Must-Have Cooking and Food Mobile Apps

 

Gone are the days of leisurely thumbing through tome-sized cooked books in search for that perfect recipe.

Sadly, it seems like cookbooks are becoming relics used more often as coffee table books or as decorative pieces that simply adorn our kitchen shelves (although, I’m in the minority and still love to go through my cookbook faves: Homemade with Love, Silver Palate Cookbook and Small Plates Sweet Treats) .

As our lives become increasingly fast-paced and pressure-filled- with multi-tasking becoming the norm- many people are constantly feeling pressed for time.

Let’s face it, “pressed for time” does not provide any encouragement for those seeking to make homemade meals.

That’s where the food/cooking app revolution has stepped in to help support our on-the-go lifestyles and take the heightened stress levels out of cooking (folks, this includes meal planning, grocery shopping and step-by-step videos).

Now there’s literally an app for everything!

My mom used to sit at home and casually leaf ear through her trusted cookbooks for meal inspiration. I now find myself searching for meal ideas anywhere: sitting on a plane, squished on a bus, in line at the bank. And, at the same time I’m also sorting out my grocery lists and even purchasing these items with the mere swipe of my fingers on a tiny phone screen.

While there are myriad food/cooking apps designed for the most novice to the most experienced cooks, here’s a list highlighting just a few of my cooking app must-haves*:

KitchenPad Timer

Platform: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later
Price: $1.99

Take back control of meal time with the all new KitchenPad™ Timer. This visual kitchen timer that can be used to manage multiple cook times for your stove-top and oven. The convenient timer displays give you all the critical timer info at-a-glance. Never lose track of a dish you are preparing ever again! To help you become a more organized cook and improve time management in the kitchen.

Big Oven

Platform: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 5.1 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5
Price: free!

Take 250,000+ recipes (including all your own and recipes from friends), your grocery list and menus anywhere on your iPhone! With over seven million downloads, BigOven is the most complete cooking tool for getting inspired and organized in the kitchen and on-the-go. BigOven was named “Readers Choice, Best Recipe App” for 2012 and 2011 on About.com, and chosen one of the “Best Apps for Foodies”, “Best Apps for New Moms” and “Best App for Eating In” by well-known publications.

 

Dirty Dozen by the Environmental Working Group

Platform: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.
Price: free!

The health benefits of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables outweigh the risks of pesticide exposure. Use EWG’s Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides™ to reduce your exposures as much as possible, but eating conventionally-grown produce is far better than not eating fruits and vegetables at all. The Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce™ will help you determine which fruits and vegetables have the most pesticide residues and are the most important to buy organic. You can lower your pesticide intake by avoiding the 12 most contaminated fruits and vegetables and choosing the least contaminated produce.

 

 

Baking with Dorie

Platform: iPad Requires iOS 5.0 or later.
Price: free- The app has one free recipe with videos, and you can buy additional recipe videos for US$0.99 each. You can also pay $9.99 to unlock videos for all the recipes.

The Baking with Dorie app takes the recipe and images from a traditional cookbook and pairs it with videos to create the ultimate digital cooking lesson. You not only get to see some lovely baked goods, you also get to watch a video that shows you how to make them. All the recipes include text, images and tips, but the videos are extra.

 

Jamie Oliver- 20 Minute Meals

Platform: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Requires iOS 5.1 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5. Android.
Price:$6.99 Apple;  $3.99 Android

Cooking great meals on your iPod or iPhone has never been so easy. My personal fave: once installed, no Internet connection is required to view the recipes.

This app includes not only allows you to check nutrition details and essential kitchen equipment but also contains:

– 60 recipes with easy to follow steps
– Stunning step-by-step photography for every recipe
– 21 exclusive Jamie Oliver videos featuring tips, techniques and kitchen skills
– Beautiful intuitive design
– Handy, encouraging voice prompts and tips in every recipe
– Easy to use innovative interactive shopping list
– Comprehensive kitchen essentials guide
– Powerful browse or search recipes by ingredient or recipe type
– Shake for random recipe
– Toggle portion size by number of guests
– All recipes in both metric and US Imperial measures

 

Meal Snap

Platform: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5
Price:$2.99

Meal Snap lets you take pictures of the meals you eat, and then magically tells you what food was in your meal. Oh yeah, we give you a rough estimate of the calories you ate too. Food tracking has never been easier.

 

 

Foodily Recipe Sharing with Friends

Platform: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.
Price: Free!

Foodily is the world’s largest social recipe network where you can discover and share any recipe on the web, including your own. Foodily keeps track of all the recipes you love in one complete recipe box. You can get ideas everyday by following friends and experts like Wolfgang Puck and Cat Cora.

 

 

 

Epicurious

Platform: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later; Android
Price: free

Recipes from the award-winning food site Epicurious.com are now available on your iPhone and your iPad. Search more than 30,000 delicious, professionally created recipes from Bon Appetit, Gourmet, Self, and renowned chefs and cookbooks. Save your favorite recipes, and sync your Favorites list in the app with your online Recipe Box at Epicurious.com. You can also create shopping lists, and e-mail recipes and shopping lists to yourself and friends. Plus, get access to authoritative recipe reviews from Epicurious members.

You can use the Epicurious Recipes and Shopping List app on either the iPhone or the iPad. Whether you launch the app from an iPhone or iPad, you get the same robust feature set, customized for the device you’re currently using.

 

 

Mark Bittman: How to Cook Everything

Platform: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone
Price: $4.99

This first-of-its-kind app of the bestselling cookbook—How to Cook Everything® from New York Times columnist Mark Bittman—has 2,000 recipes, 400 how-to illustrations, and a host of features that appeal to cooks on the go.

Easy-to-use and flexible search capabilities, as well as the ability to browse recipes and reference information.

• Handy built-in timers, placed throughout the recipe steps, which run even when the app is not.

• Well-organized shopping lists that make it easy to buy ingredients—and whatever other groceries you need at home.

• Convenient printing of recipes and shopping lists.

• Cooking inspiration: Bittman’s Picks, Featured Recipe, Quick Dinners, and Favorites, which provide quick access to selected recipes.

• All recipe and reference content is embedded in the app, which means that you can use the app even if you don’t have a network connection.

• Swipe between recipe steps with a flick across the screen.

• Add recipes to the calendar app.

• Feed your friends: Integration with Facebook and Twitter allows you to share what you’re cooking with your social network!

• Email up to 10 recipes a month to yourself or to friends.

• Be global: Automatically convert temperatures and quantities to metric if that’s your preference.

 

 

Fooducate

Platform: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5. Android.
Price: Free!

Diet Tracker and Healthy Food Nutrition Scanner

Lose weight, eat real food, and track your progress. Fooducate grades your food, explains what’s really inside each product, and offers healthier alternatives. We’ve got the largest database of UPCs – over 200,000 unique products and growing. Fooducate’s scientific algorithms grade each product and provide simple, concise explanations.
Grading system developed by scientists, dietitians and concerned parents. Each product is automatically graded (A-, B+, C, etc…) by a scientific algorithm based on its nutrition facts and ingredient list.
Fooducate recommends minimally processed, real foods,that are naturally rich in nutrients and antioxidants.

 

 

Paprika

Platform: IOS, Android
Price: $4.99

Delightfully simple recipe management for everyone: from aspiring cooks to professional chefs. With ingredient scaling, grocery lists and meal planning, Paprika is the ideal kitchen companion.

Automatic Cloud Syncing

We understand that you want to cook with your tablet in the kitchen, manage your recipes on your Mac, and take your phone with you to the grocery store.

Paprika Cloud Sync allows you to seamlessly sync your recipes, grocery lists, and meal plans across all of your devices, so you can take your recipes everywhere.

Clipping Recipes Online

Paprika’s built in web browser allows you to browse for recipes anywhere on the web.

When you find a recipe you like, simply tap a button to clip the recipe and save it into Paprika.

Smart Grocery Lists

Paprika makes grocery shopping easy. When you add ingredients to your grocery list, they will be automatically sorted into grocery store aisles: Dairy, Produce, etc.

 

 

Cozi Meal Planner

Platform: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.
Price: Free download so you can preview the recipes, try them out, and see if they’re right for you. After two weeks, subscribe to continue getting a new personalized dinner plan every week and to update your preferences (if your tastes change, so should your recipes!).

**In-app subscription prices: $6.99 for 3 months, or $19.99 for a full year (that’s less than 40 cents per week!)**

 

Allows you to simplify the way you get dinner on the table. The app is available for free download so you can preview the recipes, try them out, and see if they’re right for you. After two weeks, subscribe to continue getting a new personalized dinner plan every week and to update your preferences (if your tastes change, so should your recipes!).

**In-app subscription prices: $6.99 for 3 months, or $19.99 for a full year (that’s less than 40 cents per week!)**

Here’s how it works:
• Choose your food and cooking preferences – main ingredients, food allergens, whether you have a slow cooker, if you prefer low calorie meals, etc.
• Every weekend you’ll get a new dinner plan of five simple-gourmet style recipes plus two extras.
• Add ingredients to your shopping list with one click.
• Use Cooking Mode to keep your mobile device from dimming (and the screen clean) while you cook.
• Give a thumbs up or thumbs down to recipes you try.
• Each week, Dinner Decider produces even better personalized dinner plans as it learns more about you!
• Put recipes you love in Keepers to access them anytime.
• See all previous dinner plans
• Recipes include nutritional information as well as points.
• You’ll get a free sample plan immediately, plus a new one over the weekend.
• Subscribe to continue getting new personalized plans every week. Isn’t a half dollar a week worth relief from the daily dinner decision?

Cozi dinner recipes were developed specifically for busy families by the meal planning experts at Relish! who specialize in creating meals that are easy, affordable and reliably yummy.

 

Disclaimer: I am simply curating these apps. All product description are from the itunes app page review. Screen shots, where applicable, are iphone screenshots taken from itunes app review pages.