BigOven screenshot

What is BigOven?

BigOven is a recipe and meal planning platform that lets you search for recipes, build weekly meal plans, and organise your cooking with friends or family. The tool acts as a central hub for meal preparation; you can browse recipes from various sources, create shopping lists based on your plans, and collaborate with others on shared meal planning. It's designed for home cooks who want to reduce the friction between deciding what to eat and actually cooking it. The freemium model means you can start using core features without paying, with premium options available for additional capabilities.

Key Features

Recipe discovery and search across a large database of recipes from multiple sources

Meal planning tools to organise recipes into weekly or monthly plans

Automatic shopping list generation based on selected recipes and meal plans

Social sharing and collaboration features to plan meals with friends or family members

Kitchen pantry tracking to keep notes on what ingredients you have on hand

Recipe saving and organisation into custom collections or folders

Pros & Cons

Advantages

  • Free tier allows full access to core features without requiring payment
  • Solves the common problem of planning meals and generating shopping lists in one workflow
  • Social features make it practical for household meal coordination or cooking with others
  • Large recipe database means plenty of inspiration and options for different diets or cuisines

Limitations

  • The free tier may have restrictions on advanced features or recipe sources compared to paid plans
  • Recipe quality and variety can depend on community contributions, which may be inconsistent

Use Cases

Weekday meal planning for busy households trying to reduce daily cooking decisions

Generating shopping lists automatically to save time at the supermarket

Coordinating meals and cooking schedules with family members or housemates

Collecting and organising favourite recipes from various online sources in one place

Finding recipes based on dietary requirements or available ingredients