Do you carry your smartphone or tablet to the kitchen? Yes, I know you do; after all, you don’t want to miss that important call or simply want to see what’s going on on social media while waiting for your meals to reach doneness.
But besides using your smart device to catch up with friends or business associates, you can make it your cooking companion. Nowadays, you can use your mobile device to get a recipe for any dish: American, Italian, Mexican, or any cuisine you have ever dreamt of.
Whether you are on Android or iOS, numerous free and reasonably priced cooking apps exist. To help you cut through the noise, I have picked my favorite to save you time and effort. So, let’s see the top 10 cooking and recipe apps I have chosen for you; they have been helpful to me too.
Table of Contents
1. Yummly
Yummly was launched in 2009 and was highlighted as one of the best recipe recommendations applications of 2014 in Apple’s App store.
This app can search by ingredient, nutrition, diet, allergy, cuisine, taste, meal courses, price, cooking time, and sources, delivering mouthwatering results.
Yummly collects recipe ideas from numerous sites like Food52, Allrecipes, and Epicurious, meaning you can rely on it for a variety of recipes for every need or occasion.
After finding a recipe you can prepare, you can include it in your personal list of favorites, and then transfer the ingredients to your shopping list. You can even shop for cooking tools from the app. In addition, Yummly features healthy and delicious plant-based recipes.
Price: a 14-day free trial with a subscription
Devices: iOS, Android
2. Pepper
With this app, you can find, share, and even appreciate delicious recipes as well as the resulting meals. As a user, you can easily go through recipes and dishes from people you know.
From this app’s explore page, you can see trending recipes from other users. If you find a recipe you love and want to prepare from the newsfeed or explore page, you can press the “save” icon on the photo. Your saved posts go to your profile's “saved” section.
Pepper is rapidly becoming a go-to platform for every food enthusiast seeking to share cooking content and interact with others about food.
Cost: Free
Devices: iOS, Android
3. Allrecipes
Allrecipes is a renowned recipe app among food lovers. This app lets you share your everyday cooking inspiration based on your favorite dishes.
The Allrecipes app comprises over 15 million home cooks who keep growing their library with recipes. To inspire each other, the food-driven community shares photos of recipes and outcomes and give tips on how to make the dishes tastier.
With this cooking app, you can save your shopping list, save any recipe that caught your eye, or search for those tasty recipes you have in mind. You can either ask the app to give a recipe suggestion based on an occasion or search for recipes by category.
Step-by-step videos and cooking tips often accompany good recipes here, and you can even filter out recipes you don’t like. Another amazing feature of this app is that you can choose a meal based on what is available at your local shop.
Cost: Free
Device: iOS, Android
4. Side Chef
Side Chef is not just your traditional cooking application for searching for meal recipes. This app lets you go through thousands of recipes with detailed instructions. You can search for your favourite recipe by category, ingredient, or diet requirements.
Once you sign up on this recipe app, you can get recipes personalized to your food preferences or dietary restrictions, plus frequent meal ideas created by Side Chef’s own cooking experts. This app takes it further by allowing you to plan meals on the application, taking just a few minutes.
In addition, the Side Chef app has built-in shopping lists to ensure you don’t forget to buy any item you need from the store. This app also combines socialization with cooking: you can follow food bloggers, favorite chefs, and other people you know.
Cost: 7-day free trial
Device: iOS, Android
5. Cooklist
This award-winning app features grocery store integration and acts like a food tracking app monitoring your purchases, alerting you on expiration dates, suggesting recipes, and ordering whichever groceries you need.
Just choose your favorite recipes, and the Cooklist app will add them to your grocery list. When some of the recipe ingredients you bought are almost expiring, this application will suggest recipes you can prepare with them to avoid food waste.
Cost: Free with in-app purchases
Devices: iOS, Android
6. BigOven
BigOven is a popular library of recipes online, and millions of users download it on their devices. There are over a million recipes in this application that you can browse through on your smartphone or tablet and prepare the ones that appeal to you most.
This application features a grocery list tool that allows you to choose your favorite recipes, plus detailed step-by-step guides on preparing the recipes.
Do you love sharing your cooking achievements? BigOven allows you to take photos of your personal recipes and share them with the people you know. Also, you can upload your very own recipes on this application.
In addition, you can create a grocery shopping list on this app depending on the recipes you intend to prepare.
Also, the BigOven app has a unique feature called “Use Up Leftovers,” enabling you to get creative with leftover ingredients instead of going to waste.
Price: 30-day free trial
Devices: iOS and Android
7. Epicurious
The Epicurious app contains 50,000 tried recipe suggestions for every curious home cook. This selection of recipes is from renowned brands like HarperCollins, Bon Appetit, Gourmet, and others and is continuously being updated with new entrants.
You can search by recipes or complete menus, for example, menus for holiday celebrations, dinner parties, or any other occasion.
This app enables you to create a shopping list and get the ingredients from the store, and it can even say how much everything will take to cook. Also, you can get expert advice and high-quality video guides on this cooking application.
Cost: a 7-day free trial with a premium subscription
Devices: iOS
8. Kitchen Stories
Kitchen Stories is a perfect package with multiple beautiful cooking ideas. The foundations of this app comprise an international community of food lovers and advanced cooks who share their very own recipes.
As a result, you will always find countless recipes to prepare in your kitchen and even some hacks to improve your cooking. So, whether you are a novice cook trying to master the basics of cooking or an experienced home cook, you will always have something new to learn on this app.
Most instructional videos on this application are easy to follow, meaning you will take little time to get a perfect grip on your favorite recipes. Also, this app’s cooking mode sees you through the cooking process by watching the detailed instructions.
Do you have exciting cooking skills or a cooking style you would love to share? You can share it all here. Also, you can create your cook profile on this application and save your desired recipes in a personalized digital cookbook.
Price: 14-day free trial
Devices: iOS, Android
9. Cookbook Junior
If you are looking for easy-to-follow recipes that will result in tasty dishes that even children will love, then the Cookbook Junior is a godsent cooking application.
The free version allows ads and features meal planning, recipe organization through collections, and offline syncing for recipe categories.
This app has two paid options that enable you to enjoy all the features of this app and do away with ads.
Since this app has kids in mind, the app is fun and colorful. Also, if you love cooking visuals, you aren’t left behind either since this app has a collection of recipe videos. And there is a collection of educational food content that you can unlock through a subscription.
This app features “recipes for your health condition,” seventeen diet options, and allergy considerations.
Like Yummly, you can see recipes based on the ingredients available in your pantry, though this is limited to three ingredients. If you don’t have all the necessary recipe items, you can include the missing ones in your app shopping list.
Also, this application's “coking mode” allows you to follow along with a recipe. The application reads each step for you and will let you go to the next step when you are ready. Indeed this kitchen companion has alot to offer to kids and adults!
Cost: Free with a subscription option
Devices: Android
10. SuperCook
The main purpose of this app is to find recipes based on particular ingredients. Once you enter the ingredients you have, this application will give you recipe suggestions for just those ingredients.
If your ingredient list is too short or contains odd items, the SuperCook app will show you recipes with additional ingredients. You can add your missing ingredients to the shopping list on the application, plus there is a favorites tab that keeps all your liked recipes.
Also, you can filter the recipes by cuisine, diet, meal type, time, rating, etc.
The superCook app reduces food wastage, plus it’s free to use and ad-free. With over 11 million recipes and 2000 ingredients in this app’s database, your family will be in awe of how you created delicious meals from the only stuff you had.
Cost: Free
Devices: Android
Let The Cooking Begin
Do you want to make your cooking simpler, more fun, and healthier? The top 10 cooking and recipe apps I have discussed above will deliver that and more. So, go ahead and download the app that will meet your needs and improve your culinary experiences. Then witness a new chapter of awesomeness come forth from your meals!