I’m a creature of habit when it comes to food. At the restaurants I frequent I always know what I’m going to order, and at home I have a set rotation of meals. It’s not that I’m unadventurous. It’s just that I like knowing I’ll love what I eat. And my creative abilities don’t extend to the kitchen.
Ask me to write a short story before a recipe. My weapon of choice is the pen, not the pan.
To save money, I’m eating at home 90% of the time, and while I have my staple daily dishes, I love variety throughout the week, to keep my wandering tastebuds happy. (I blame all those years of travel. It spoiled my palate.) In the past, I’ve experimented with an artificial intelligence recipe generator, which can turn a photo of a restaurant meal into a recipe you can prepare in your own kitchen. Now I wanted to see what a tool called Recipe Remixes could serve up.
Recipe Remixes is a new AI-powered feature in food network Tasty‘s app, and it shows you several variations of classic Tasty recipes. You get three different renditions per recipe. You can also prompt it to make the recipe easier, more nutritious or more flavorful. Tasty is leaning into its community’s tips and tricks to help others improve their cooking and amplify community submissions via AI.
The feature launched in March 2025, via the Tasty iOS app, and it’s free to use. Recipe Remixes leverages OpenAI’s GPT-4o mini model.
Spin dishes like a DJ
First, I downloaded the Tasty app and created an account. It’ll ask you a few questions, like whether you’re a vegetarian and what’s important to you when cooking.
You can scroll through the recipe recommendations or use the search bar if you’re in the mood for something specific. Keep in mind, the app will prompt you to add ingredients to a cart to place an order via its grocery partner, Walmart. Simply ignore this if you’re just playing around with recipes.
I clicked on a recipe I probably have once a week (honey soy-glazed salmon) to see the interface. The strength of this app is the community tips and comments, as there are approximately 600,000 monthly users of the Tasty app. Each recipe has a video, photos, an ingredients list, instructions, tips from other people using Tasty and, now, the Remixes feature.
Given that I didn’t necessarily want to add more sweetness or citrus to my salmon, I prompted the feature to «make it more nutritious.» Here’s what Tasty’s AI tool suggested:
It would be good to see the new nutrient information, like what’s displayed in the original recipe. But I do like how it has a rationale for why it’s made specific changes.
Can AI make recipes fancier?
Next, I picked the simple scrambled eggs dish, to see how fancy Tasty’s AI could make it. I selected the «surprise me» prompt.
The twist? Adding cheese. Not groundbreaking, but delicious, I’m sure. I would’ve been more impressed with something unexpected, like a drizzle of honey.
I explored the lunch recipes but realized they’re probably too elaborate for me, especially on weekdays. Even though I work from home much of the time, I’m just not the kind of person who cooks a birria baked potato.
Can AI make recipes more nutritious?
I have a current obsession with anything ube, so when I came across a purple sweet potato latte, I had to try it.
I chose to «make it more nutritious» because I know these colorful drinks can be a sugar bomb.
The feature added protein powder, which I liked, but it removed the star of the show: the sweetened condensed milk. It also switched whole milk for the almond milk, which will probably create a watery consistency instead of that creaminess. I’m not sure, either, if cocoa will overwhelm sweet potato or work well.
I would’ve preferred a reduced amount of condensed milk, half the caffeine, and half-and-half instead of whole milk (maybe I’m better at remixing recipes myself than I thought).
Can AI make recipes easier?
I tried using AI to remix one more recipe: a homemade chicken shawarma wrap that I’d have for lunch. It’s cool to see a recipe’s popular tips for remix suggestions, like «make it garlicky,» «make it thyme-based,» «make it easier» and «make it more nutritious.» They were good suggestions, but I wasn’t about to make my lunch more garlicky. My poor wife.
I opted for «make it easy,» as I like quick lunches.
This was the original ingredients list:
Then, the remixed version to make it easier:
I didn’t love how it suggested a store-bought marinade, because the only thing that did was remove the need to use a bunch of different spices — most of which I already have at home. But it definitely made the white sauce part easier, by reducing the number of ingredients needed.
The verdict on using AI to switch up your recipes
Though I enjoyed the user-generated tips, the range of recipes, and the various ways to mix up a meal, I would’ve loved a little more customization. It would be cool to have a chatbot feature, where I could give feedback on the remixed recipe and get it to a point where I was happy with it.
I was also hoping to be able to input common meals I make and have the AI remix them, rather than have to choose from a catalog of recipes, 95% of which I’d never cook.
As with most AI features, it’s a handy tool to have for coming up with ideas, but I can certainly cook without it.
