Today’s TiPb Top 5 will be directed towards our iPhone and iPod touch wielding readers who love to cook. Just like our other TiPb top 5 must-have posts, all of these applications are available in the App Store. For the full overview, follow us after the break!

Epicurious

Epicurious is a cooking app with over 25 000 recipies, a shopping list and ratings from others who have tried the meals. If you are going to pick just one cooking application, Epicurious would fit the bill. A vast array of recipes to choose from allows for a lot of versatility in the kitchen. It may not make you Gordon Ramsay, “You Donkey!”, but it will help you to impress your loved ones.

The full page advertisements are a bit distracting but the application is free.

Epicurious is available for free [iTunes link].

Allrecipes.com Dinner Spinner

Allrecipies.com Dinner Spinner is a cooking app with a bit of a twist spin (Sorry couldn’t help myself). Boasting 1000’s of recipes Allrecipes.com allows you to pick your meal, ingredients and how long you want to spend cooking it (No “zero minutes” option, though — I checked!). The great thing about this app is that you also get to see the ratings and comments of others people who have tried the recipes. This lets you know about variations/suggestions for the meal. You can also turn on filters for vegetarian, gluten-free and other special diet restrictions.

A great overall cooking application

Allrecipies.com Dinner Spinner is available for free [iTunes link].

Jamie Oliver’s 20 Minute Meals

Jamie Oliver’s 20 minute meals gives the user a “personalized experience”. It’s is more costly than most cooking apps but it makes up for it with an sleek look intuitive feel. Jamie also gives you over an hour of videos on topics such as Knife skills, how to make the perfect steak, and how to properly use your cutting board. It’s just like having Jamie in the kitchen with you. Each step in the recipe comes with a picture. It also gives you an easy-to-use shopping list. All of the recipies are installed in the application so you don’t need to connect to the internet. The one negative to this application is the lack of recipes, with only a a bit over 50 included (though you can access more recipes via integration with Jamie’s website).

This application is especially great for those who enjoy Jamie Oliver’s cooking techniques.

Jamie Olivers 20 minute meals is available for 7.99 [iTunes link]

Look and Taste

Look and Taste is an application that gives you plenty for your money. Its clean interface allows you to seamlessly pick which recipes you want to cook. Many recipes also have video included on how to cook the meal (as opposed to other applications that only use video to show you some tips). There are also videos on various glossary terms, food items and chef tips.The recipes can be chosen by cooking time, difficulty, ingredients and main ingredient.

The application is jammed packed with information for cooks of all levels and is well worth the price tag..

Look and Taste is available for 4.99 [iTunes link].

iFood Assistant (by Kraft)

The application has a clean interface and easy to navigate controls. You choose your recipe by the kind of meal you want to prepare (either snack, breakfast, entrée etc), and then your main ingredient. The use of product placements in the ingredients list is a bit disconcerting but they’re easily replaced by whatever brand you prefer. (The strange craving for Cheese Wiz that come with them, somewhat less so!)

Browse recipes, watch the cooking videos or try out the budget wise section, it also gives you tips on how to shop on a budget (US only). You can organize the recipes by prep time, reviewer rating, total time or name. This makes finding a quick meal fast and efficient. The application has over 40 cooking videos, which give you tips, but the video quality is low. The recipes range in difficulty from beginner to advanced, so there’s a bit of everything. (Though it’s not quite up to the standard of the other apps in this list).

iFood Assistant is available for $0.99 [iTunes link].

Conclusion

There you have it, TiPb’s Top 5 Must-Have iPhone cooking games. Did we miss any of your favorites? Overlook any amazing food finds? Drop us a comment and let us know your list!

AllRecipes.com DinnerSpinner by cjvitek For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum!

Hey, let’s use Urban Spoon to pick a restaurant to go to.

Nah, I want to cook tonight. Let’s use DinnerSpinner!

DinnerSpinner is an app based on the same idea as Urban Spoon. It let’s you spin (or shake the iPhone) to choose various criteria to match recipes. You can match recipes based on three categories: dish type (main course, bread, cookies, dessert, etc), ingredients (beef, chocolate, fruit, legumes, etc), and preparation time (less than 20 minutes, slow cooker, over an hour, etc). Based on the criteria you “spin” (or select manually) you will get a variety of matching recipes to look through.

Now, before I go any further, yes, sometimes you may get something like “slow cooking cookies made with beef” – and you won’t get any matches.

So once you get your matches (in my example, I am using desserts with fruit in 45 minutes or less) you then hit the button to see your recipe matches. In my example, I got 45 matching recipes. You are taken to a page that shows the recipe name, the reviews (presumably from Allrecipes.com), who submitted the recipe, and a quick, two or three sentence description of the recipe. It also shows a picture of the recipe, which can be nice. To go to the next option, just swipe the screen.

Note, recipes are not exclusive. In my example, I got many recipes that were cookies, even though I had chosen dessert (not cookies) as the dish type. I also got recipes that included chocolate as a ingredient – so recipes are cross listed, which is nice to know.

If you see a recipe you like, you can choose to send it to someone via email (with the share button). You can also click on the “view recipe/reviews” to see the recipe or read the reviews. I like the fact they have various reviews of the recipe – you can read what other people thought about it.

The recipe itself includes a list of ingredients, the “summary” you read when scanning the recipes, how many servings and how long it takes, and the directions for cooking. Since the recipes are submitted by people, my guess is that the quality of directions may vary somewhat. You also get the nutritional information, and the “file” ends with some of the reviews of the recipe. If you want to read more that the first ten reviews, or you want to browse more recipes, there is a button at the bottom of the page to go to Allrecipes.com directly.

Please note, you are accessing the internet when using this app, so you need to have a data connection – the recipes are not downloaded onto your phone until you look at it. I am not sure how many recipes are found at AllRecipes.com, but in what I thought was an obscure category (bread made with veggies in 45 minutes or less) I found 20 recipes, so my guess is there are a fair number of options.

Some problems with the app. First of all, you can’t “lock in” a category. If you want to cook dinner, for example, you might want to lock in “main course” as the dish type. Or if you have a pound of ground beef, you might want to lock in “beef” as an ingredient.

Also, you can’t choose multiple items within a category. For example, you can’t look at main courses made with fish or pork, it is only one or the other. Lastly, there is no way to simply browse through all the recipes (either in all groups, or within a category – browsing all pork recipes, for example). IMO, these are pretty important things for a cook book or recipe bank to allow. The concept of “spinning” is fun to play with, but a really useful cookbook should allow these various changes.

Pros:

• Fun way to approach a cookbook,
• lots of recipes available

Cons:

• No ability to limit options or to choose multiple options

All in all, I think this is sort of a fun app to use. It adds a little variety and fun to choosing a recipe to use, although I really think being able to “lock” a category is essential. There are a wide range of choices for the categories, so you can be very specific (if you want) about what you want to cook. This app is free, so if it is something you think you might want to try, give it a shot!

Forum Review Rating

[AllRecipes.com DinnerSpinner is available from the iTunes App Store.]