Why Mela Is My Favourite Everyday Cooking Companion
Silvio Rizzi’s app makes saving, organising and cooking recipes simple and stress-free.
One of the things I’ll share on this blog is the apps I love to use. I find a personal recommendation from a blog or newsletter way more useful than a traditional review, so I’m doing the same for you. Today I’m thinking about an app I use every single day of the year.
As the person in my household who cooks most of our meals, this one is invaluable to me. I’ve used countless recipe apps over the years. Each has its own set of cool features, but none have stuck quite like Mela. It makes every step of collecting, organising, and cooking from them feel easy, reliable, and enjoyable, and dare I say, even a little joyful. Created by developer Silvio Rizzi, Mela is an iOS and macOS recipe app that’s designed with home cooks in mind.
Discovering, saving and sharing recipes
Most of my recipes make their way into Mela via the sharing menu. I’ll be browsing online, spot something worth trying, and quickly share the link to Mela. In seconds, it’s in my collection, ready to use in the app’s clean, native recipe viewer. It’s rare for it to fail to detect a recipe, and when it does, the process of adding manually is still so smooth that it barely slows me down.
One of Mela’s strengths is its seamless integration across Apple devices. Everything syncs seamlessly via iCloud, so I can pull up a recipe on my phone in the supermarket, check it on my Mac while planning, or most often use my iPad in the kitchen. The larger screen makes following steps much easier, and that’s where Cook Mode shines.
Cooking and planning the week's menu
Cook Mode is exactly what sounds like, a distraction-free, full-screen view designed for the kitchen. Only the current step is bright, keeping you focused, while previous and upcoming steps are dimmed but still accessible. Moving between steps is as simple as a tap with a knuckle, so you’re not smudging your screen mid-prep. You can start timers without breaking your rhythm, keeping you focused even when the kitchen is at its busiest.
Beyond the cooking itself, Mela has become part of how my partner and I plan our week. We use its built-in calendar feature to schedule meals together, and because it syncs with our shared calendar, we can both see what’s coming up even if one of us is out. We still jot it down on paper for the kids’ benefit, but Mela is where the plan starts.
An app you can trust to be there for you
Reliability is another big factor for me. Mela feels rock solid. I never worry about recipes disappearing or syncing going wrong. Every time I open it, my collection is there, perfectly organised, and ready to go. Silvio Rizzi has anticipated every useful function, from scanning recipes out of books with text recognition to subscribing to food blogs via RSS so new recipes appear right in your feed.
Mela has become the central tool in how I cook, plan, and even discover new dishes. It’s rare to find software that blends function and reliability so well, but Mela delivers. If you love cooking and want an app that keeps up with you, this is the one. Interested? Check it out in the App Store.