MealDB Scraper - Food Recipes & Ingredients

Pricing

Rating

Developer

Actor stats

Categories

Share

Scrape meal recipes from TheMealDB. Search by name, browse by category or cuisine. Get full ingredient lists with measures, cooking instructions, images, and YouTube video links.

Features

• Search by name: Find meals by name (e.g. "chicken", "pasta", "curry")
• Browse by category: Get all meals in a category (Beef, Seafood, Dessert, Vegan, etc.)
• Browse by area/cuisine: Get all meals from a cuisine (Italian, Japanese, Mexican, Indian, etc.)
• Random mode: Fetch a batch of random unique meals for discovery
• Full details: Every result includes complete ingredient list with measures
• Fast: Direct JSON API calls, no browser needed

Output Fields

Input Options

• Mode: search (by name), category (by category), area (by cuisine), or random
• Search Query: Meal name to search for
• Category: Beef, Breakfast, Chicken, Dessert, Goat, Lamb, Pasta, Pork, Seafood, Side, Starter, Vegan, Vegetarian
• Area: American, British, Chinese, French, Indian, Italian, Japanese, Mexican, Thai, and more
• Limit: Maximum results to return (default 25, max 100)

Use Cases

• Recipe apps: Build meal recipe databases with ingredients and instructions
• Menu planning: Browse meals by category or cuisine for meal planning
• Grocery lists: Extract ingredient lists for shopping
• Content creation: Generate food content for blogs, social media, or YouTube
• Nutrition apps: Collect recipes organized by cuisine and category
• Education: Learn about international cuisines and cooking techniques

Example Output

{
"id":"52772",
"name":"Teriyaki Chicken Casserole",
"category":"Chicken",
"area":"Japanese",
"instructions":"Preheat oven to 350F. Spray a 9x13-inch baking pan...",
"ingredients":[
{"ingredient":"soy sauce","measure":"3/4 cup"},
{"ingredient":"water","measure":"1/2 cup"},
{"ingredient":"brown sugar","measure":"1/4 cup"},
{"ingredient":"garlic","measure":"1/2 teaspoon"}
],
"imageUrl":"https://www.themealdb.com/images/media/meals/wvpsxx1468256321.jpg",
"youtubeUrl":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aZr5hZXP_s",
"source":"http://www.ثقافته.com/recipes/teriyaki-chicken-casserole",
"tags":"Meat,Casserole",
"scrapedAt":"2026-04-26T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Data Source

• TheMealDB - Open, crowd-sourced database of meal recipes from around the world

Run on Apify

This scraper runs on the Apify platform -- a full-stack web scraping and automation cloud. Sign up for a free account to get started with 30-day trial of all features.

Try Apify free