Five of the best … food and recipe apps.

Anne Whelton
iD Mobile Ireland
Published in
4 min readJun 16, 2016

With Taste of Dublin returning to the Iveagh Gardens this weekend, we’ve got delicious food on the brain. But how do we get it on our plates at home? With app-inspiration of course! Here are five of our favourite apps for creating tasty meals from scratch.

Epicurious

We’ve previously highlighted this recipe app as a good addition to your home screen if you’re trying to stick to a healthy diet, but Epicurious also has plenty of recipes for those of you that want to indulge your sweet tooth or just need dinner inspiration.

Search by ingredient and nutritional information, or add items to your interactive shopping list for tomorrow night’s dinner; Epicurious covers all the basics in one app — including a hands-free cook mode and smart timer — and is free for iPhones and iPads.

Tender

No not that Tinder, but close! Tender — available for free on Google Play and the App Store — works off the same ‘swipe right or left’ mentality as the dating app but instead of seeing the faces of eligible bachelors or bachelorettes in your area, you get meal ideas appearing on your phone screen.

Like the look of the food and think you could be perfect together? Swipe right to save the recipe to your cookbook. Or maybe there’s just too much spinach in the food for your liking; swipe left and never see it again. You can also easily filter the recipes that appear by your favourite core ingredient, e.g. if you only want to see veggie dishes.

Substitutions

The only app on our list that isn’t free — it’s €2.99 on the App Store, but trust us it’s money well spent if you enjoy cooking for yourself or others — Substitutions helps you to find substitutions to commonly-used ingredients.

On a gluten-free diet or want to reduce the amount of carbs you consume? Or maybe you’ve forgotten to go to the shop and you’ve already started cooking. No problem, simply select the item you want to substitute or forgot to buy, and the app will offer you alternatives.

Jamie’s Recipes

One of the most popular chefs in the world at this point, Jamie Oliver in known for two things: getting his hands dirty in the kitchen and preparing super-quick meals for all the family, and Jamie’s Recipes for iOS serves up another large helping of just that. With plenty of videos, information on dietary restrictions and cooking times for each recipe, Jamie’s Recipes is one of the slickest recipe apps we’ve come across and really seems to have captured what Jamie fans love about his best-selling cookbooks.

SideChef

So at this point you’ve probably downloaded a while host to recipe apps, you’ve picked two or three meals that look good and will impress the in-laws, there’s just one problem; you have no idea where to start with actually preparing and cooking the food. That’s where SideChef comes in.

A handy app, available on iOS and Android, one of the best features on SideChef is voice command. Got your hands stuck in a bowl of dough and not sure what to do next? No problem, SideChef responds to voice commands for hands-free cooking.

So there you have it, five apps to get you on the road to becoming the next Neven Maguire or Clodagh McKenna. And remember, if all else fails, you always have #foodporn on Instagram and JustEat.

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Originally published on www.idmobile.ie.

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Anne Whelton
iD Mobile Ireland

Editor, copywriter, occasional journalist and muser based in Dublin.