What’s for dinner?

After food blogs and Instagram, the next best thing to happen to tech-loving foodies are the millions of food-related apps out there. We sifted through them to bring you four of the best ones. All these apps let you mark recipes, save them for later or use their calendar to plan ahead. You can even create your grocery shopping list with ingredients from the recipe you choose – no more last minute runs to the super market! Whether you’re a beginner or a pro, looking to finish off some leftovers in your fridge or planning an ambitious dinner party – these four apps should keep you (and your tummy) pretty happy.

This app is perfect for ambitious cooks who like to plan their meals in advance and love shopping lists – because the app lets you do just that. Go through their extensive collection and bookmark recipes, or find recipes that use ingredients leftover in your fridge with their ‘Search By Leftovers’ Option – a super practical idea. You can even add your own notes to each recipe you try and there’s even a tempting ‘Nutrition Facts’ tab for each recipe – but this requires an upgrade to BigOven Pro, which is a paid app.

Like the app’s title, this one lets you create your own profile and connects you to other cooks who also use the app. The advantage is that you can see which user put up a particular recipe, and follow all their recipes, even message them directly – rather like a Facebook for cooking enthusiasts. The small details like instantly being able to change measurements from Metric to Imperial and being able to add a picture of your dish once you’re done, make this app useful and yet fun. This app also lets you flag recipes if you spot errors and add reviews as you go along.

This one is for all those people who find themselves going through a million recipes, unable to decide what to cook. The app lets you find a recipe by picking options in three categories – Dish (pick a salad or soup or breakfast, etc), Ingredients (pick a kind of fruit or meat or add your own custom ingredient) and Method of cooking (Over or slow cooker? Do you want it in less than 20 minutes or over an hour?). I picked ‘salad’, ‘legumes’ and ‘under 20 minutes’ and found about 25 recipes, of which eight I could really work with. For the really indecisive folks, there’s even a ‘spin categories’ option, which is pretty much like playing roulette with your dinner menu!

As important as it is to find the right recipe, sometimes you need a bit of practical advice to smooth things out in the kitchen – and this is where this app comes in. We’d all love to whip up some pasta but if you’re trying it for the first time, this app gives you practical advice – like adding a bit of oil while boiling to make sure the pasta doesn’t stick together. Or what to substitute when you’ve run out of eggs! Not to great on visuals and not the most intuitive app – but definitely one with practical advice.

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