The Souschef

Stop scrolling, start cooking. SousChef uses AI to extract recipes from social media videos and websites, organizing them into a hands-free, voice-controlled digital cookbook.

Comment

Inspiration

We've all been there: you see a delicious recipe on TikTok or Instagram, save it, and... never cook it. Or when you do, you're constantly scrubbing through the video with messy hands trying to find the next step. I wanted to bridge the gap between inspiration and action. I built SousChef to take the chaos of social media food content and turn it into a structured, calm, and helpful cooking experience.

What it does

SousChef is a comprehensive kitchen companion:

  • Magic Import: Paste a link from TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, or any recipe blog. Our Gemini-powered AI extracts the ingredients, steps, and timings instantly.
  • Voice Control: "Hey SousChef, what's the next step?" Cook without touching your phone.
  • Smart Timers: Automatically detects cooking times in steps and sets parallel timers.
  • Pantry & Shopping: Tracks what you have and generates shopping lists for what you need.
  • Pro Chef Mode: revenue-generating features for power users, managed via RevenueCat.

How we built it

The app is built with React Native (Expo) for a cross-platform native experience.

  • AI & Logic: We use Google Gemini 1.5 Flash for the heavy lifting—analyzing video content, parsing unstructured text, and understanding natural language voice commands.
  • Backend: Firebase handles authentication and real-time database syncing.
  • Monetization: We integrated RevenueCat to seamlessly handle in-app subscriptions ("SousChef Pro"), making it dead simple to monetize features like unlimited AI imports and cloud backups.
  • Voice: Integrated react-native-voice for real-time speech recognition.

Challenges we ran into

Extracting recipes from short-form video (TikTok/Reels) was incredibly difficult because creators often don't speak usage instructions clearly. We had to fine-tune our prompts with Gemini 3 Flash to look at the visuals of the cooking process to fill in the gaps left by the audio.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Achieving a near 100% success rate on extracting interpretable recipes from "messy" social media sources. Building a truly hands-free voice navigation system that actually understands context. Seamlessly integrating RevenueCat; it took less than an hour to set up the entire paywall and entitlement system, which usually takes days.

What we learned

We learned that AI is not just a text processor; it's a structural translator. The ability to turn a chaotic video into a structured JSON object is a game-changer for utility apps. We also learned the value of tools like RevenueCat that abstract away the pain of mobile infrastructure, letting us look at the "fun" parts of building.

What's next for SousChef

  • Social Sharing: Share your modified "remixed" recipes with friends.
  • Meal Planning AI: suggestive meal plans based on your pantry inventory (to reduce food waste).
  • Apple Watch App: For an even more unobtrusive timer experience.

Built With

Share this project:

Updates