Explore a well-equipped kitchen and you’ll find plenty of pots and pans, casserole dishes, gadgets for chopping this and blending that, weighing scales and mixing bowls, sharp knives and serving spoons and, most importantly of all, a smartphone.
Amateur cooks and professional chefs alike have all started turning to apps to help them out in the kitchen. These are 7 apps that will easily help increase your culinary capabilities.
Snapguide
Snapguide isn’t strictly a cooking app as the community of clever users share simple how to guides on a range of topics from DIY to arts and crafts – but the Food section is certainly one of the strongest, with a huge selection of easy to follow recipes.
One Snapguide feature that you won’t find on many similar apps is the ability to request guides – so if you want to know how to make a gluten and egg free chocolate cake you can ask the Snapguide community and see if they’re up for the challenge. Make sure to give back as well by sharing those recipes you’re most proud of.
The Perfect Egg-Timer
Boiling the perfect egg is deceptively difficult – unless you have The Perfect Egg-Timer app that is. Tell the egg timer how you want your egg boiled (choose from liquid to hard) and simply input a bit of information about the cooking conditions, such as the temperature of the egg, how big it is and even what altitude you’re boiling it at. If you’re making egg and soldiers the only thing you’ll have to worry about is not burning the toast!
Kitchen Calculator PRO
If you’re making dinner for 3 people but the recipe gives measurements for 4 do you just make extra and have leftovers or do you start scratching your head trying to work out the new quantities? With the kitchen calculator PRO you don’t have to do either, as it’ll instantly scale recipes up or down to suit how many people you’re cooking for.
The Kitchen Calculator can also be used to convert temperature, weight and volume, so you don’t have to worry about making a mammoth mistake when converting imperial measurements to metric or vice versa.
The Multi Timer App
We’ve already established that timing is crucial in the kitchen. When you’ve got lots going on at once it’s far too easy to forget about something and find out far too late that you’ve overcooked the chicken, which is where the multi timer app comes in – set different timers with their own labels and alarms for all the component parts you’re cooking. Then all you have to do is make sure you take your time enjoying your meal.
Perfect Produce
The easiest way to instantly make your food taste better is to use ingredients that are just ripe – the difficult part is being able to tell when something is ripe or not. Perfect Produce is bursting at the seams with information about how to pick fruit or vegetables and tips for storage to ensure they keep fresh for as long as possible.
If you’ve steered away from some of the more unusual vegetables on offer this app will also give tips on how to handle them in the kitchen so you can feel more comfortable experimenting with different recipes.
Substitutions
Whether you need to substitute an ingredient because you’ve ran out of something, because you’re trying to cut down on sugar and fat, or because you need to avoid certain things you’re allergic to, Substitutions is the perfect app.
Never again will have you have to pass by a tasty-looking recipe simply because it contains food you can’t or don’t want to eat, making this an app that helps you eat more with less.
Author bio – Written by Lionel Thain of online competition site MyOffers. Visit them at MyOffers.co.uk for a chance to win petrol, insurance and even cars.
