What does Recipe structured data do?

It tells Google the ingredients, steps, time and ratings of a dish. Eligible recipes can appear in the recipe carousel and gain star ratings and cook-time labels in search, which lifts traffic substantially.

How are cooking times formatted?

Schema.org uses ISO 8601 durations. Thirty minutes becomes PT30M and one hour fifteen minutes becomes PT1H15M. This tool converts the minutes you enter into that format automatically.

Do instructions need to be structured?

Google prefers HowToStep objects over a single text blob. This builder splits each line into its own HowToStep, which makes steps eligible for the step-by-step display in Google Assistant and search.

Is nutrition information required?

No, it is optional, but adding calories via a NutritionInformation block can surface a calorie label in results. Only include figures you have actually calculated to stay compliant.

Why combine prep and cook time?

Google also reads totalTime, the sum of prep and cook. The tool computes totalTime for you so the displayed total is always consistent with the individual durations.

JSON-LD Recipe Schema Builder

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Recipe markup that gets you into the carousel

The JSON-LD Recipe Schema Builder turns a recipe into a valid schema.org/Recipe block. Proper markup makes your dish eligible for Google’s recipe carousel and adds star ratings, cook time and calorie labels to your listing — a meaningful traffic boost for food sites.

How it works

The tool builds a Recipe object with name, image, description, recipeYield, recipeCategory and recipeCuisine. Ingredients are split by line into a recipeIngredient array. Each instruction line becomes a HowToStep object inside recipeInstructions. Prep and cook minutes are converted to ISO 8601 durations (PT#H#M) for prepTime and cookTime, and their sum is emitted as totalTime. When you supply calories, a NutritionInformation block is added, and a rating produces an aggregateRating.

Tips and example

Use a high-quality, absolute image URL — Google strongly favours recipes with images. Keep each instruction as one clear action per line. The duration converter handles the format, so just enter whole minutes. A two-step instruction array looks like this:

"recipeInstructions": [
  { "@type": "HowToStep", "text": "Preheat the oven to 180C." },
  { "@type": "HowToStep", "text": "Mix the dry ingredients." }
]