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Belka Food is a recipe builder and social network for anyone who cooks professionally or simply cares about precision in the kitchen. The site recalculates a recipe for any number of servings or the weight of any ingredient, automatically works out calories/protein/fat/carbs and cost, tracks allergens, and keeps recipes in three languages — Russian, Norwegian and English. It suits chefs and catering businesses who need accurate cost breakdowns and production sheets; food bloggers who publish recipes and grow an audience; and everyday users who just want to cook from reliable recipes that automatically rescale to the number of servings they need. You can browse recipes without registering. An account is only needed to publish your own recipes, save favorites, follow authors and use the recipe builder.

The core features are free forever: creating and publishing recipes, automatic serving-size recalculation, nutrition facts, basic cost calculation, the meal planner, following authors, favorites. Pro unlocks professional tools: gross/net weight and waste % on every ingredient line, recipe components (reusable sub-recipes shared across multiple recipes), food cost % and sale price, exporting a production sheet to PDF and Excel, your own purchase prices for ingredients, event planning (banquets/catering), importing a recipe from a link on another website, one-click translation of recipes into the site's other languages, and access to the builder's AI assistant (build/edit a recipe by voice or text, recognize one from a photo — see the "AI assistant" section of this help center). Details and sign-up are on the Pricing page.

Click "+ Recipe" in the site header. Then fill in the title, description, category and cuisine, cooking time, number of servings (or pieces — cookies and patties are easier to count individually), and a photo. Ingredients are added one at a time: start typing a name and autocomplete kicks in, searching the shared catalog and your own personal ingredients. The recipe is saved as a draft automatically the first time you add a photo or save — only you can see it until you click "Publish". Nutrition facts and cost are calculated live as you enter the ingredients, no separate "calculate" step needed.

A component is simply one of your own recipes, embedded inside another recipe as a single "ingredient". A typical example: you have "Garlic Sauce" as a separate recipe, and you use 60 g of that sauce inside "Shawarma". Instead of retyping the sauce's ingredients into every recipe that uses it, you cost the sauce once and then just reference it by weight. Why this matters: — Cost cascades automatically: if the price of garlic in the sauce changes, both the sauce and every recipe using it recalculate — no manual edits needed anywhere. — No need to duplicate a long ingredient list (dough, broth, marinade) in every recipe that uses it. — On the recipe page, the component can be expanded — a visitor sees exactly what it's made of without leaving the page. How to add one: in the builder, click "+ Recipe component" (visible when Pro mode is on). Start typing a name — the site searches only YOUR OWN recipes (you can't turn someone else's recipe into a component — it's your personal reusable sub-recipe). If no matching recipe exists yet, a "+ Add ingredient" option appears right there, letting you build the component's ingredient list on the spot without leaving the page; on save it becomes a separate draft in "My Recipes" (the "Components" tab). Components inside components (two levels of nesting) aren't supported yet — only one level.

A recipe's cost is calculated from ingredient prices: the sum of (each ingredient's weight × price per kg/l/piece) plus the cost of any components. There are two price sources: Base price — shared across all users, set for ingredients in the main catalog (not every ingredient has one — if there's no price, that ingredient simply doesn't contribute to the total, and the cost is honestly marked as incomplete). Your own price — you set it yourself in the ingredient catalog ("Ingredients" in the profile menu), or right in the builder via the "price?" button next to a priceless line. Your own price overrides the base price and instantly applies to ALL your recipes that use this ingredient — enter your supplier's price once, and every recipe's cost recalculates. Currency is personal per user (set in your profile; the available currencies depend on the site language you use). You can enter a price in whatever unit is convenient — kr/kg, kr/l or kr/piece — the site converts it automatically for calculations. Cost is visible to every visitor on the public recipe page — that part is open. Food cost % (cost as a share of sale price) and the sale price itself are private, visible only to you in the builder.

Net weight is the clean amount of an ingredient that actually goes into the dish and is used for nutrition calculations. Gross weight is the amount before peeling/trimming/cooking losses (e.g. potatoes before peeling). Cost is calculated from the gross weight — that's what you actually buy, not what's left after prep. On an ingredient line (in Pro mode) there's a "waste %" toggle next to the gross weight field — they're linked: enter a waste percentage and the gross weight recalculates automatically, or enter the gross weight directly and the percentage works itself out. The net weight used for nutrition facts doesn't change from this field — only the cost does.

Not every ingredient has an exact amount — salt, spices, garnish herbs are often added "to taste". For such lines there's a toggle next to the unit field: switch on "to taste?" and the quantity field disappears. This ingredient doesn't count toward the recipe's weight, nutrition facts or cost, but it still shows up in the allergen list (if it's an allergen) and in the shopping list — just without a specified amount.

A recipe can be measured two ways. "Servings" is the usual mode (soup for 4, cake for 8). "Pieces" is for dishes that are naturally counted individually: cookies, patties, dumplings. In this mode you specify the number of pieces and the weight of one piece — on the public recipe page a visitor can rescale the recipe to the number of pieces they need, the same way servings are usually rescaled. You can switch modes in the "Portioning" block when creating a recipe.

The recipe builder has an "AI assistant" button — it opens a chat panel next to the recipe form. You can type or speak (a microphone button sits next to the input field): dictate the dish's name, the ingredients with quantities (or say "to taste" when there's no exact amount), and the cooking steps — the assistant works out what you said and fills in the recipe form right in front of you: title, category, cuisine, cooking time, ingredient list, steps. You can dictate in parts, over several messages — the assistant remembers what you've already told it in this conversation. If you open the assistant on a recipe you've already saved, it sees its full content and can give you professional advice — what to add for a better flavor balance, how to change the cooking technique, what to substitute for an ingredient. You can attach a photo — for example, take a picture of something you have on hand and ask whether it can replace something in the recipe; the assistant looks at the photo and answers directly, updating the ingredient list itself if needed. Once the recipe is complete (it has a title, ingredients and at least one step), the assistant asks — once per conversation — whether you'd like it translated into the site's other languages; say yes, and it gets translated and published automatically (see "Translating a recipe into other languages" in this same section). Available on the Pro plan. Every message spends from your AI balance — see "AI balance: topping up and what it's spent on" for details.

The builder's AI assistant (chat, photo recognition) is a paid feature on top of the Pro subscription — it has its own prepaid balance in kroner, separate from the subscription payment. Top it up on the "AI balance" page (linked from the profile dropdown menu): there are a few preset amounts or you can enter your own (from 20 kr), paid by regular card via Stripe, credited instantly. It's charged based on actual usage — the real cost of the tokens the AI model processed plus a small site markup, not a flat "per attempt" price. You're charged for any response the AI actually returns — including when a photo turns out not to contain a recipe, or the assistant couldn't extract a single usable ingredient: the AI still did real work and spent real tokens on your request. Only genuine technical failures are free — when no response comes back at all (network error, service unavailable). A voice message is first transcribed to text for free, and from there it's billed the same as a regular typed message — speaking instead of typing doesn't add extra cost. A single voice recording is capped at three minutes. Translating a recipe into other languages (via the button or through the assistant), on the other hand, never touches the AI balance at all — that's a separate free mechanism. To protect it from abuse, voice messages and translations are both rate-limited to a few dozen per hour — normal builder use never comes close to that limit. The "AI balance" page shows a full transaction history (top-ups and charges, each with a description of what was paid for), with pagination and PDF/Excel export.

The "Recognize from photo" button in the builder is visible before the recipe is saved for the first time. Upload 1 to 3 photos — a screenshot of a recipe from another site, a photo of a page from a cookbook, a photo of a handwritten recipe — and the AI extracts the title, ingredients with quantities, cooking steps and category, creating a draft that just needs a quick check before publishing. The AI balance is charged for the act of processing the photo itself — regardless of the outcome. If the photo turns out not to contain a recipe, or the AI couldn't make out a single usable ingredient, you're still charged: the request genuinely went to the AI model and spent tokens, the result just wasn't useful. Only a genuine technical failure — when no response comes back from the AI at all — is free. Available on the Pro plan, charges the AI balance based on actual usage (see "AI balance: topping up and what it's spent on" for details).

Belka Food runs in three languages — Russian, English and Norwegian. A recipe is always created in one language, but it can be translated and published in the other two — in two ways. A dedicated "Translate" button — on the page of a recipe you've already saved in the builder, next to "AI assistant". It opens a checklist of the two missing languages: tick one or both and click "Translate" — the recipe gets translated and published in the chosen languages right away, and the original itself gets published too if it was still a draft. Languages already translated are marked in the list and link to the finished version. Via the AI assistant — once you've dictated or typed a recipe in the chat and it's fully complete, the assistant asks whether to translate it into the site's other languages; say yes and you get the same result as with the button. Translating doesn't touch your AI balance — it's a free part of the Pro plan (limited to 10 translations per hour to protect the mechanism from abuse — normal use never comes close). After translating, if you switch the site's language version (RU/EN/NO), the matching translated copy of your recipe shows up in "My Recipes" on that version.

Nutrition facts are calculated from each ingredient's net weight (using catalog values per 100 g) and shown per serving and per 100 g of the finished dish. Components are handled recursively — the sauce's nutrition inside a shawarma is calculated from the sauce's own ingredients, not entered separately. On the public recipe page there's a "reference" feature — click any ingredient's amount and enter how much of it you actually have, and the whole recipe (including nutrition and cost) rescales proportionally.

The 14 official EU allergens (the same list applies in Norway) — gluten, crustaceans, eggs, fish, peanuts, soy, milk, nuts, celery, mustard, sesame, sulphites, lupin, molluscs. They're detected automatically from the recipe's ingredients and shown as a banner on the recipe page. If even one ingredient in the recipe hasn't had its allergens classified yet, the banner honestly warns that the list may be incomplete — we don't label a recipe "safe" when we're genuinely not sure.

Pro unlocks: gross/net weight and waste % on ingredient lines, recipe components, food cost % and sale price, exporting a production sheet to PDF/Excel, your own purchase prices for ingredients, event planning (banquets and catering) with a combined shopping list sized to the guest count, importing a recipe from a link on another website, and one-click translation of recipes into the site's other languages. Pro also unlocks the builder's AI assistant — you can dictate a recipe by voice or text, recognize one from a photo, and get advice on a recipe you've already built (see the "AI assistant" section of this help center for details). The assistant itself and photo recognition spend from a separate prepaid AI balance on top of the subscription; translating recipes into other languages, like every other Pro tool above, is free as part of the subscription. Everything else — the builder, publishing recipes, basic cost calculation, the meal planner, nutrition facts, following authors — is free forever.

On the Pricing page, click "Subscribe" and complete a regular secure card payment via Stripe. The subscription renews automatically every month until you cancel it. You can cancel on the same Pricing page — the "Manage subscription" button opens the Stripe portal, where you can change your card or cancel renewal. Cancelling keeps your Pro access until the end of the period you've already paid for — you're not cut off instantly.

With Pro, you get your own channel — a feed of short posts, separate from recipes. A post can have text plus either up to 6 photos or one video up to 60 seconds long (not both at once). Readers see the channel on your profile, can react and leave comments under posts, and your followers get notified about new posts. Go to your profile → "Channel" → "Create channel", then use the "Write a post" button. You can set a channel name and description in settings (the gear icon above the feed) — otherwise a default name is used. The channel is tied to an active Pro subscription: if it lapses, the channel stops being visible to readers, but all posts are kept and become available again as soon as you renew Pro.

If you have enough followers and published recipes (or you've been granted access manually), a personal referral link appears in the "Finance" section. Someone who registers through it pays you a commission every month for as long as they themselves pay for Pro — but not permanently: it's their current choice of "favorite author", not a one-time binding. Any user can change their favorite author at any time — on their own Pricing page, or on the profile page of any author in the program. The link only sets the STARTING choice at registration: if the person later switches to a different author, commission goes to the new one from that point on. Anything already accrued before the switch is not clawed back. The "Finance" page shows the whole funnel: link clicks, sign-ups, how many people currently actually support you (this can be lower than the sign-up count, and that's normal), your current balance and the full earnings history.

Accrued commission isn't transferred to your card automatically — you need to connect payouts once first. In the "Finance" section, choose your country and click "Connect payouts" — a secure Stripe form opens where you confirm your identity (a document, sometimes a selfie for matching) and provide a bank account to receive money. This identity check is handled entirely by Stripe itself — the Platform never sees or stores your documents or account number, only a "connected / not connected" flag. Stripe Connect doesn't work with every country — if yours isn't in the list when connecting, please contact support. Once payouts are connected, accrued commission is transferred automatically, with no further action on your part — usually within an hour of being earned. The minimum amount for an actual transfer to your bank account is set by Stripe itself (around 20 kr for Norwegian accounts) — if the amount is smaller, it simply waits for the next payment to add up.

The "Plan" section is a weekly grid with 4 meals a day (breakfast/lunch/dinner/snack). You can add a recipe to any cell (your own, a favorite, or found via search) and set the number of servings. The site calculates nutrition and cost per day and per week, and builds one combined shopping list from all the chosen recipes — merging matching ingredients and grouping them by category.

The "Events" section (Pro) is for banquets and catering. Create an event, set the guest count and price per guest, add dishes from your recipes — the site calculates the total cost, food cost % and a single combined shopping list for the whole event, exportable to PDF/Excel for the kitchen. There's an "Add to event" button on every recipe page — you can add dishes while browsing the feed, without opening the section itself.

You can register with email and password, via Google, or via Telegram (a login widget button). If you already registered by email and later sign in with Google using the same email address, the site links Google to that same account instead of creating a second one.

In your profile you can set your name, photo, a short bio, and social media links (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat) — they appear as icons on your public author page. The same page lets you choose the currency used for ingredient prices and cost (the available currencies depend on the site language you're using).

Belka Food is a progressive web app (PWA) — you can install it on your phone like a regular app, without the App Store or Google Play. Open the site in your phone's browser → browser menu → "Add to Home screen" (Android) or "Add to Home Screen" (iPhone, via the Share button in Safari). An icon appears on your home screen, and the site opens in full-screen mode without the browser's address bar.

On the recipe page, the "Shopping list" button shows the ingredients already rescaled to the current serving size; checked-off items are saved in your browser and survive a page reload. "Cooking mode" opens a large, full-screen step-by-step view — handy in the kitchen, and the screen stays on while cooking (where the browser supports it).