The 13 Best Cooking Apps for iPhone and iPad
“A recipe has no soul, you as the cook must bring soul to the recipe.” – Thomas Keller
A table is laid for the meal. Delicious dishes, colourful salads, exotic drinks, yummy desserts, cool ice creams and the art of display all combine our mouths to water and increase our appetite. The preparation of all these delicacies is done by a great cook. Commonly it is seen that women are experts in cooking but the top chefs in the world are men.
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With the latest technology and implementing of apps in our day-to-day life cooking can be more fun and informative when using such apps designed especially for this purpose.
Let us know about such wonderful apps for Android iOS, Windows Phone and Windows 8 Devices. They should be ideal accompaniments to your kitchen and serve as a handy digital cookbook to discover and organize recipes, track shopping lists and organize menus and meal calendars.
1. Food Network In The Kitchen (Android, iOS) (Free)
More than just a channel guide, Food Network’s In The Kitchen app (Android, iOS) puts recipes from the network’s celebrity chefs right at your fingertips. You will find plenty of helpful videos for the more special recipe ideas. Everything from brunch to kid-friendly meals is here, and you can easily add your notes and substitutions for future reference. You can search by chef or ingredient, view seasonal collections, import recipes, create custom shopping lists, and access useful extras like unit converters and cooking timers.
2. Allthcooks (Android, iOS) (Free)
Allthecooks is a combination of a recipe tutorial app and social network, providing with a wealth of crowd-sourced recipes ranging from everyday viands to fine dining. You can search for tons of recipes from main courses, desserts, appetizers, soups and variants, with filters for ingredients, ease of preparation and dietary restrictions. You can create custom shopping lists, participate in user forums or comment on individual recipes and even upload your favourite meals for others to enjoy.
3. Appetites (iOS)
Appetites feature clear, concise, video cooking classes that teach you to cook a variety of dishes. The video classes are designed for ease of learning, with step-by-step videos shot from the perspective of the teaching chef looking at the ingredients, allowing you to see exactly what’s going on all the time. The app already comes with a variety of recipes, but more are available as in-app purchases.
4. Epicurious (Android, iOS, Windows Phone) (Free)
Featuring more than 30,000 recipes sorted into convenient categories, Epicurious functions as an excellent recipe discovery tool. In addition to the recipe search and categories, Epicurious includes a digital recipe box for saving your favourite recipes from within the site and elsewhere on the Web, with your recipe box syncing across devices. A convenient cook mode on iPad and Windows Phone allows you to use voice commands to control the app, for hands-free navigation while cooking.
5. Allrecipes Dinner Spinner (Android, iOS, Windows Phone) (Free)
Allrecipes Dinner Spinner uses a neat spinner system for helping you find just the kind of recipe you need. A set of spinners allows you to look up the kind of course, main ingredient and preparation time you want to cook up. It has a set of recipes that fit the parameters, with detailed instructions and videos. In addition to the dinner spinner, the app also functions as a recipe box, shopping list and more.
6. BigOven (Android, iPad, iPhone, Windows Phone) (Free)
As part of a subscription-based service, BigOven offers up over 350,000 different recipes, each curated according to season, holiday, lifestyle, diet, and many other factors. Through the app, you can easily plan your week’s upcoming meals, as well as account for those special occasions when you want to cook up something extra exciting. It’ll even suggest what to do with your leftovers.
Recipe Scan is a tool that allows users to upload pictures of handwritten or typed recipes and have BigOven transcribe them for them (3 pages for free users, or up to 25 for paid). A $2.49 per month membership to BigOven Pro removes ads and includes a handy Web clipper in addition to other tools.
7. EatingWell Healthy in a Hurry (Android, iOS) (Free, in-app purchases)
EatingWell.com’s Healthy in a Hurry is a great source for healthy, tasty and quick-to-prepare recipes. Healthy in a Hurry focuses on recipes that can be prepared in 45 minutes or less, with the free app coming with a selection of 200 different meals and snacks that you can quickly prepare. Recipes are sorted into course categories, and you can display each recipe’s nutritional information, or search by main ingredient and time to prepare. Additional recipe packs are available as in-app purchases.
8. Evernote Food (Android, iOS) (Free)
The app easily allows you to save recipes found across the web into their cookbook for later perusal. Easily document every step of the cooking process with notes and pictures that are featured prominently on the recipe entries. A location and map-based restaurant view allow you to discover eateries, search by cuisine, and clip and save lists of those you’ve already visited. A “My Meals” section allows you to log your favourite dining experiences with notes, favourite dishes and your photographs.
9. Cheftap (Android) (Free)
This Android recipe manager does a great job at importing recipes from your favofavouritees all over the net, with a variety of tools for you to organize your collection. Cheftap’s built-in recipe scraper allows you to import from any website or blog, and it can even scrape all of the recipes from a Pinterest board, as well as from your Epicurious or Allthecooks recipe box. Users can tag and edit recipes. The app allows you to store 50 recipes offline or 100 recipes with a free account. A ChefTap Pro account also includes premium features such as unlimited recipe importing and cloud backup and syncing.
10. Basil Smart Recipe Manager (iPad)
This App acts as a kitchen assistant. You can manually enter your favorite recipes, or import them from a variety of cooking sites. Basil then helps you organize your recipes, adding tags-based ingredients as well as user-defined tags. Slick browsing and filters allow you to quickly find the recipes you want, and everything is stored offline. The app even functions as a cooking and shopping assistant, automatically generating shopping lists, smart-scaling ingredients and generating cooking timers based on your recipes.
11. Paprika Recipe Manager (Android, iPad, iPhone)
Paprika Recipe Manager is an excellent way to organize your custom digital cookbook. A built-in browser lets you easily search for recipes online and clip them into your recipe book, or manually type them in and edit them in-app. Once you’ve loaded in recipes, you can organize them into various categories and have the app automatically generate a grocery list by selecting recipes. The app also detects cooking times, providing built-in timers that you can trigger with a tap as you cook. You can even scale ingredients based on your desired serving size. Meal planners, a pantry log, and more are among the many features of this excellent cooking app.
12. Holiday Recipes & Party Planning Guide
Planning for a dinner party is fun but stressful. This app offers a classy selection of recipes ideal for entertaining guests. Over 100 minutes of HD-based video tutorials are provided, along with step-by-step technique guides for all preparation. It’ll even advise you on how to plan the event.
13. Forks Over Knives
Focusing on whole-food, plant-based recipes, this is an ideal app for those who want to eat healthily but enjoyably. You’ll be surprised at how far plant-based eating can go, and just what tasty delights can be concocted. The app provides over 180 ideas with step by step instructions for each of them. Grocery list functionality is also there, along with general tips for those embracing a plant-based lifestyle.
Any other left? Do write to us.