How We Create and Test Recipes
Last updated: January 2026
Recipes at UseThis Kitchen are developed with the help of AI tools and reviewed and tested by Marie Lavigne. We think the honest version of how content gets made is more useful to readers than the polished version, so here it is in detail.
How a recipe gets to the site
- Concept. We start with an ingredient or constraint, "what works with leftover rice and an egg?". And identify gaps in our existing coverage.
- Draft with AI assistance. We use AI tools to speed up the structural parts: ingredient lists, basic technique scaffolding, internal cross-linking, schema markup. This is where AI is useful and honest.
- Human review and test. Every recipe is cooked at least once in a real home kitchen, with the equipment most readers actually own. We measure, we time, we taste at the end. Quantities, times, and instructions get rewritten based on what actually happened.
- Edit pass. The intro, technique notes, and substitutions are written or rewritten by hand. Voice and accuracy matter more than speed.
- Publish. If a recipe doesn't actually work in real life, it doesn't go up.
What we don't do
- Publish AI-generated text without a human cook reviewing the recipe.
- Make health, weight-loss, or medical claims. Our angle is money and anti-waste.
- Run paid reviews or sponsored recipes without clearly disclosing them.
- Buy or fabricate testimonials.
Updates and corrections
If a reader tells us something doesn't work, we re-test and update the page. Material changes get noted with a "last updated" date. If we make a meaningful error (an ingredient ratio that doesn't work, a missing step), we fix it and add a correction note.
Cost-per-serving estimates
Cost estimates are based on grocery prices at mid-tier North American supermarkets at the time of writing. They will be wrong for your store, your country, and the date you read this. Treat them as a relative guide, not a budget tool.
Affiliate links
We don't currently use affiliate links. If that changes, links will be marked clearly and we'll add a disclosure to this page.
Author
Recipes are reviewed by Marie Lavigne. For questions about a specific recipe, email hello@usethiskitchen.com.