Last week we peered deep into the world of video apps, seeing what food bloggers and a professional kitchen could put together. Today, we crank it up a notch and delve into the world of celebrity chef apps. Can these outsized personalities kick it iOS style and prepare us a five-course meal of digital goodness, or are they jumping on a bandwagon and rushing out a digital soufflé, only to see it flop? Someone's in the kitchen with Dinah, that much we can say, so let's have a look.
If you know the rotund redhead that is Mario Batali, then you know what you're getting here as far as range of cuisine in High Five Labs Inc.'s Mario Batali Cooks! It's gonna be Italian, then a little Italian, and to mix things up some, a little more Italian. While Mario's speciality is somewhat limited (Italian happens to be our own personal favorite, so it's not a great knock on his approach), his app is slick, helpful, and feature rich.
We're Suckers for a Dessert That Uses This Much Rum
It's also definitely designed for use in the kitchen, so as we said last week, best break out your gallon-sized Ziploc before you get out the mixing bowls. Fire up the app and the first important thing you encounter (other than the welcome video) is the navigation wheel. A dial with directions to Videos, Recipes, Market (terms and your grocery lists), More (bio of Batali), and Mario! where you can access bookmarks you've put in the app, your notes, and a glossary of terms.
Take a Spin on the Wheel and Visit Scenic Italy...And Their Kitchens
Tap on Recipes and a pane extends of a map of Italy broken up into colored groups of regions. Those with a number icon indicate places with actual recipes (tap a numberless region and you only get a brief history lesson). Recipes are indicated with pictures of the final result and a graphic showing how long it'll take to cook. Don't know much about the regions or don't care? There's also a menu that lets you sort recipes by course, by season, by things kids will eat, and quick meals. Tap a dish and a specific pane for it slides out from the right.
Wine With My Dessert? Yes, Please.
Videos are short, colorful, and give you just enough information to make the dishes. There are currently 62 recipes in the app and best of all, when you pick a dish, the ingredient list also tells you what makes a good accompaniment, whether that be pasta, side dishes, or even wines. And if watching videos isn't your style, the app give you the option of looking at some pretty pictures and following a text version of the recipe. Another helpful element we've not seen before is the built-in timer that lets you ensure you've been whisking those egg yolks for a full three minutes.
A Very Helpful Feature So You Don't Have to Open Another App for Timer
The developers were kind and savvy enough to provide a universal app rather than just a single platform, and the same levels of control follow you down from iPad to iPhone with just slight alterations in layout of buttons. There's no landscape mode in the iPad version, but they were clever to add it in the iPhone to give you a better view of the delicious pictures.
Jamie Oliver tends to have a similar focus as Mario when it comes to Italian dishes, but he does branch out into quite a bit more international cuisine. The former Naked Chef is here in 20 Minute Meals app form courtesy of Zolmo who also offer the freemium Jamie Oliver app that comes with in-app packs of recipes to add and 13 already installed. This app, however, offers up 60 recipes that were once exclusive to it and are now available elsewhere.
Mmmm...Stir Fry Goodness
The thing about this video app is that there aren't really videos of the recipes in question. Instead, there are step by step recipes with photos available for each step, then there are related videos of how to perform certain cooking functions. So if you aren't quite certain how you should go about slicing onions, Oliver's got you covered here. Most of these are short, though a salad tutorial, a steak cooking how-to, and a risotto instruction manual all top out at over ten minutes. You'll need an internet connection to download the videos, but these tutorials are chock full of good tips.
How Do My Pestle and Mortar Skills Stack Up?
Across the app's bottom are five buttons that take you to the Recipes (which are grouped by type, such as Vegetarian and Gorgeous desserts), your Shopping list should you select a dish, the aforementioned Videos, and a More button where you can turn off the sound and select your measurement metrics. There's also an Essentials section where Oliver will teach you what kind of equipment you should have in your kitchen as well as the differing ingredients you should always have on hand. The More button also includes a link to more recipes online, which merely opens up Safari and takes you to jamieoliver.com.
It's a Good List, All Things Considered
The recipes themselves are pretty tasty and, in fitting with the name, fairly easy to make. There's also a setting that allows you to up your recipes from two people to four, but nothing more than that. Interestingly, adding ingredients to your shopping list badges your app with the number of ingredients you need to pick up which is a neat, if slightly strange, feature. And if someone else is doing the shopping, email them the list, then sit back and wait for your supper.
Hey, Can You Swing by the Store for Me?
Do any of our older readers remember the recipe card fad where you'd subscribe to packets of recipes on oversized index cards? They still exist, but they were huge in the 70s and 80s. Well, clearly Random House, who put together the Nigella Quick Collection, had that in mind. Fire up the app and you're presented with a page that lets you select recipes based on moods, on what main ingredients you already have lying around, shuffles up what's in the app, or favorites you've already selected. Recipes are presented in Cover Flow style, letting you swipe through tappable recipe cards. Another browsing option is to find recipes from Nigella Quick's books.
I'm Feeling Sociable, But Not Indulgent
If you have a well-stocked Nigella Lawson cookbook library, you may want to skip this app. Sure, there are some videos included, but the video aspect of this cookbook may not be worth the money to you.
Across the app's bottom are four buttons. Recipes takes you to the main list, Videos has that library, Shopping is your list of groceries to purchase once you've selected a recipe, and More gives you a bio of Nigella, some notes, and lets you choose between US and UK measurements.
It's a Different Chef Who Says Delish, Nom Nom Nom.
What is especially nice about the Nigella Quick Collection is that it has voice control. This means while you stand there, hands covered in sticky dough, you can simply say "Forward" and the app will advance to the next step. Of all the features in this app, this is the one we most want to see replicated everywhere. Cooking tends to be a messy business and anything that can help us keep our grubby paws off our iOS devices is a good thing. There are also Nigella's notes on certain steps of the recipe, short audio clips where she offers a bit of coaching on what task you're currently engaged in.
This Should Be Mandatory for Cooking Apps
Like Jamie Oliver's app (though Nigella offered it first), adding items to your shopping list badges your app icon with as many items as you need to purchase. Check an item off your list and it grays out and your badge count goes down. The other thing the two apps have in common is that there aren't a great deal of videos in the app specifically related to the recipes. There are only ten videos for the sixty recipes, then there are a few cooking tips and how-tos. Sure, now that we know how Nigella deseeds a pomegranate, we won't be wasting our time picking out the juicy bits, but we'd really rather see a lot more videos of things like Corsican omelets.
We Get It, You're Pretty. How About the Food?
Also, we suppose this is inevitable since much of the Nigella marketing trades in on her good looks, but it seemed a disproportionate time during the videos were spent on her face, rather than the mechanics of what she's cooking. It's not that this displeases us, but we'd really rather have more cake batter and less cheesecake.
While Jamie and Nigella were the first out the gate with their celebrity chef apps, they also provide the least amount of content. While Nigella provides a few actual videos of the recipes themselves, Oliver's app is bereft of these and hasn't been updated in a year. Mario's app is newer, packed with specific content, features a novel navigation scheme, and contains more recipes in total. It's also the only app to take advantage of fitting to a universal platform, meaning greater flexibility for the chef. At two dollars more than the other two apps, it's a great bargain for a ton more content.
Ultimately, the issue with celebrity chef apps is that developers trade in on name recognition to drive sales as opposed to freshly developed content. It appears the price of fame is expected to be borne by you, the consumer. While Mario wins this round, you're far more likely to find value and an actual calendar of updated recipes by sticking with both of last week's contenders, Appetites and The Video Cookbook. Between last week and this, Appetites even updated to give you all 30 recipes for free with more in-app purchases arriving. Now you're cooking.
