{"id":10181,"date":"2026-11-07T19:02:47","date_gmt":"2026-11-07T19:02:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=10181"},"modified":"2026-11-07T19:02:47","modified_gmt":"2026-11-07T19:02:47","slug":"nyt-cooking-ai-assistant-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=10181","title":{"rendered":"NYT Cooking AI review: hands-on with the new recipe customization feature"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Around 7PM each weeknight, I find myself standing in front of the fridge, trying to decide on something for dinner that won\u2019t make my husband complain, \u201cChicken again<\/em>?\u201d Yes, I should meal plan more, but I don\u2019t, so this is where I\u2019m at. A nightly battle in which the chicken usually wins.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Recently, my best weapon in this fight has been AI. Between Alexa Plus in the Echo smart display<\/a> on my kitchen counter, the Samsung Food app<\/a> on my fridge, and even an AI-powered cooking robot<\/a>, AI has become my go-to sous chef \u2014 albeit one I need to keep a close eye on. It\u2019s helped me swap ingredients, generate ideas, fix things when I mess up, and yes, even cook better. So I was intrigued when my go-to recipe app, NYT Cooking, introduced an AI assistant<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Many, including some NYT Cooking users<\/a> and recipe purists<\/a>, are skeptical of this new tool (available to subscribers<\/a> on iOS only at launch), and I get why. One of the things I like most about NYT Cooking is that it features thousands of recipes from dozens of reputable sources \u2014 such as the New York Times<\/em> archives, restaurants, cookbooks, and food columnists \u2014 and real people have tested them. (I\u2019ve tried some purely AI-generated recipes and they were not good).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Another great feature of the service, which I\u2019ve been paying for for several years, is the reader comments. Here, I\u2019ve often found solutions to cooking dilemmas, like what to substitute for makrut lime leaves \u2014 there\u2019s always one slightly bougie ingredient in an NYT Cooking recipe that I don\u2019t have on hand.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"I\u2019ve<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

I\u2019ve used several AI tools in my kitchen and have found them mostly helpful.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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However, reading through hundreds of comments to find answers<\/a> at 7PM on a weeknight isn\u2019t always practical. And this is where I\u2019ve found the NYT Cooking assistant helpful. Among other things, it was trained on user comments<\/a>, and in my few days testing it, it provided practical substitutions and solid cooking guidance for the new ingredients. It also won\u2019t unquestionably agree to crazy requests (I tried!). As with all AI tools, it\u2019s not perfect \u2014 it almost made me put half the required butter in my cake \u2014 but as a tool, it is useful and feels like a solid application of AI. Importantly, it doesn\u2019t change the existing recipe; it leaves it as is and creates a new one for you.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It doesn\u2019t change the existing recipe; it leaves it as is and creates a new one for you<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The assistant appears in the app in a small text box on the recipe page with a prompt: \u201cCustomize this recipe\u2026\u201d From here, you type in a question to adapt it to your needs. This can be as simple as \u201cWhat can I substitute for this ingredient?\u201d to \u201cScale this recipe to feed seven people, and make it vegan and gluten-free.\u201d The New York Times<\/em> has also said the feature can suggest substitutions for cooking equipment and convert measurements; the latter option has been in the app for a couple of years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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1\/3<\/strong>

The AI modified version of the chicken recipe. The red highlighted words are what changed from the original.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/span><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Last Friday night, instead of staring aimlessly into the fridge, I turned to the Chicken folder in my NYT Cooking app Recipe Box and found a One-Pot Chicken and Rice With Ginger<\/em> I\u2019d been wanting to try. Only I didn\u2019t have chicken thighs or half the ingredients.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I could have figured these steps myself, but it was nice to have validation that my modifications wouldn\u2019t make the dish taste terrible.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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I typed my dilemma into the assistant box on the recipe page: \u201cI have chicken tenders, fresh ginger, garlic, rice, broth, limes, but no chard or cilantro or scallions. I do have green beans and red onions.\u201d Within seconds, it created a new version of the recipe, with a new title: One-Pot Chicken and Rice With Ginger and Green Beans. It suggested a shorter browning time for the tenders, cooking the red onion alongside the chicken, and steaming the green beans on top of the rice for the last eight minutes instead of the chard. Every change was highlighted in the new recipe under a Your Version tab, and I could flip back to the original at any point.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I noticed it hadn\u2019t adjusted for the lack of cilantro, saying it was optional. So I asked if I could use Thai basil, which I happen to have, and it agreed, highlighting how it would change the flavor. While I could have figured out a lot of these steps myself, maybe with the help of Google, it was nice to have validation that my modifications wouldn\u2019t make the dish taste terrible and nice not to have to swipe out of the app. The NYT Cooking editors say it\u2019s been trained not to comply with requests that will taste bad<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Weeknight<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Weeknight chicken and rice.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The resulting dish \u2014 which took the same amount of time to cook as the original \u2014 was delicious and got my husband\u2019s seal of approval (he just had the leftovers for lunch). It was very different from the recipe Yasmin Fahr wrote, and I can see the purists\u2019 point. But the rewritten recipe was much easier to use and produced a better dish than winging it with my own subs gleaned from the comments section, which I usually do with varying degrees of success.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I cook regularly, so I had a sense of what ingredients I had on hand that might work for the dish I wanted to make. But the assistant can also help if you have no idea what to use as a substitute. For example, I was cooking a Thai red curry and asked what I could use instead of makrut lime leaf. It replied, saying that grated lime zest would work, but \u201cit misses the deeper floral, herbal aroma\u201d of fresh limes. (See? Bougie.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"<em>I<\/a><\/div>\n
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