It’s likely you have a pantry full of Campbell’s products, but you might be tired of all your standby dinner recipes. Campbell’s thought this, too, so it’s released Campbell’s Kitchen, an app for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
Like many other recipe apps, Campbell’s Kitchen features a searchable database of ideas. The app also features a spinner function, in which you can see random recipes by a shake of the device. You can also lock the spinners, which feature filters such as prep and cook time, type of eater, nutrition details or cuisine.
The most promising function in Campbell’s Kitchen is its bar-code scanner for iPhone 3GS and 4 users. Using the camera to read the UPC of Campbell’s, Pace, Pepperidge Farm, Prego, Swanson and V8 products will provide recipes related directly to the ingredient you have on hand.
My recipes didn’t have a quick load time over 3G, but I did like that Campbell’s considered that people would be using the app while they are actually cooking. Turning the device on its side displays each step of a recipe in large text on a swipe-able page, reducing eyestrain and ensuring that you don’t miss anything crucial. Campbell’s Kitchen does offer a Favorites function to save recipes you like, but, annoyingly, an account is required to use this feature. If you don’t feel like registering with yet another site, you’ll still be able to create and email a grocery list.
However, even with the user-friendly features Campbell’s Kitchen provides, this app still needs a lot of work. I ran into quite a few bugs in my testing. When using the dinner spinner, the app would give me the option to view all available recipes, but when I tapped that button, the app would give a “no recipes were found” error. Often the app would time out when loading content, too. Most egregious is the fact that Campbell’s Kitchen is only designed to show a maximum of 30 recipes in the Quick Ideas section, even when there are hundreds more available.
