Favorite cooking app: the 6 best apps to help you cook at home

Best cooking mobile apps

Smartphones can be a great tool to help you cooking from home, with the help of a cooking app on your phone, as you don't need to print the recipe - or to take your laptop on the kitchen counter - to follow a recipe while cooking it.

But, with a very large offering available, it can be difficult to find the best one. Therefore, we asked the community what are their favorite cooking app and here are their answers.

Are you a cooking enthusiast? Are you using a cooking mobile application to support your craft, if yes which one? Or was it so bad that you stick with online search, or print recipe for convenience?

Sara Marcum: I like to experiment and use my grandmother’s cookbooks

I like to cook. I like to experiment when I cook. I’m a rebel who likes to go against recipes, especially after pulling off the recipe a time or two before. I have tried to use mobile applications in the past. The biggest problem I have with them is their lack of diversity. When I look a recipe up online I get thousands of different websites in a matter of seconds, usually with their own unique take on the recipe. Mobile apps have never really accommodated that.

The only time I use online or application recipes is if I am in a hurry.

The accessibility of recipes in this format is a time saver and gets dinner on the table so much quicker.

I am old school though. I prefer to use cook books or recipe cards to gather my meal plans. Maybe it is for sentimental reasons, but I inherite my grandmother’s cookbooks and recipe cards. I like to use those. It is those little notes in the margins that make the recipe taste so much better. A lot of these date back to the 50s and 60s when home cooking was the thing to do, so I am never at a loss for great family meals.

Elliot Reimers: ATK Americas Test Kitchen gives you real cooking skills

A fantastic app to use if you love cooking is the ATK Americas Test Kitchen. This app is free to use and can be used on iOS and android. It allows you to search a recipe, then it will create a shopping list. This gives you real cooking skills from your favourite food experts. With it being an app, it is so easy for me to share recipes with my friends and family or, if I want to recreate the meal again, it's already downloaded onto my phone or tablet. No more pieces of paper scattered all over the place. The app is even kid friendly so you can prepare and cook a meal as a family. It's fantastic, and the recipes I have tried out have been delicious and they weren't that hard to make. There are some fantastic apps out there but for me, it's a no-brainer. With the wide selection of recipes, I don't need several apps; I just need the one and with this one catering for my every need, from classic dishes to something a little different, it is widening my palate and my knowledge of many different ingredients.

Dusan: SuperFood to eat healthy meals which taste good

I would love to recommend SuperFood mobile app for everyone who wants to eat healthy meals which taste good. I think modern-day people are too busy to keep their health in check, and they cannot devote to much time to research when it comes to healthy recipes. This is how the SuperFood app comes in handy because besides offering delicious recipes, it provides nutritional information as well. Furthermore, the built-in nutritional diary and calorie counter will ensure we’re not passing our daily calorie intake.

Mira Rakicevic: Tasty is convenient and simply to get a quick recipe

My number one reason for using Tasty is the convenience and simplicity of the app for getting a quick recipe. As a more visual person, I enjoy watching someone demonstrate how to prep a dish, from start to finish. With Tasty I can rewatch my favorite recipes until I've memorized them, and always find new recipes. Their library has over 3000 recipes and there are always new ones coming out on their social media.

The video tutorials are simple and easy to follow at all times, all of them under 60 seconds. I also like that you can filter out ingredients, based on personal or religious culinary preferences. So if your vegetarian or lactose-intolerant, the app lets you filter through meat and dairy-free products respectively. You can also save your favorites to have them on hand for quick reference when needed.

Overall, Tasty gets the job done for my personal cooking needs, and I love its simplicity and ease of use. It might not be the best app for professional cooks and culinary experts, but it's perfect for most of us just looking to spice up our daily cooking routine.

Grace Woinicz: Paprika lets you pull a recipe off a website

My favorite cooking app is Paprika. It's great: it has a feature that lets you automatically pull a recipe off a website, which is awesome for those websites that start each recipe with a cheesy 10-paragraph introduction. It can create smart shopping lists by combining amounts of the same ingredient and sorting them into aisles. It has a meal planner for a week or a month, and finally, it also has a scale feature that allows you to halve or double a recipe with one click.

You can use it with a significant other using a shared account. We share shopping lists, recipes and meal plans. It helps that it works on all devices and platforms and it syncs.

If you're against paying for apps, I suggest you try Pepperplate. I've used it before I moved to Paprika and it also has the ability to pull the recipe from websites and combined shopping lists.

For discovering new recipes, I mainly use Pinterest. It helps you get in touch with awesome food bloggers, who are very accountable for their recipes.

Rafid Nassir: Supercook allows you to choose ingredients you have

I'm a cooking enthusiast thanks to my lifestyle. The one app that has really been helpful through it all is Supercook.

Supercook allows you to choose all the ingredients that you currently have and shows you recipes accordingly. It's super simple, efficient and a great way to make sure none of your ingredients go bad.

It does have an app but I use the mobile version of the website most of the time.

Melanie Musson: Paprika Recipe Manager is amazingly helpful to plan and prepare

I love to cook for my friends and family, and I try new recipes every week. Eating at home is usually healthier than eating out, so if an app makes homemade meals easier to plan and prepare, it’s well worth it. Paprika Recipe Manager is an amazingly helpful app.

You can save recipes from anywhere on the internet onto the app, and from there you can create meal plans and build grocery lists. It’s a one-stop-app for everything related to meals.

The creators of this app demonstrate their commitment to being user-friendly. For example, when you make a grocery list, the app automatically puts the list in order of the department. Produce is grouped together, as is dairy, and staples, and so on. As a result, your shopping trips are more streamlined because you won’t need to backtrack down the aisles to purchase everything on your list.

Because the service is cloud-based, you can access your account on any device, phone, tablet, or computer. I like to plan meals on the computer, but when I’m grocery shopping, I use my grocery list on my phone, and when I’m cooking a meal, I look up the recipe on the iPad. The ease of alternating through all those devices is a big benefit for this app.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the best apps for cooking using ingredients?

Take a look at the Supercook app. This allows you to select all the ingredients you currently have and shows you the corresponding recipes. It's very simple, effective, and a great way to make sure none of your ingredients go bad.

What is the best app for cooking desserts?

The best app for cooking desserts is Tasty. Tasty offers a wide range of dessert recipes with clear instructions, step-by-step videos, and user reviews. The app also allows you to save your favorite recipes, create shopping lists and provides helpful cooking tips and techniques.

Is Supercook app free?

Yes, the Supercook app is free to download and use. It provides a convenient way to search for recipes based on the ingredients you already have at home.

How have cooking apps adapted to changing home cooking trends, especially during periods of increased home cooking?

Cooking apps have adapted by offering a broader range of recipes, including easy-to-cook and health-conscious options, along with features to assist in meal planning and ingredient shopping.