Whether you’re looking to try out new recipes for fun or to impress, concoct the perfect cocktail, or simply give up and order delivery, the iPhone is the perfect sous chef for any kitchen activity.
Generally considered one of the best-looking and most helpful iOS apps around, Epicurious condenses the fantastic content from the popular recipe website into a handy universal app that offers more than 30,000 professional recipes at your fingertips. Among the listed recipes are selections from Gourmet and Bon Appétit magazines, as well as celebrity chefs and various cookbooks. The app particularly shines on the iPad, where the larger screen layout allows for ingredients, instructions, and photos on a single screen. Favorite recipes can also be starred for later reading, and the app also includes a handy shopping list feature for when you need a quick reminder of what you need from the grocery store.
Epicurious Recipes & Shopping List 2.2
Conde Nast
epicurious.com
Free
The easy-to-use Paprika Recipe Manager serves a number of purposes, whether you’re looking to document your more successful kitchen experiments, better preserve the tried-and-true recipes handed down from your ancestors, or simply keep track of your favorite found meal ideas. Not only is Paprika useful for inputting your own recipes from scratch—complete with optional ratings and categories—but also for discovering and saving existing recipes discovered around the Internet. The built-in web browser lets you copy a chunk of text and have Paprika interpret and save the info locally, which makes it a breeze to hunt down recipes and decide whether to save them in the permanent collection.
Paprika Recipe Manager for iPhone 1.0.1
Hindsight Labs
paprikaapp.com
$2.99
If you’re entertaining guests or simply need some new drink ideas, give Cocktails: Signature Drinks a whirl. Combining written text with a series of video tutorials, this app—starring a self-proclaimed “Master Drink Mixologist” who pours in the Bay Area—offers up directions and details for 24 completely original drinks, with recipes for 40 more included in the text. Whether you’re intrigued by the “Not So Virgin Mary” or the “Black Mamba,” Cocktails: Signature Drinks includes enough unique choices to sate even the most experienced bar patron. Though at $9.99 for this universal app, you’d better be interested in trying all the drinks to get your money’s worth!
Cocktails: Signature Drinks 1.0
Vook
vook.com
$6.99
The Food Network cable channel has cultivated an array of celebrity chefs and personalities in recent years, including Alton Brown, Paula Deen, Guy Fieri, and Giada De Laurentiis, and the In the Kitchen: Food Network Recipes app collects many of their top recipes in one convenient location. You can sort by chef—Emeril Lagasse has more than 5000 recipes attributed to him here—or simply search the archive. The app also pops up themed food collections; for example, before the Super Bowl, you could find a listing of appropriate appetizers, desserts, and 10 distinct menus offering dishes like Texas BBQ and higher-end tailgating fare. This universal app works on both iPhone and iPad.
In the Kitchen: Food Network Recipes, Chefs, Cooking Tools and Shopping Lists 1.1.5
Food Network
foodnetwork.com
$1.99
Other mixed-drink apps may offer more of an aesthetic punch, but we were hard-pressed to find anything nearly as comprehensive as Mixologist: Drink Recipes. This simple app is absolutely packed with drink ideas, including thousands of distinct recipes. We searched for “Mac” and found the “Mac Daddy,” “MacLaren F1,” and “Mary Got Hit By a Mack Truck” (among others), the last of which is a hardcore Bloody Mary. Mixologist also includes a glossary of bartending tips and terminology, a Liquor Cabinet menu that sorts drinks by what liquor you have available, and an UrbanSpoon-like randomizer that lets you shake the phone for a completely unique option. Be adventurous!
Mixologist: Drink Recipes
Digital Outcrop
digitaloutcrop.com
$0.99
If microwaving leftovers and baking frozen pizzas is the extent of your kitchen experience, it might be worth investing in Culinary Fundamentals, a helpful app that includes more than 250 brief video tutorials on a variety of subjects, including precision cutting and preparing fruit, vegetables, and seafood. You’ll need an Internet connection to stream the videos, but the breadth of the offerings is pretty astounding; if you ever wanted to know how to properly julienne a turnip, Culinary Fundamentals can help! Even if you have some kitchen know-how, these video tutorials and text descriptions can help you improve your skills and find new techniques to master.
Culinary Fundamentals – Cooking School 1.4
Futura Group
futuragroup.com.au
$4.99
Peapod’s grocery delivery service is a godsend for those without cars or folks too busy to manage a weekly shopping trip. The process of ordering from the service became tremendously easier with the introduction of this universal app. Using the same login information from the website, you simply sign in and start compiling your order, adding food and beverages from a wide variety of categories and even taking advantage of special deals. Though you’ll have to complete your first order on the website, future deliveries can be handled exclusively through the app, letting you fill your cart on your commute or whenever else it’s convenient to virtually purchase groceries.
Peapod 1.0
Peapod
peapod.com
Free
Let’s be honest: no matter how skilled an amateur chef you fancy yourself to be, everyone screws up dinner at some point. It’s then that you’ll need a delivery option on the double, and GrubHub is an excellent option for finding local restaurants and ordering from within the app. Simply input your current location and food preference and watch as the app compiles a list of all of your nearby options, all sorted by whether or not they’re open and delivering at that moment. Many of the restaurants GrubHub works with support online ordering through the app, letting you piece together your order and send it off without talking to a real person or using a web browser. Talk about a perfect dinner!
GrubHub Food Delivery 2.0
GrubHub
grubhub.com
Free
If the thought of a great home-cooked meal without a perfect glass of vino gives you the fits, the iPhone can help you find the right match, no matter the food. Hello Vino is a free option that lets you sort by food, occasion, taste, and region of origin, letting you easily pair everything from pizza to bouillabaisse with just a few menu taps. You can also search for wines to find pricing and rating details, and many of the featured wines include detailed write-ups and links to purchase them online.
Another stellar wine app worth keeping around is Drync Wine—available in both a free, ad-supported version and a more robust $4.99 pro version—which lets you search for wine and catalog your current inventory, wines you’ve tasted, and personal notes about each varietal. You’ll always have a convenient way to manage your wine cellar, and Drync Wine also lets you browse listings of featured wines and those most popular with other users.
Celebrity chefs have long had their own cookbooks, but dedicated apps are the wave of the future. When he’s not leading his campaign to rehab school lunches, Jamie Oliver is producing new meal packs for Jamie’s Recipes, an attractive, free cooking app that comes pre-loaded with 13 recipes and a couple of tutorial videos. The app guides you through meals like “Beef & Guinness stew with dumplings” and “Lemon & herb chicken with mash” with ease, though you’ll have to pay extra to access additional recipe packs curated by “The Naked Chef” himself.
On the other hand, the Mario Batali Cooks! app costs $9.99 from the outset, but it offers a wealth of content presented by the eccentric chef. More than 60 Italian dishes—from “Arancine” (fried rice balls) to “Crostini Toscani” (Tuscan chicken liver toasts)—are included, each featuring step-by-step text directions and a video tutorial from the man himself. It’s incredibly easy to find recipes by region, course, or season, or through menus dedicated to kid-friendly options and quick meals. Plus, the universal app includes technique videos as well as a glossary of Italian and English cooking terms.
