What's New in the App: Cooking Together

Saturday Cookoff is really about learning to cook. Every week brings a new challenge with a new skill to try, and the recent updates are about making that weekly cook feel less like you are doing it alone. Here are six new things worth knowing about.

Check in on your group while you cook

Now you can see what your group-mates are up to while you cook. Open the challenge and, if someone from your group is cooking too, you will see their name and the step they are on, so you know your sister is still browning mince while you are already plating. You will also see a live count of how many people in total are working through the recipe at the same time as you. Strangers stay anonymous; they are just part of the count.

Comments live on the step where you need them

Every recipe step now has its own comment thread. Get stuck on one (dough too sticky, sauce not thickening) and you can ask right there on the step, then see what other people said when they hit the same spot. The box keeps it simple: ask a question, or leave a tip for whoever cooks it next.

You choose who sees each comment. Public means everyone cooking the challenge can read it, or you can share it into one of your groups, where it lands in the group chat too. You can also tag a comment with something like #gluten-free or #budget, so people can filter a busy step down to the tips that fit how they are cooking it. Comments from people in your groups sort to the top.

Read the whole recipe on one page

Some people like cooking step by step, one instruction at a time. Others want the whole recipe in front of them. Now you can switch any recipe to a long-form view, with the ingredients and every step on a single page you can scroll, read ahead of time, or print out and keep on the bench.

Tag your plate

When you post your cook, you can tag it with how you made it, like #vegan, #gluten-free, #budget or #spicy. Pick from the existing tags, or suggest one we are missing and we will review it. The tags become a filter bar on the feed, so you can browse every #vegan take on the challenge, or find the people who cooked it #gluten-free the same way you did.

The archive is open

Every challenge we have ever run now lives in the archive, and you can still cook them. Missed a week you liked the look of? Cook it this weekend. Your cook gets a small "past challenge" note in the feed, but it counts the same as any other.

Keep a weekly streak going

Cook the challenge each week and you build a streak, shown as a little strip of coins on your profile. It is weekly, not daily, because this is Saturday Cookoff, not a step counter. And it is forgiving: miss a week and you have until the next challenge drops to go back and cook the one you missed, which repairs the streak.

Make it your own

The thread through all of these updates is simple: we want the challenge to be yours. Cook it your way, make the swaps you want, and pick up what you can from how everyone else cooked it. That is the whole point of doing it together.