3.5 KiB
Recipe Curation for Batch Import
How to find popular, high-rated recipes and import them into Mealie.
Workflow
- Find popular collections on reliable scraper-compatible sites
- Extract individual recipe URLs (not category/search pages)
- Filter by dietary preference (e.g., no pork/bacon)
- Batch import via the Mealie API with polite delays
Reliable Source Sites (near-100% scraper success)
| Site | Notes |
|---|---|
| BBC Good Food (bbcgoodfood.com) | Has curated collections like "All-time top 20 recipes", "Best rated recipes", "Most popular recipes of [year]". High rating counts (500–3000+). |
| RecipeTin Eats (recipetineats.com) | Has a "Most Popular" category across 12 pages. Many recipes have comments/ratings. |
Both sites consistently return 200/201 from Mealie's scraper. Avoid sites behind Cloudflare (Damn Delicious, AllRecipes, Simply Recipes) — they fail with HTTP 400.
Finding Popular Recipes
BBC Good Food
Known collection URLs (direct recipe lists, not just articles):
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/collection/all-time-top-20-recipes
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/collection/most-popular-recipes
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/most-popular-recipes-on-good-food
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/news-trends/popular-recipes-2025
Search strategy: site:bbcgoodfood.com "most popular" OR "top" OR "best rated" recipes collection
Each recipe on these list pages links to its individual URL (e.g., https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/chilli-con-carne-recipe).
RecipeTin Eats
The "Most Popular" category has 12 pages:
https://www.recipetineats.com/category/most-popular/
https://www.recipetineats.com/category/most-popular/page/2/
...up to page 12
To extract URLs from a category page programmatically, use the browser console:
JSON.stringify(Array.from(document.querySelectorAll('article a[href*="recipetineats.com"]')).map(a => a.href))
Or scrape with web_extract + regex on the class/HTML (the article titles contain links).
Filtering by Dietary Preference
When the user has restrictions (e.g., no pork or bacon), skip recipes with these in the title before importing:
- "pork" (pork tenderloin, pork chops, pulled pork, etc.)
- "bacon" (bacon-wrapped, bacon cheeseburger, etc.)
- "chorizo" (often Spanish pork sausage — check if user is ok with it; chorizo is typically pork)
- "pancetta" (cured pork belly, common in carbonara)
- "sausage" (can be pork — check recipe page)
- "prosciutto" / "ham" / "gammon"
Checking individual recipes: Open the recipe URL, scan the ingredient list for pork/bacon before importing. BBC Good Food often lists dietary tags (Vegetarian, Vegan, Healthy) which help quickly ID compatible recipes.
Curated safe categories with high success: vegetarian, chicken, beef, lamb, fish/seafood, pasta (without pork), curries, baked goods, soups, salads.
Batch Import Script
See references/batch-import.md for the full Python import script.
Recommended settings:
- 2-second delay between imports (avoids rate limiting on BBC Good Food)
- 60-second timeout per URL (Mealie's scraper can be slow on first parse)
- Filter URL list before importing — it's easier than cleaning up after
Real-World Example
20 recipes imported in a single batch (13 BBC Good Food + 7 RecipeTin Eats):
- Pork/bacon recipes skipped: Bacon-Wrapped Pork Tenderloin, Sausage Ragu, Bangers and Mash (sausage = likely pork)
- Result: 20/20 success (100%)
- Time: ~68 seconds with 2-second delays