Old school recipe organizers and clunky cookbooks have been put on the back burner in today’s modern kitchens. A new generation of cooks, bakers and chefs have adopted a new kitchen tool — the smartphone. From food bloggers and amateur chefs to moms and dads to first-time bakers, the smartphone has made navigating the kitchen easier.
It’s like having your own personal assistant in the kitchen. From finding recipes, indexing your favorite dishes, sharing photos of your finished product and even phoning mom if it all goes wrong, the smartphone has certainly made cooking more accessible and even more fun.
Follow Along With YouTube’s Top Chefs
Forget signing up, paying for and driving to a cooking class. Instead, get online and head to YouTube. Popular YouTube chefs are becoming Internet stars, and these mega-popular viral sensations offer something for everyone. In the mood for something healthy? LeanBodyLifeStyle offers low-fat versions of your favorite foods, such as cupcakes. How about Italian? YouTube channel Laura in the Kitchen has 650 recipes and more than 1,759,000 subscribers.
Following along is simple and you can go at your own pace. You can pause, back up or skip ahead as needed. And smartphones like the Google Nexus 6 make viewing uncomplicated. Its large six-inch HD screen displays brilliant, clear pictures and the front-facing speakers make following along with instructions easy, even if you’re not looking at the screen.
Get Unlimited Access to Recipes
Google is a powerful tool because it’s easy to navigate and easy to use. Unlike cookbooks and unorganized recipe indexes, finding the recipe you need takes just seconds. And, you don’t even need to type in what you’re looking for. Smartphone personal assistants like Siri and Cortana can help you locate what you’re searching for online.
Share Your Story
We live in a sharing culture. Every minute we’re uploading our experiences to one social network or another. You share every detail of your life, so why not share what you’re whipping up in the kitchen? Apps like Instagram attract foodies from all over the world. Snap a photo, use a filter and add a couple hashtags to show off your favorite dish. Or, show the world how you did it by uploading a 15 second video detailing the ingredients, cooking process and plating technique. Want to start a food blog? You can get your own blog up and running in less than 15 minutes by using a website like WordPress. You can add beautiful photos, share your unique recipes and follow other blogs right from your smartphone.
Find Apps That Make Cooking Easy
The Daily Meal recently put together a list of the top cooking apps for smartphones. Here are a few notable mentions:
- Cooking Light: This app’s advanced recipe storage and ability to cross-reference recipes within the app earned it a spot on The Daily Meal's list. It uses beautiful photos, encourages meal planning and follows a theme similar to the magazine “Cooking Light.”
- The Photo Cookbook: Great for novice cooks, this app solves the common problem of not understanding a line recipe by using a collection of high-quality photos to demonstrate the cooking process of each recipe.
- BigOven: Part recipe database, grocery shopper and meal planner, this free app offers more than 250,000 recipes to work with. You’ll never have to worry about what to make for dinner again.