Minthee
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Topic 12•Basics•4 min read

Universal Web Recipe Importer

Import recipes from food blogs and websites in one tap with automatic ingredient, instruction, and photo extraction.

Saving delicious recipes found online usually means fighting through walls of ads, slow-loading story preludes, and aggressive cookie banners. Minthee’s Universal Web Recipe Importer lets you extract the core recipe in seconds and save it straight into your private, offline-first collection.

1. Importing from Any URL

To import a recipe:

  1. Tap the + (Add Dish) button on the Home screen.
  2. At the top of the Add Dish screen, tap Import from Web.
  3. Paste the recipe URL (e.g. from BBC Good Food, Serious Eats, NYT Cooking, or any personal food blog).
  4. Tap Fetch Recipe.

Minthee parses the website and instantly populates the dish form with:

  • Title: Clean recipe name without clickbait adjectives.
  • Image: High-resolution dish hero image downloaded and cached locally.
  • Cooking & Prep Times: Parsed from international ISO 8601 duration standards (PT30M, etc.).
  • Yield / Servings: Configured portion size.
  • Ingredients: Structured list of ingredients and quantities.
  • Method / Steps: Sequenced instructions ready for Cooking Mode.

2. Universal Schema.org & Heuristic Parsing

The importer engine is designed to parse recipes from across the open web:

  • Standardized Schema: Leverages schema.org/Recipe JSON-LD microdata utilized by major culinary publishers.
  • Microdata & Fallback Parsing: When sites don’t provide JSON-LD, Minthee applies semantic HTML heuristics to locate ingredients lists and ordered cooking instructions.
  • Ingredient Cleansing: Automatically strips extraneous website formatting, affiliate disclaimers, and unnecessary bullet points.

3. Privacy & Network Security Protection

Unlike cloud services that proxy your web traffic through remote analytics servers, Minthee fetches and processes the recipe directly on your Android device:

  • Zero Cloud Intermediaries: The connection goes straight from your device to the target food blog.
  • SSRF Sandboxing: The built-in fetcher strictly prohibits connections to private network IPs, loopback hosts (localhost, 127.0.0.1), and invalid URL schemes, protecting your home network from malicious redirect chains.
  • Safe Size Limits: Heavy scripts and oversized assets are bypassed, capping HTML parsing to prevent mobile memory bloat.

4. Review & Customize Before Saving

Every imported recipe is fully editable before it enters your collection:

  • Adjust ingredients to match what you have in your pantry.
  • Tweak cooking temperatures, add personal flavor notes, or assign custom tags (e.g. Quick Weeknight, High Protein).
  • Set your preferred repeat frequency and category before tapping Save Dish.
  • Once saved, the recipe is completely offline: you will never lose access if the original website goes down or changes.