Kraft’s iFood Assistant cooks a winning recipe
iFood Assistant that picking a starting point for this review is like choosing between steak or sushi for dinner. You’re happy either way.
If you like to cook, you’ll want iFood Assistant on your iPhone or iPod Touch. I love to cook and constantly watch the Food Network for ideas. With iFood Assistant, you’ll learn fun stuff such as how to be more creative with your meals plus the practical aspect of being delivered a recipe each day. That will help if you have no clue what to cook.
The iFood Assistant includes cooking videos, recipes for healthier meals, estimated prep times and recipes for appetizers through dessert. Other useful touches include help in devising creative meals for a few dollars, the ability to add custom ingredients to a shopping list and a grocery store locator, useful in case you need to pick something up (cheese, perhaps) before visiting friends.
Unfortunately, a network connection is required to use the iFood Assistant if you take it to the grocery store, a bummer for iPod Touch owners. You can download your shopping list before you go, and that’s useful, but if you decide at the spur of the moment to whip up something special, you’ll need an iPhone to access new ideas.
Regardless, Kraft cooked a winning dish with iFood Assistant.
How to Cook Everything an iPhone app not for occasional chefs
Wow, the makers of the How to Cook Everything iPhone app were serious when they named it. OK, to be honest, the cooking app was named after the best-selling cookbook of the same name by Matt Bittman. With 2,000 recipes in this app, you definitely won’t need to wonder what’s for dinner for a while, especially since it comes handy with a “quick dinners” function right on the main screen of the app.
I was a little overwhelmed by this app at first, so I decided to check out the “Bittman’s Picks” section. Um, “100 Make-Ahead Recipes?” I think not. How about five? Bittman definitely isn’t a fan of less is more. This is definitely not an iPhone app for the occasional cook. It’s more like reading the whole novel instead of reading the Cliff Notes.
The recipes are pretty straightforward, with an overview, ingredients, steps — and my favorite — a bonus category with variations. To truly understand the vast quantity of the recipes in this app, you must know that the recipe menu of this comprehensive cookbook iPhone app has its own menu. For instance, click on “appetizers” and then select from dips and spreads, crispy starters and many more. Click on “beans” and choose from bean soups, bean salads, beans in a pot, rice and beans, and so on.
The app is perfect for new and dedicated cooks with its detailed “kitchen basics” section, including tips on equipment, techniques, ingredients and more. If you’ve ever stood in amazement at the rice aisle in a Whole Foods Market, you’ll love the section that breaks down all the different types of rice, including flavors and uses.
The Betty Crocker iPhone app knows what’s for dinner tonight
I told the free Betty Crocker Mobile Cookbook iPhone app, through the meal finder function, that I had pork and beans in my kitchen and needed to make something for dinner. In response, the virtual Betty supplied me with 25 possible recipes to cook a scrumptious dinner, including Tex-Mex pizza, Asian pork salad, easy pork chili and even slow cooker taco shortcakes.
Then, with the app’s recipe search function, I tried to throw Betty off her snazzy cooking game and asked her to find me a dinner recipe with Chihuahua. No, not my pet Chihuahua, but the scrumptious white cheese of Mexican origin. Betty politely responded with two recipes: one for a double-cheese wheel and one for chicken chilaquiles casserole.
For a free app, this one is deliciously stacked. The “browsing by main ingredient” section also comes in handy when you bought a random ingredient at the grocery store and have no idea what to cook with it. For instance, Betty has 43 recipes on how to use up those leftover cucumbers that you hastily bought at the farmer’s market last weekend.
And, as if that wasn’t enough, the free app also comes with coupons. So basically, Betty is paying you to download her iPhone app. However, I had to take away one spoon in my rating for the app, as it lacks a grocery list generator.
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