Recipe Schema Generator: Free Recipe JSON-LD

Recipe schema is the structured data that lets Google show a recipe as a rich result: a thumbnail, total time, star rating and ingredient count, right in the search results before anyone clicks through. This generator turns a plain form into valid Recipe JSON-LD, including converting your prep and cook times into the ISO 8601 duration format Google expects, without you needing to write any of it by hand.

What Recipe schema covers

The Recipe type carries a name, description, image, author, prep and cook time, yield, ingredients, step-by-step instructions, and optional fields like category, cuisine and an aggregate rating. Google uses these fields to build the recipe carousel and rich snippet, and food-focused AI answer engines rely on the same structured ingredient and step data when they summarize or cite a recipe.

Why times need a specific format

prepTime, cookTime and totalTime all use ISO 8601 duration format rather than plain numbers, so 30 minutes has to be written as PT30M and one hour fifteen minutes as PT1H15M. Get this wrong and the field is often ignored or flagged as invalid by validators. This tool takes the minutes you type into two plain number fields, prep time and cook time, and converts each one into the correct duration string automatically, while also adding the two together for totalTime so you never have to do that math yourself.

Ingredients, instructions and images

List each ingredient on its own line and each instruction step on its own line. The generator turns the ingredient lines into a recipeIngredient array and the instruction lines into individual HowToStep entries, which is the structure Google expects to display numbered steps correctly. An image is required, not optional, for recipe rich results, and Google recommends it be at least 1000 pixels wide or tall, ideally closer to 1200 pixels, using a 1:1, 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio so it renders cleanly across devices. Leave the rating fields blank unless you have real reviews to report, since Google's guidelines explicitly prohibit fabricated or estimated ratings in structured data.