Cook up a storm with 6 helpful iPad apps

Cooks love gadgets, it's true. But aside from the avocado slicer and the cherry pitter, one of the most versatile kitchen gadgets isn't actually kitchen-specific ? it's your iPad. There are lots of cooking resources online?and hundreds of apps available for the iPhone, Blackberry, or Android. But the iPad is uniquely suited to use in the kitchen.

Here are six of the best cooking apps, optimized specifically for the iPad.

1. Epicurious
Price: Free
Download:?Epicurious for?iPhone and iPad

Epicurious has had a presence on the web for a number of years, building a reputation for its huge recipe database, informative articles and how-tos, and engaged user community. The Epicurious iPad app has likewise emerged at the top of the cooking app pile. Like its pint-sized iPhone app cousin, this app gives you access to the vast recipe database, searchable by keyword, ingredient, what's in season, or user rating. If you create an account, you can also save your favorite recipes and create shopping lists to take with you to the grocery store. The iPad app's cook-friendly recipe view makes it easy to follow the instructions for your culinary creations in the kitchen.

2. How to Cook Everything
Price: $9.99
Download: How to Cook Everything

This app, based on Mark Bittman's cookbook of the same name, may sound rather ambitious. But it really is an incredibly comprehensive iPad-based cooking assistant, with more than 2,000 recipes, 400 how-to illustrations, and a ton of features designed specifically for the iPad. You can bookmark particular recipe steps for easy navigation, keep notes on your favorite recipes, use the flexible and intuitive search feature to figure out exactly what you want to make, email recipes to friends, automatically convert measurements to your standards of choice, and even share what you're cooking on Facebook and Twitter. One oft-overlooked but handy feature is an "always on" button, which keeps the screen from dimming while you're cooking.

3. Big Oven
Price: Free, $15.99 per year for pro membership
Download: Big Oven

There are essentially three levels to Big Oven. At its most basic, anyone can use it to search and view the over 170,000 recipes and use the handy "Use up Leftovers" feature, which lets you enter up to three ingredients you have in your fridge or cupboard and find things to make with them. If you create a free account at BigOven.com, you can also post your own recipes and photos on the website and then view them on your iPad, share recipes with friends, add reviews, and save your favorite recipes. If you decide to purchase a pro membership for $15.99 per year, you also have an ad-free experience, the ability to track the recipes you've made, and access to grocery lists that sync between the website, iPad, and iPhone. With the pro membership and an iPad 2, you can also scan and import your own handwritten recipes.

4. Smart Chef Suite
Price: $2.99
Download: Smart Chef Suite

Even the most prepared chef sometimes needs a little help, and Smart Chef Suite is there to provide just that. An invaluable resource in the kitchen, this app has three categories. Conversions is a calculator that easily converts English and metric measurements of weight, volume, and temperature. Definitions is just that ? descriptions for more than 1,000 cooking terms, so you can be sure of the difference between beating and blending the batter. Substitutions offers suggestions of ingredients that can be substituted for others in a pinch, so if you find yourself without quite enough of some crucial part of your recipe, you might be able to save a trip to the store.

5. The Recipe Box
Price: $3.99
Download: The Recipe Box

Rather than giving you access to other people's recipes, The Recipe Box helps you organize the recipes you already have (though it does include 20 preloaded recipes to get you started). You can type them in by hand or copy and paste from a website or text file. It's really what you can do after entering your recipes that makes this app unique. Cross-referencing makes finding the recipe you're looking for a breeze, even if you don't remember what it's called. And cooking multiple recipes at once is made much easier by a feature that lets you dim ingredients as you add them, so you can be sure that the soup and cookies both have the right amount of ginger. You can share recipes via email and back up your collection through iTunes file sharing.

6. Big Fork Little Fork
Price: Free
Download: Big Fork Little Fork

This app from Kraft Foods was developed to help families "cook together, eat together, and live well together." From recipes that will appeal to picky eaters to advice on nutrition for the whole family, this app has it all. There are video how-to's and educational games to teach kids cooking skills like how to crack an egg or measure correctly, in addition to recipe videos that kids can follow along with and cook a whole meal. "Dinnertime 911" includes conversation starters to get the family talking around the dinner table.

The most versatile tool in your kitchen
The iPad's unique capabilities as a touchscreen tablet that's larger than a smartphone but smaller and more portable than a laptop make it immensely suited to using in the kitchen. You don't have to spend a lot of money on cooking apps; Epicurious is at the top of so many lists for a very good reason, and it's free! If you're still struggling with getting eggs properly hard boiled, spending $15.99 on a cooking app like Big Oven might not make a lot of sense for you. If, on the other hand, you want to impress your fianc?e (or your fianc?e's mother) with your culinary know-how, $9.99 for How To Cook Everything might seem like a steal.

Either way, these apps will help you get the most out of your cooking technology ? just be sure not to bake your iPad!

[Image credit: Robert Couse-Baker]

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/tecca/~3/KjKXHJCPjaE/

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