Simmer For cooks Get the app

Now on the App Store

Someone near you just posted dinner.

Recipes from kitchens within 50 miles of you — the quantities, the steps, the photo of the bit everyone gets wrong. Written by cooks a few streets away, not a studio.

Download for iPhoneApp Store · free AndroidComing soon

On your laptop?Point your iPhone camera here and the App Store opens on Simmer.

The feed

Newest first, within 50 miles · filter by cuisine
  • Chicken biryani, layered the proper way @saffronfox · Camden · Indian ~4 miles128 reactions · 2 hr ago
  • Sourdough for people who work full time @crumbwitch · Hackney · Bakes ~7 miles64 reactions · 5 hr ago
  • Pad kra pao, one wok, twelve minutes @basilriot · Peckham · Thai ~11 miles212 reactions · yesterday
  • Sunday ragù, with the four-hour version and the one-hour version @nonnasrevenge · Islington · Italian ~5 miles39 reactions · yesterday

Free accounts see 50 miles. Chef Pass stretches that to 150, or watch a short ad and the feed opens to 150 miles for the next half hour.

The recipe editor

Write it the way you'd cook it.

A recipe on Simmer is not a caption under a photo. It has sections in the order a cook thinks — cover, dish, time, ingredients, steps — and each one is a real field, so the person reading it three streets away can actually make the thing.

  • Ingredients as quantity · unit · name, one row each
  • Steps with their own photo or short clip
  • Prep time, cook time, servings
  • A cover photo or video
  • A full cook-along video, if you want one
  • Notes, and nutrition per serving if you know it

Photos and videos come straight from your library. Simmer never asks for the camera or the microphone.

A phone photographing a board of tomatoes, chillies, garlic and coriander in a dark kitchen — the ingredients for a post.
A mascot, not a name

Nobody sees who you are

Design a cook — body, colours, hat, apron, the utensil in their hand — or pick a ready-made one. Your real name appears nowhere, and your handle is the only thing anyone else ever sees on a post.

Your street stays yours

A neighbourhood, never a pin

Others see a coarse label and a rough distance — “Camden, about 4 miles”. Your exact position works out whose recipes you see and is never shown to another person, on a map or anywhere else.

Reactions and tips

Love, Yum, Fire, Wow — then SPICE

Four reactions, one per recipe, switch it any time. When a post deserves more, tip SPICE: earn it by cooking, keeping a streak, finishing quests or watching a short ad, or buy a pack. SPICE has no cash value and cannot be withdrawn.

Also in the app

Eat in a way you can keep up.

Simmer carries a healthy-eating challenge built on Abbey Sharp's Hunger Crushing Combo: protein, fibre, fat, and something you actually want. It asks one question — what could you add to make this more satisfying? — wherever you actually are, at the stove or over the sink at 9pm.

  • No calorie counting
  • No macro tracking
  • No weights, no targets, no score
  • “Log it as it is” is a real answer
A bowl of rice, greens and a soft-boiled egg on a wooden table, lit by a bulb and a gas flame.

For cooks

Your recipes, in front of your neighbours.

You don't need a studio, a crew or a following somewhere else. You need a pan, a phone and the recipe written down properly. Simmer puts it in front of the people closest to you, and the ones who cook it send SPICE back.

  • Post the recipe, not a reel — quantities travel further than vibes
  • Put the dish in the title, and the trick in step three
  • Every tip on a post reaches the cook who wrote it
  • Share to Instagram, TikTok, YouTube or X — the photo and a link go with it
  • Keep the streak — the daily reward grows with it
  • Quests, XP and a leaderboard of cooks nearby

SPICE is in-app only today. It has no cash value and cannot be withdrawn or transferred. Paying cooks real money is what we want to build next, and it needs a payout system that doesn't exist yet — we'd rather say so than imply otherwise.

A phone on a small tripod framing a cook's hands finishing a bowl — the last step of a recipe, shot in a warm dark kitchen.

Get Simmer

Come and cook with us.

Simmer is new and the feed is still filling up. The quickest way to see the whole thing is to post something yourself — beans on toast counts, as long as it has a photo and the quantities.

Download for iPhoneApp Store · free AndroidComing soon

Free on iPhone. Please allow your location when asked: that's how the feed finds recipes near you. Photos and videos come from your library, so there is no camera or microphone permission to grant.

Android is coming soon. Want to know when it lands? Email cppingale@gmail.com.