Any WordPress website can publish recipes, but by using a purpose-built recipe plugin, you can ensure your recipes are nicely formatted, easy to read, and printable. By installing one of the best WordPress recipe plugins in this collection, you can add lots of useful features to your website for publishing this type of content.
Some of the reasons to install a recipe plugin include getting access to templates that were created specifically for publishing recipes, a search tool that enables your visitors to search just your recipe content, plus systems for organizing and filtering your recipes so that your audience can find what they’re looking for.
Many of the best recipe plugins for WordPress also have the ability to ensure your recipe content is optimized for search engines. This not only increases the chances of your website and its content being found but also tells search engines like Google that your website includes recipes, rather than just blog posts and pages. This should help your content show up when people are searching specifically for recipes.
Other useful features you might want to look out for in these plugins include the ability to display nutritional information, add cooking times, and upload videos to your recipes. To find the best option for your website, make sure you check out the plugin demos to see how your recipes could look when they’re published.
1. Tasty Recipes
Tasty Recipes has lots of features to help you upgrade the recipe publishing functionality of your WordPress website.
If you decide to install this premium plugin, you’ll be able to import your recipes from a range of platforms, including Ziplist, Meal Planner Pro, and Cookbook as well as many other free WordPress recipe plugins. Therefore, if you’ve already been using another WordPress recipe plugin, upgrading to Tasty Recipes doesn’t mean starting from scratch. As part of the migration process, you can choose to convert your recipes one at a time to see how they’ll look, or just do them all at once, depending on your preferences.
As well as being able to smoothly transition to this recipe plugin, you can also begin enjoying new features, including the ability to choose from a range of recipe card presentation styles and insert adverts right into your recipe content to enable you to monetize your website. Unlike some of the free WordPress recipe plugins, paying for this premium option gives you access to a responsive help desk team that can support you while using Tasty Recipes.
Other reasons to consider this plugin include support for search engines, integration with Pinterest to help with social media marketing, and a user-friendly interface for adding the recipes to your website. You can also take a more hands-on approach to the design of your recipes, thanks to the styling functionality of Tasty Recipes. Users can leave star ratings for your recipes, too, helping your best content rise to the top.
Although there isn’t a free version of Tasty Recipes, there is a 15-day money-back guarantee available so you can try this plugin without risk.
2. Recipe Card Blocks
Recipe Card Blocks is a WordPress recipe plugin that’s specifically built to work inside the new WordPress block editor (AKA Gutenberg).
Whereas most other recipe plugins offer separate interfaces or shortcode builders, Recipe Card Blocks gives you an intuitive system that sits right inside the native WordPress editor as its own block.
From that block, you can include:
- Images of your food
- A video
- Ingredient lists
- Step-by-step directions (including images)
- Basic details such as servings, cook time, prep time, and calories
- Categories such as meal type (e.g. breakfast, dinner), cuisine, and difficulty
Recipe Card Blocks automatically adds Google-recommended JSON-LD structured data/schema markup to all your content, which helps you get those eye-catching recipe rich snippets in Google search results. Recipe Card Blocks even includes a structured data testing tool right in the WordPress editor sidebar to make sure you’ve added all the information.
And on the front-end of your site, the recipe card that your visitors will interact with looks great out of the box. If you want, you can choose from different recipe card styles and templates (with more available in the premium version).
The core Recipe Card Blocks plugin is available for free at WordPress.org, but you can also purchase the Pro version for $59. It adds:
- More color schemes and recipe card styles
- A review star rating (including structured data to get the review rich snippet)
- A nutrition facts tool
- Advanced Pinterest settings
3. WP Recipe Maker
WP Recipe Maker is a popular freemium option for publishing nicely presented recipes on your WordPress website.
Currently being used on over 40,000 websites, the WP Recipe Maker plugin simplifies the process of adding recipes to your WordPress website or blog. As well as being widely used for a plugin of this type, WP Recipe Maker has a positive rating from its users. Also, as the plugin has been built with SEO in mind, your recipe content will be optimized to increase its chances of being found by users of search engines like Google. Now by using this plugin, your content will show up in the Google recipe search engine as well as the regular search mode.
In addition to the SEO-friendly design of this plugin, you can also use the social media integration to help more people find your website and its content. By enabling the optional Pinterest sharing button, you can make it very easy for your audience to promote your recipes on this popular visual social network. Visitors can also leave ratings for your recipes, which can help your content stand out. Another useful feature of WP Recipe Maker is the print button which ensures your recipes look great when they are printed out by your visitors. Adding images and videos to your recipe pages is very straightforward too with this free WordPress plugin. As well as all the other features of the free version of WP Recipe Maker, there’s also a paid upgrade available if you need even more functionality.
Thanks to regular plugin updates, WP Recipe Maker now works with both the classic WordPress editor and the new Gutenberg editor. This means your website’s recipes and the recipe publishing system will continue to be accessible and fully functional for the foreseeable future.
To find out more about this plugin, you can view a walkthrough video on the WP Recipe Maker page.
4. Zip Recipes
Zip Recipes is another free plugin for publishing and organizing recipes on your WordPress website.
Like some of the other popular recipe plugins for WordPress, Zip Recipes has been built to work with the Google Search View to help your content show up in this search engine. Not only will your recipes be search engine optimized with this plugin but they will also look great when published on your website. Each recipe includes details about the servings, a description, a list of the ingredients, and photos to help illustrate your content. The plugin also adds a handy print button to each recipe that allows your visitors to quickly print off a copy that’s well formatted and easy to read. Another nice feature of Zip Recipes is the Pinterest sharing buttons that are added to any images you include in your recipes for easy promotion by your visitors.
Adding recipes to your WordPress website or blog is easy too. Thanks to the user interface, your recipes are well organized and kept separate from the other content on your site. However, the recipes are added using the default WordPress editor along with a few extra fields, preventing you from having to learn a new system for inputting the recipe content.
Although there’s a premium version of this plugin, the free version of Zip Recipes certainly isn’t lacking in features. Some more of the reasons to choose this plugin includes the ability to monetize your recipes by using the affiliate link tool, full Google AMP support for accommodating smartphone and tablet users, and a recipe name auto-complete tool which helps you find the most popular and most searched for versions of your recipe’s name. Thanks to the walkthrough video on the plugin page, you can see for yourself how easy this plugin is to use in just a few minutes.
As well as the useful features, Zip Recipes has a positive feedback rating from users who have installed this plugin on their WordPress website.
5. Cooked
Cooked is another feature-rich free option for improving the capabilities of WordPress websites when it comes to publishing recipes.
With a simplified interface that makes it easy to enter the details of your recipes, combined with a stylish template for presenting those recipes when they’re published on your website, Cooked is a plugin you should definitely consider. Thanks to the drag-and-drop interface, you get a good amount of control over how your recipes are presented.
However, as the pre-built templates are well designed, there’s no need to take a hands-on approach to the design of your recipes unless you really want to. As well as the individual recipe template, there’s also a grid layout that’s used to display the list of recipes on your website, including the featured image, title, and description of each recipe. Due to this, you have the option of adding an archive page to your website that displays all the recipes in one easily accessible location.
The free Cooked plugin also has a search tool that gives your visitors the ability to search through all the recipe content to find certain dishes or the use of specific ingredients. Like the best WordPress recipe plugins, Cooked formats the recipes you enter in a way that ensures they’re recognized by the Google recipe search engine. The content is also mobile-friendly so that your visitors can access your recipes, no matter what type of device they’re using. Some of the other notable features of the Cooked plugin include the ability to add nutritional information to your recipes, the option of setting a difficulty level for a recipe, and author tags for the recipes that allow visitors to filter the recipes according to who uploaded them.
One of the highlights of Cooked is the recipe template that you can view in action on the plugin demo page.
6. Total Recipe Generator
Total Recipe Generator is a recipe publishing add-on for the Elementor page builder plugin.
If you’re using the powerful and popular Elementor page builder plugin or plan to do so, then Total Recipe Generator is an add-on you might be interested in. The main reason to use this tool is that it makes it easier to publish well-formatted and attractive recipes on your WordPress website, all through the intuitive Elementor interface.
Once you’ve activated Elementor and Total Recipe Generator on your site, you can publish recipe content in a number of different formats. As well as the standard recipe with text and image layout, it’s also easy to publish recipe pages that contain videos, reviews and ratings, and nutritional information. If you do want to publish nutritional data in your recipes, this add-on gives you two main ways you can do this. One uses the familiar style that’s often seen on food packaging, while the other approach is more colorful and eye-catching.
Perhaps the best reason to use Total Recipe Generator, though, is the fact that you can easily edit any of the recipes you create through the Elementor page builder interface. Thanks to this, as you create your recipe content, you get full control over how they look, with the ability to add any of the many page elements that come with Elementor to your pages. This could include image galleries, sliders, buttons, tables, and a whole lot more.
You can view the types of recipes that this plugin can create on the demos on the Total Recipe Generator website. But to give you some ideas of what else this tool can do, other features include full support for Pinterest rich pins to help your content get shared, search engine support to ensure your key recipe details are displayed in the results on sites such as Google, and open graph tags to help your content stand out when it’s shared on social media.
Total Recipe Generator should appeal to anyone who wants to take full control over how their content is displayed.
7. Delicious Recipes
Delicious Recipes is a free WordPress recipe plugin with six widgets.
Thanks to its schema-friendly design, Delicious Recipes will display additional information in the results pages of search engines like Google when your site is listed. This extra information, which can include key recipe details, should draw more attention from users and hopefully drive more traffic to your site.
When people get to your site, they’ll see your recipes in a nicely presented format. Support for image galleries and video content as well as making it easy for users to print your recipes, all combine to make this an appealing free WordPress recipe plugin. Delicious Recipes also has a built-in rating system so that your visitors can easily leave feedback and see, at a glance, which of your recipes are the most popular. Other features, like video tutorials, a walk-through wizard to help you get started, and support for Pinterest Rich Pins are other reasons to check out this plugin.
There’s also a Pro version of Delicious Recipes if you need more features.
