custom serving sizes.
➡ Get the Recipe & Shopping List Manager Template
6. Recipe & Meal Planner
Recipe & Meal Planner is a clean aesthetic recipe manager that lets you prepare weekly meal plans.
- Creator: Mirrorball Designs
- Price: £2
Key Features
- Store recipes in the Recipe book based on meal type.
- Know what’s in your pantry and easily add out-of-stock products to your shopping list.
- Monitor how different foods affect your body with Food & Symptoms Diary.
➡ Get the Recipe & Meal Planner Template
7. Meal Planner Template
The Meal Planner Template comes in two versions to cater to different Notion users.
- Creator: Hugh Dawkins
- Price: Free
Key Features
- Plan your upcoming week by simply dragging and dropping recipes into place.
- Automatically displays ingredients required for the week.
- Automatic grocery list creation with stock-level information.
➡ Get the Meal Planner Template by Hugh
Wrapping Up: The Best Notion Recipe Template
Meal planning can be a stressful and overwhelming task, but with the help of Notion recipe templates, it can be an enjoyable and easier process.
With my Recipe and Meal Planner template, you don’t have to spend time setting up anything yourself – simply start adding your recipes. Now, I no longer spend hours searching for dishes to prepare and can readily and easily structure meals for the week.
So why not, give it a try and see how it can transform the way you approach meal planning?
