Mealie: Recipes & Meal Planning

What You'll Build

Mealie is a recipe manager for the whole household. Paste a link to any recipe website and Mealie pulls out just the ingredients and steps. Then plan the week and get a shopping list everyone in the house can tick off.

Port: 9925 · Time: 15 minutes · Difficulty: Easy

What You Need

• Your home server from Foundations 1 (Docker installed, ~/stacks folder).
• Nginx Proxy Manager with your *.home.example.com certificate (recommended).
• Nothing special.

Step 1: Start Mealie

mkdir -p ~/stacks/mealie && cd ~/stacks/mealie
nano compose.yaml

services:
  mealie:
    image: ghcr.io/mealie-recipes/mealie:latest   # or pin the version from Mealie's docs
    container_name: mealie
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "9925:9000"
    deploy:
      resources:
        limits:
          memory: 1000M                 # stops it using lots of RAM when idle
    environment:
      ALLOW_SIGNUP: "false"             # only people you invite
      PUID: 1000
      PGID: 1000
      TZ: "America/New_York"
      BASE_URL: "https://recipes.home.example.com"
    volumes:
      - ./data:/app/data

docker compose up -d

Step 2: First Login

Open http://192.168.1.50:9925. Follow the first-run setup to create your admin account. If you get a login page instead, use the default admin credentials listed in Mealie's documentation and change them immediately under your profile.

Invite family members from Settings → Members / Invite so everyone shares one household's recipes and lists.

Step 3: Import Recipes

• + Create → Import from URL: paste a recipe page's link. Mealie reads the recipe data most sites publish.
• Bulk URL import: paste many links at once.
• Other apps: Settings → Data management → migrations (Paprika, Nextcloud Cookbook, Tandoor, and others).

Step 4: Plan the Week and Shop

1. Meal Planner: drag recipes onto days, or let Mealie suggest random ones with rules (e.g. "vegetarian on Monday").
2. Shopping list: from the meal plan, add all ingredients to a list — Mealie merges duplicates.
3. Open the list on your phone in the store (add Mealie to your home screen from the browser for an app-like experience).

Add It to Your Proxy, Dashboard, and Backups

• Nginx Proxy Manager: new proxy host recipes.home.example.com → scheme http, 192.168.1.50, port 9925, Websockets on, your wildcard certificate, Force SSL.
• Homepage: add a tile in services.yaml (how).
• Uptime Kuma: add an HTTP monitor for the new address (how).
• Backups: ~/stacks/mealie is already covered by the restic script.

Troubleshooting

• URL import fails — some sites block scrapers. Use "Create manually", or try the site's print view link.
• Links in emails/invites point to the wrong address — BASE_URL must match your proxy address.

What's Next?