Start Cooking
Follow a focused, synchronized cooking guide from a recipe or from scratch.
Start Cooking turns a saved recipe into a focused guide with four stages: Plan, Gather, Prep, and Cook. It keeps the information needed right now close at hand while the saved recipe remains the source of truth.
You can also choose Cook From Scratch when you do not have a saved recipe. Record ingredients, amounts, timing, and other observations with Cooking Notes, then review the recipe draft Sparky Cooks prepares when you finish.
Open Start Cooking
- Open a recipe.
- Choose Start Cooking.
- If Sparky Cooks needs to prepare or refresh the cooking guide, keep the recipe open while the current preparation step is shown.
- Begin with Plan, or choose another stage when you already know where you want to start.
The first opening can take longer for an existing or detailed recipe. A current guide is reused until cooking-related recipe content changes.
If an active Cooking Session already exists, choose whether to continue it or start a separate session. Continuing lets you move between the web, iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV without losing the current stage, checklist marks, step, Cooking Notes, or timer state.
Cook From Scratch
Choose Cook From Scratch from the cooking-session area when you want to cook without a saved recipe. The session opens directly in Cook. Use Note This to capture enough detail to make the recipe useful, including ingredients, amounts, techniques, temperatures, timing, and changes you make.
When you finish, review the generated recipe draft before accepting it. Cooking from scratch requires available Cooking Assistant allowance because preparing the recipe draft is an essential part of the workflow.
What the Guide Uses
Sparky Cooks derives a cooking guide from the saved recipe. Depending on what the recipe contains, the guide can organize:
- Ingredients and ingredient sections.
- Important equipment.
- Preparation tasks.
- Cooking steps and phases.
- Ingredients and equipment used by a particular step.
- Times, temperatures, servings, and warnings.
Generated guidance can be incomplete when the original recipe is unclear. Always check the saved recipe when a warning appears or something important seems to be missing.
The Recipe Does Not Change
Moving through Start Cooking does not rewrite ingredients, directions, or other recipe content. Checkmarks, Cooking Notes, the current stage, and the current cooking step belong to the Cooking Session, not to the recipe.
When you choose Finish, Sparky Cooks may offer proposed changes based on your Cooking Notes. The saved recipe changes only if you review the result and explicitly choose an action such as Update Recipe.