Self-Hosting Tandoor Recipes: Advanced Meal Planning

If you’ve outgrown basic recipe apps and want serious meal planning, Tandoor Recipes is the self-hosted answer. It’s a full-featured recipe manager built for people who actually cook — with meal plans, shopping lists, nutritional data, ingredient management, and multi-user support.

Where simpler tools like Mealie focus on quick recipe imports, Tandoor goes deeper with food databases, unit conversions, cookbooks, and a recipe editor that handles complex dishes with multiple steps.

What Tandoor Recipes Does

• Recipe management — full editor with ingredients, steps, images, and keywords
• Meal planning — calendar-based planning with drag-and-drop
• Shopping lists — auto-generated from meal plans, shareable in real-time
• Nutritional tracking — integrates with the Open Food Facts database
• Cookbooks — organize recipes into themed collections
• Multi-user — households with permissions and shared spaces
• Import/export — supports Nextcloud Cookbook, Mealie, Paprika, and more
• API access — full REST API for integrations and automation
• Mobile-friendly — responsive PWA that works offline

Prerequisites

• A Linux server (Ubuntu 22.04+ or Debian 12+)
• Docker and Docker Compose installed
• At least 1GB RAM and 2GB disk space
• A domain name (optional, for remote access)
• Basic terminal knowledge

Step 1: Create the Project Directory

mkdir -p ~/tandoor && cd ~/tandoor

Step 2: Set Up Environment Variables

Create the .env file with your configuration:

cat > .env << 'EOF'
# Database
POSTGRES_HOST=db
POSTGRES_PORT=5432
POSTGRES_USER=tandoor
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=CHANGE_THIS_TO_A_STRONG_PASSWORD
POSTGRES_DB=tandoor

# Tandoor Settings
SECRET_KEY=CHANGE_THIS_TO_A_RANDOM_STRING
ALLOWED_HOSTS=*
TIMEZONE=America/New_York

# Features
ENABLE_SIGNUP=0
ENABLE_METRICS=0
ENABLE_PDF_EXPORT=1
FRACTION_PREF_DEFAULT=0
COMMENT_PREF_DEFAULT=1
SHOPPING_MIN_AUTOSYNC_INTERVAL=5
EOF

Generate a proper secret key:

sed -i "s/CHANGE_THIS_TO_A_RANDOM_STRING/$(openssl rand -base64 45)/" .env

Important: Change POSTGRES_PASSWORD to something strong. Never use the default in production.

Step 3: Create the Docker Compose File

# docker-compose.yml
version: "3.8"

services:
  db:
    image: postgres:16-alpine
    container_name: tandoor-db
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - tandoor-db:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    env_file:
      - .env
    networks:
      - tandoor

  web:
    image: vabene1111/recipes:latest
    container_name: tandoor
    restart: unless-stopped
    env_file:
      - .env
    volumes:
      - tandoor-static:/opt/recipes/staticfiles
      - tandoor-media:/opt/recipes/mediafiles
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    depends_on:
      - db
    networks:
      - tandoor

volumes:
  tandoor-db:
  tandoor-static:
  tandoor-media:

networks:
  tandoor:

Step 4: Deploy

docker compose up -d

Wait about 30 seconds for the database to initialize and migrations to run:

docker compose logs -f web

Look for Listening at: http://0.0.0.0:8080. Once you see that, Tandoor is ready.

Step 5: Create Your Admin Account

Open your browser to http://YOUR_SERVER_IP:8080 and you’ll see the setup screen. Create your superuser account — this is your admin login.

If the setup screen doesn’t appear, create the account via CLI:

docker compose exec web python manage.py createsuperuser

Step 6: Initial Configuration

Once logged in:

1. Go to Settings → Space Settings — configure your default space name
2. Set up food database — navigate to Admin → Open Data and import the food database for nutritional info
3. Configure units — Tandoor comes with defaults, but you can customize unit conversions under Admin → Units
4. Invite household members — go to Space Settings → Invite Links to generate invite URLs

Importing Existing Recipes

Tandoor can import from several formats. Go to Import/Export in the sidebar:

From URLs

Paste any recipe URL and Tandoor will scrape it:

It uses the Recipe Schema standard — most major cooking sites are supported.

From Other Apps

Tandoor supports importing from:

• Mealie — JSON export
• Nextcloud Cookbook — direct import
• Paprika — .paprikarecipes files
• Chowdown — markdown files
• RecipeSage — JSON export

Go to Import/Export → select your source format → upload.

Setting Up Meal Plans

This is where Tandoor really shines:

1. Navigate to Meal Plan in the sidebar
2. Click any day to add a meal
3. Select the meal type (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack — or create custom types)
4. Search and pick a recipe
5. Set servings to auto-scale ingredients

The meal plan view shows your entire week. Drag recipes between days to rearrange.

Auto-generating Shopping Lists

Once your meal plan is set:

1. Go to Shopping List
2. Click “From Meal Plan”
3. Select the date range
4. Tandoor generates a combined ingredient list, merging duplicates and converting units

The shopping list is real-time — share it with household members and check items off together from different devices.

Nutritional Tracking

To enable nutritional info:

1. Go to Admin → Open Data
2. Click Import to load the Open Food Facts database
3. Now when editing recipes, you can link ingredients to food database entries
4. Tandoor auto-calculates calories, macros, and micronutrients per serving

This works best when you link your commonly used ingredients once — after that, every recipe using those ingredients gets automatic nutritional data.

Reverse Proxy Setup (Optional)

For HTTPS access with Nginx:

server {
    listen 443 ssl;
    server_name recipes.yourdomain.com;

    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/recipes.yourdomain.com/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/recipes.yourdomain.com/privkey.pem;

    client_max_body_size 128M;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    }
}

Update your .env to restrict the allowed host:

ALLOWED_HOSTS=recipes.yourdomain.com

Then restart: docker compose restart web

Backups

Back up the database and media files:

# Database dump
docker compose exec db pg_dump -U tandoor tandoor > backup-$(date +%Y%m%d).sql

# Media files
docker compose cp web:/opt/recipes/mediafiles ./media-backup/

Automate this with a cron job:

0 3 * * * cd ~/tandoor && docker compose exec -T db pg_dump -U tandoor tandoor > backups/tandoor-$(date +\%Y\%m\%d).sql

Troubleshooting

“502 Bad Gateway” after startup

The web container is still initializing. Wait 60 seconds and try again. Check logs with docker compose logs web.

Recipes not importing from URL

Some sites block scraping. Try:

• Using a different browser’s user agent
• Manually creating the recipe and pasting ingredients
• Check if the site uses Recipe Schema markup (most major sites do)

Images not loading

Check that the media volume is mounted correctly:

docker compose exec web ls -la /opt/recipes/mediafiles/

If empty, the volume mount may have failed. Recreate with docker compose down && docker compose up -d.

Database connection errors

Ensure the database container is healthy:

docker compose exec db pg_isready -U tandoor

If not ready, check logs: docker compose logs db

Tandoor vs Mealie

Pick Mealie if you want quick setup and basic recipe storage. Pick Tandoor if you want serious meal planning, nutritional tracking, and multi-user kitchens.

Conclusion

Tandoor Recipes is the most feature-complete self-hosted recipe manager available. The PostgreSQL backend makes it solid for households, the nutritional integration helps with diet tracking, and the real-time shopping lists are genuinely useful.

Start with importing your existing recipes, build a week’s meal plan, and generate your first shopping list. Once the workflow clicks, you’ll wonder how you managed without it.

Useful links:

• Tandoor Recipes GitHub
• Official Documentation
• Open Food Facts