I’m not going to hide the fact that I love cooking. Especially for big groups. I think it’s the challenge that I love: Can the food I cook elicit a heart-felt response from everyone at the table?
If I am doing the cooking, most often I’m firing up the Weber. This is why I was pretty excited when the Weber App hit the iPhone App store. I may not have been among the first 10 to download it, but I didn’t waste any time doing so once I heard of its existence.
As much as I dig the Weber App, however, I can’t keep my critic’s pen from commenting on the paltry recipe offerings. I do appreciate that the recipes are organized by category (chicken, pork, sides, etc), but with only 15 or so recipes per category, I find myself returning to a few favorites a few too many times.
Variety, it would seem, is not just the spice of life. It’s pretty darn important for the household cook.
With no interest in propping a sauce-splattered recipe book open on the countertop, I embraced the arrival of the Food Network Kitchen App, with over 45,000 recipes from Food Network chefs. Read that again: 45,000. No recipe book in the world holds that many. Unless it’s on someone’s Kindle.
$1.99 gets you all those recipes plus some pretty standard recipe App features, like the “recipe box” for saving favorites, a shopping list feature and a timer. A handy unit converter will assist with accurate measurements, as well.
The challenge with a recipe App, I’ve found, is keeping the iPhone “lit” for long enough to complete a few prescribed recipe steps. I know I could simply adjust my settings to keep it from going dark (idle), but I always forget to do so. I think these recipe Apps should have a built-in feature that force you to manually darken your iPhone screen when in the App to allow you to stir, glance, measure, pour, glance and stir again without having to swipe the screen with dirty fingers. This, admittedly, is where the recipe book still has the App beat.
But really, it’s all about the recipes. 45,000. It’s on my phone. Is it on yours?
