Internet of Yum digs into all the things that make us drool while we're checking our feeds.
You're scrolling through Instagram and bike sex video sexjust as the most gorgeous, gooey brownies are about to leave your field of view, your thumb instinctively stops. You want those brownies. You need those brownies. But you're definitely not going to make those brownies right now, while you're comfortably curled up on the couch, zoning out with the Instagram scroll.
What to do?
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Save the brownies, of course. But if you save images whenever you get a jolt of cooking inspiration without a dash of organization, you'll end up with random pictures of pasta mixed in with that cute puppy you saw up for adoption along with that Fijian beach you long to visit — and a lot of squinting.
Your solution is to turn Instagram into a recipe book. Most recipe books are divided into sections, including main courses, soups, salads, sides, and desserts. You can create similar groupings in Instagram by building a new collection for each category. I have nine food collections, but you can slice and dice it any way you please. Prefer to break it up by cuisine type? Go ahead and chop your finds into Mexican, French, and Thai entrees. Or if you're really just the baking type, split your picks into Great British Bake-Off-inspired collections filled with biscuits, bread, patisseries, and pastries.
Dessert recipe / Quiche recipe / Kebab recipe / Pasta putanesca recipe Credit: Mashable composite: New Africa / DronG / Rimma Bondarenko / Brent Hofacker / Shutterstock / Instagram How to create Instagram collections
On your profile page, tap the menu button that looks like three horizontal lines.
Then click the "Saved" flag, which is four options down
Click on the + button in the top right
Enter the name of your collection. For example, type "Cookies" and click "Add" in the top right.
Cookie recipe Credit: Mashable Composite: Ulrich 22 / Shutterstock / Instagram How to add to Instagram collections
If you see something tasty on your feed, tap the flag below the photo on the right.
That will automatically drop it into your "All Posts" saved dumping grounds. If you want to organize it, click "Save to Collection."
A carousel filled with your recipe folders will pop up. Select the one you want. If you want to start a new collection for this particular recipe, you can click the + button and go through the steps of naming your collection as outlined above.
Instagram recipe collections Credit: Mashable Composite: Ildi Papp / New Africa / DronG / MoonByMoon / Damian Lugowski / Shutterstock / Instagram OK, then what?
Now, the next time you want to bake brownies on a Friday afternoon or throw together a quiche on a Sunday morning, you have plenty of inspiration to soak up.
Note, however, that there is a catch to this Instagram recipe collection: Not all recipe posts have the instructions in the captions. When you come across a recipe that does have this, it's a gift from the foodie gods.
View this post on Instagram
In other cases, you'll have to dig a little deeper. Most recipes arelinked in the poster's bio page. It's easy enough to find them there, but you may have to forage within that link-in-bio page if a recipe you saved is from a few months ago. If all else fails, most Instagram cooks include the name of the recipe in the caption. If that's the case, you can do some light googling to get to the recipe. Some people drop a url in the caption, but Instagram doesn't make it easy to copy and paste those, so you'll still likely have to turn to Google.
On another note, you'll only see recipes in your Instagram feed if you follow a bunch of people who post recipes. (You can click on "Food" in the Explore tab if you'd like random suggestions.) You'll quickly figure out your favorites after you begin following a few accounts. Some of my most-saved accounts include:
basically
bakerbynature
smittenkitchen
food52
nytcooking
cookingforpeanuts
inagarten
koreanbapsang
alisoneroman
ottolenghi
View this post on Instagram
Now, just because you've spent time organizing the inspiration for your next meal doesn't mean you'll use all the recipes. There are plenty of dish pics I've saved that I've never gotten around to making. There are also plenty that merely serve as reminders of interesting tricks: Oh, this recipe uses chicken stock instead of water when boiling couscous? I'll try that next time.
SEE ALSO: 7 YouTube channels that will teach you how to cookThen there are those I've whipped up multiple times. I like to save my favorites to a "Tested" collection. That way, when I want to make that Caesar salad bursting with anchovies or the creamy hummus again, the directions are just a few tippety-taps away.
It's easy to lose track of the things you're craving, let alone time, while scrolling through Instagram when you're bored. Let your Instagram recipe book do the remembering for you — and save you time when you're ready to whip up something tasty.