Should you be using AI for recipes? We asked 3 chefs for their thoughts.
Technology is constantly transforming how we cook. Before the rise of smart kitchen gadgets, we relied on cookbooks and wind-up timers to make fancy meals. Nowadays, you can ask smart assistants to crawl the web for the most popular dinner ideas, store them on a smart refrigerator, and preheat a smart oven, all at the same time.
Just when we thought smart cooking had reached its peak, along comes artificial intelligence. People are now using AI for everything, and it was only a matter of time before it graced our kitchens.
In theory, AI can handle the culinary legwork, especially recipe development. You can ask your chatbot to whip up custom recipes tailored specifically to your tastes, then set specific variables, including ingredients, dietary preferences, time, serving size, and degree of difficulty. You can ask for a creamy Gouda mac and cheese that can be prepped in 20 minutes and serves six to eight people, or have it plan a full three-course meal for a first date with a foodie
Does the final product always turn out to be delicious? The answer is subjective (everyone's a food critic). The more sensible question to ask is whether AI should even be used for recipes in the first place.
However, AI cannot taste food. It does not intuitively understand texture, seasoning balance, or how a sauce should feel when properly reduced.
Well, we figured the best answer would come, not from a chatbot, but from a professional chef. Three to be exact. From bakery specialists to gourmet masters, our selected trio of cooking experts chimed in to set the record straight on AI recipes.
Jason Heiselman (Hungryroot)
Director of Culinary and former Sr. Executive Chef
AI is very good at generating and scaling food ideas quickly. It can synthesize thousands of flavor combinations, cuisines, and dietary constraints in seconds. For home cooks, especially, that can be inspiring. It lowers the barrier to entry and helps people experiment with ingredients they might not normally combine.
At work and at home, I use AI for cooking all the time. My experience is that AI recipes are a strong starting point. They are often structurally sound and can spark interesting combinations. I typically refine seasoning levels, modify techniques, or tweak cooking times. For Hungryroot — where we have over 50,000 recipes — I also use it to scale great recipe ideas to meet all the different needs and nutrition preferences of our customers.
However, AI cannot taste food. It does not intuitively understand texture, seasoning balance, or how a sauce should feel when properly reduced. It also may miss subtle, but important, technical steps that experienced cooks know instinctively, like blooming spices, salting in stages, and watching visual cues instead of time.
Accuracy is critical in cooking, especially in baking or techniques that depend on precision. It's getting there, but I think AI still has some work to do here. It sometimes glosses over harder-to-grasp details like exact timing cues, visual indicators, or small technical adjustments that make the difference between success and failure.
Authenticity is more nuanced. Food traditions are rooted in culture, history, and lived experience. That is where human expertise matters most. Authenticity is not just about ingredients – it is about understanding the story and intention behind a dish.
A recipe is only a framework. The artistry happens in how someone seasons, adjusts, plates, and makes it their own. AI can generate ideas, but the creative decisions that bring a dish to life still belong to the human.
Chef Chuck Hayworth (Thankfully Local Private Chef)
Private chef and medical meal specialist
I’ve had mixed feelings so far with AI. It has been like having a sous chef by my side or a senior chef, in that I could just ask questions. As AI develops to be more analytical, it will only become [better], so chefs can use it as a tool or just steal ideas, as many young people are doing now.
It’s been said in our industry that no original recipes exist anywhere anymore. I fundamentally disagree. With AI, I can ask if certain flavors will work before I even create a recipe for a client. If I have a vision, I can just ask it to create a visualization in the form of an image to see if it may look the way I envision it. It makes a cook’s job look easy by providing an image or a recipe in seconds. Most importantly, it helps me by asking questions about my thoughts when it comes to new recipe ideas. This can be a blessing and a curse.
Even if AI generates ideas, as I’ve seen with some chefs in the private culinary sector, it’s still up to the individual chef to season properly and cook well. Certainly, AI recipes and pictures look fake, and oftentimes, the measurements are off. However, humans must use their ability of taste. Chefs must also use their career experience to determine if the recipe is off (AI recipes are way off most times).
The future is bright for AI usage within the kitchen. I, for one, look forward to adjusting and using it for years to come to help me with my thoughts on recipes.
One last thing that I’d like to add is that it helps me convert recipes from other countries into Western-style recipes through measurements. Again, I currently take its suggestions with a grain of salt because it is still a very young technology, but I can always visualize and discern this information.
Chef Tom Favorule (Major Food Group, Banana Daddy)
Co-founder and seasoned pastry chef
It’s a bit of a double-edged sword. AI is incredibly accurate with numbers, but it’s terrible at catching human mistakes. If a recipe submitted has a typo that says '1 cup of salt' instead of a teaspoon, the AI might just roll with it, and it is up to us to catch it.
Think of it like a photographer using Photoshop. The AI isn't taking the picture; it’s just helping with the lighting.
Honestly, the biggest pro is having a sous-chef who’s a literal math genius and never gets tired.
By letting AI handle the technical 'grunt work' — the conversions, the scaling, the stabilizer science — I have more time left for the fun stuff. The flavor combos, the presentation, and the overall taste are all me. AI is just the high-tech coworker that helps me get there faster.
It’s this cool collaborative loop. I’m the one doing the tasting and the real-world testing, and the AI is the one crunching the data to help me fix the bugs. It hasn't replaced my cooking; it’s just made me a much faster, much more precise version of myself.
Honestly, the biggest pro is having a sous-chef who’s a literal math genius and never gets tired.
When I’m deep in the weeds with a soft-serve base for Banana Daddy, trying to nail that perfect Brix level or sugar-to-fat ratio, AI saves me hours of calculations.
It’s also a total game-changer for 'what if' scenarios, like, "How do I make this vegan without it turning into a popsicle?"
The con? AI has no idea what I want something to taste like. I’ll tell the AI, "Hey, this batch came out a little too icy, and this is what I put into it," and it’ll immediately spit back a new ratio for the stabilizers, fats, or sugars.
It can give me a formula that looks perfect on paper, but it tastes like nothing. It doesn't have a palate or know that I am buying the best chocolate or the finest vanilla beans.
AI is a great mimic, but it has no life experience to base the idea of a final recipe. It can scan 10,000 carrot cake recipes and tell you the most common ingredients, but it doesn't understand the culture behind the recipe. I use it to understand the mechanics, but I rely on my own taste and research to keep the heart of the dish intact.
Some of the quotes in this story have been lightly edited for clarity and grammar.