Cooking with AI: "How I hack recipes for my ADHD brain"

I love cooking, but it turns out I can’t follow written recipes.

Cooking has always been an enjoyable and relaxing hobby for me, but when it comes to recipes, I really struggle.

As a kid, I’d beg my parents to help me make treats from their cookbooks (yes, including the Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book) and was always in the kitchen with my nanna. 

By 8, I could whip up pancakes for a group. By 13, steak and three veg for my family’s tea. And by 18, I was cooking everything from roasts to curries in a cafe.

It wasn’t until later on in life (after many failed attempts at making new recipes from cookbooks I’d bought) that I realised everything I’d learned came from verbal directions, not written ones. 

Even as an avid reader – and someone who’s built their career in professional communications – I find reading new recipes overwhelming and hard to follow. For me, following a recipe I’ve never seen before feels like getting to the end of a page in a book and realising I’ve absorbed nothing. 

So the solution isn’t just “cook what you know.” It’s to make doing what I want to do more accessible. 

ADHD and following instructions

As an ADHDer, reading instructions can be difficult. Like, really laborious. Dense instructions and complex formats overload my focus and executive function, turning a relaxing activity into a frustrating challenge. 

When it comes to instructions, I need simple, direct language that leaves no room for interpretation. If it says do X, I do X, and don’t always think about Y or Z. 

For example, when I was 9ish, I asked my older sister how to make 2-minute noodles. She told me to put them in a bowl and put them in the microwave.

She did not explicitly tell me to add water – and that’s how I blew up our first family microwave... 

Over the years, when cooking from new recipes, I’ve missed key steps, like forgetting to add a main ingredient or ignoring marinating time. I’ve burned things by following the instructions without question, like reading ‘turn the oven on 350 degrees’, and not realising it means Fahrenheit, not Celsius. 

Come on, we’ve all done it... Right?

So, I created an AI Prompt

That’s where the idea for an AI prompt came in – to act as a translator, and turn unfamiliar recipe formats into something that feels familiar, and make the instructions easier to follow. 

I’m sharing it with you, so anyone, especially ADHDers or those with reading difficulties like dyslexia, can feel confident cooking at home.

Before we jump to it, here’s why this approach works:

• It reduces overwhelm by breaking recipes into small steps
• Improves focus with direct language
• Ensures you won’t miss crucial steps or timing cues
• Supports independence in the kitchen
  

My recipe for reading recipes

Ingredients: 

For this recipe, you’ll need:

• An AI tool like ChatGPT 

Your original recipe

• If it’s from a website: copy and paste the instructions 
• If it’s from a book, upload a photo.
  

Method:

These are the instructions I use. You can copy and paste them into your AI Tool or adapt them to your needs. 

• Translate this recipe into an ADHD-and dyslexic-friendly format, making it as easy to follow as possible
• Break up long directions and keep sentences short
• In the instructions, use bold for ingredients and include the measurements
• Use direct, unambiguous language
• Include the total time at the start
• List equipment separately
• Group ingredients by use or stage
• Explicitly state when to preheat or start boiling water
• Convert to metric measurements (Celsius, grams, millilitres)
• Highlight section breaks with lines or boxes
• Suggest tasks for passive time (e.g. while sauce simmers, clean, prep ingredients)
  

If relevant:

• Include a separate Notes and Tips section at the end of the instructions, listing all recipe notes clearly in bullet points.
• Add any relevant notes within the step they apply to.

Optional steps:

These extras can make your recipe even easier to follow:

• Provide an audio version
• Add emoji cues to support text tracking
  

An example in practice

Here’s how a Sweet Potato Soup recipe from RecipeTin Eats chef, Nagi, looks after using this prompt:

Check out the recipe

Serving dinner, with a side of accessibility

Cooking should be a joyful experience, not an overwhelming mess. After all, we do it every day. And this is what I do with brand new recipes to make them ADHD-friendly for my spicy brain. 

Wouldn’t it be cool if recipe websites and apps had a "translate this for my learning style” button? That’s what I need. That way people like me who love to cook elaborate dishes, but struggle with the layout of a recipe can still follow it.

It’s not a shortcut or a cheat, (but, like, if it were, that would also be fine). It’s just a different way. And if there’s something us neurodivergent folk have learned, it’s how to do things in a non-typical way.

We consistently redesign systems for ourselves to make them more accessible, and that’s exactly what this lil’ hack here does for me.

Have you struggled with recipes, too? Try this prompt with your favourite dish and let us know how it works for you by tagging us on social media @hireupaustralia