RepimameUpdated 23 September 2026
How to save a recipe from an Instagram Reel
Saving the Reel takes one tap. Finding the amounts again, three weeks later, with flour on your hands, is the part that goes wrong. Here are four ways to keep the recipe itself, from free and manual to one tap.
Quick answer. On most cooking Reels the recipe is written in the caption, or in a comment from the creator. Tap "more" to expand the caption, copy the text, and paste it into a notes app with the Reel's link underneath. The bookmark icon saves the video, which is not the same as saving the recipe.
If the caption only says "comment RECIPE and I'll DM you", the recipe arrives in your messages. No app can read your DMs for you.
Where the recipe lives on a Reel
The video is the demonstration. The written recipe is in one of these four places. "Sometimes readable": apps can only see the first comments Instagram shows to people who are not logged in.
1. Save it in Instagram (free, where most people stop)
Tap the bookmark icon under the Reel. It goes to your profile, then the menu, then Saved, and you can sort saves into collections.
It works until your Saved grid is a wall of near-identical pasta. The only way to tell two apart is to open them and watch. You have kept the demonstration, not the recipe: nothing to shop from, nothing to read at the stove, and nothing left if the creator deletes the post.
Do this if you cook two or three saved Reels a month and you remember which is which.
2. Copy the caption into a notes app (free, five minutes)
- Tap more under the Reel to expand the full caption.
- Press and hold the text to copy it. If Instagram will not let you select it, take a screenshot of the caption: on an iPhone you can then press and hold the text in the screenshot and copy it (Live Text).
- Paste it into Notes, Google Keep or whatever you use, with the Reel link underneath for the tricky bit.
If the caption says "full recipe in the comments", look for a comment from the creator's own account. It is often pinned at the top.
Do this if you cook from maybe one Reel a week and do not mind a little admin each time.
3. Paste the caption into an AI chat (free, faster, uneven)
Paste the copied caption into ChatGPT or Claude and ask for an ingredients list and numbered steps. You get something tidy in seconds.
Watch for invented amounts. If the caption never says how much butter, a chat model will often supply a plausible number anyway. Check anything that matters against the video before you trust it.
4. Use an app that does it for you
Several apps take an Instagram link and give you back a recipe you can search, scale and shop from. ReciMe, CookBook, Plan to Eat and ours, Repimame, all say they import from Instagram. Our comparison page covers how they differ, including when one of the others is the better choice.
What Repimame does with a Reel (this is ours, so read it as our own description): you share the Reel to the app, and it reads the caption into ingredients and steps. It can also pin a still from the video beside each step the video shows. If the caption has no amounts, we leave them blank instead of guessing.
One honest limit. When the recipe is only in a comment, we can read it if the creator's comment is among the first comments Instagram shows to people who are not logged in. On newer posts with many comments it often is not, and then we cannot get it. Method 2 still works.
When the Reel has no written recipe
No recipe in the caption? Check in this order
- Check the creator's comment, then the link in their profile. Many link to a blog with the full recipe.
- "Comment a word and I'll DM you": do it, then copy the DM into your notes. That text is the recipe.
- Nothing written anywhere? Write the steps down, leave the amounts blank, and fill them in the first time you cook it.
Try Repimame
Free for our first 100 members outside Japan. iPhone and iPad.
Written 23 September 2026.