There’s simply no escape from the world of cooking these days. Whether it be TV ads with celebrity endorsements, Masterchef programmes or recipe websites, there is now no excuse for those who claim they “can’t cook”.
Indeed, the development of “cooking apps” for mobile phones is another step in the same direction. Forget standing in your kitchen, with your trusty recipe book covered in flour/egg/sugar (or whatever!). Modern cooking now revolves around our trusty mobiles, propped up in the kitchen as a step by step guide and even photographs for reference. So with this in mind, I decided to research the best cooking apps out there. I might even rustle up something new for dinner!
1) Jamie Oliver’s 20 minute meals app
The idea of this app is that it will teach you to cook several different meals, each one in around 20 minutes. There are around 60 recipes in easy steps with step-by-step photos as well as a shopping list feature. Plus you can see videos of Jamie Oliver with useful tips, tricks and kitchen skills from sharpening a knife to chopping an onion.
2) Ask the Butcher app
Ask The Butcher is an educational and handy meat-cooking application. It offers features such as photographs of meat dishes and over 30 exclusive meat-based recipes. A handy cooking timer is also included – pick the weight, how well done you want the meat cooked and the app will guide you through the cooking process. You can also learn about your favourite cuts of meat and where they come from.
3) Martha’s Everyday Food app
From Martha Stewart, this app provides recipes that are simple to prepare, seasonal, and family friendly. You can also create and manage shopping lists, use barcodes to identify your ingredients and even share recipes with family and friends. It also allows you to meal ideas on Facebook or twitter.
4) Dishy app
This app makes sure that you never over cook your food by working out when to turn it off – simple!
6) How to Cook Everything app
New York Times columnist Mark Bittman’s app includes around 2,000 recipes as well as shopping lists, timers and integration with Facebook and Twitter. Applications like this are also great for those on a no carb diet.
7) Wine Ratings Guide app
So not only are there a zillion apps for food, but now there are apps designed to help you to choose the accompanying wine too! This app helps you choose that great bottle of wine by searching their two million wine database by name, price, grape varietal, food pairing, flavour profile, region, producer, and designation.
8) Beer Ratings Guide app
Not content with assisting with wine selection, you can now get an app for picking the best beers! This app has a 100,000 beer database by name, price, style, food pairing, flavour profile, region, producer, and designation. You can also review beers on there for other users to refer to.
9) Kitchen Calculator PRO app
This application helps with converting recipe measurements, e.g from metric to imperial. It will also let you scale up or down the quantities in a recipe, should you wish to cook a lasagne for four for two, or a four serving cake for seven.
10) Pair it app
Another one for helping with complementary wine and food, this app also gives hints as to the wine’s qualities and suitability for the meal – ideal for even the most ignorant cook.
Jo writes for a number of food blogs on the topic of weight loss diets, from vegan to meat.
