What app do I choose?

If you do a search for recipes in the app store, you will get over 2000 results!

I wanted more than just recipes.  I wanted a solution that would help make the shopping and dinner experience better, faster and easier.

There are a lot of great apps out there each with their strengths and weaknesses.  From over 2000 apps I narrowed my review down to these 6: MealGuru®, Pepperplate®, Food Planner®, Better Homes & Garden Recipes, Allthecooks®, AllRecipes®.

MealGuruAppIcon PepperplateAppIcon FoodPlannerAppIcon BetterHomesAndGardenAppIcon AllTheCooksAppIcon AllRecipesIcon

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When reviewing these recipe apps I looked for the following features:

  • Ease of Use
  • Device Options
  • Smart Shopping Lists
  • Recipe Variety
  • Favorites
  • Meal Planning

I wanted an easy, clean design, availability on smart phone and tablet, an intelligent shopping list builder (sorted by grocery department: canned food, vegetables, beef, etc.), and I wanted to be able to save recipes for quick access for future use.

From these 6 I narrowed it down these top 3.  Here is what I discovered.

“Recipes” Better Homes & Garden® 

Better Homes and Gardens Recipe
Francie’s rating: 4.6

4.6GoldRatingStars

Pro’s:

  • Clean design & easy to use (same interface on tablet and smart phone)
  • Over 500 recipes plus you can pay for more
  • Shopping cart groups by category and identifies needed qty and related recipe
  • You don’t have to create account to use shopping lists and other features

Con’s:

  • Your shopping lists from iPad don’t talk with lists on smart phone
  • No recipe user ratings
  • No recipe specific cooking tips

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“allrecipes.com®”

Photo May 18, 3 00 50 PM
Francie’s rating: 4.5
4.6GoldRatingStars

Pro’s:

  • Beautiful design
  • Recipe ratings by users
  • Recipe tips & variations
  • Shopping list shared with tablet & smart phone
  • Nutritional info & diet restriction

Con’s:

  • My password didn’t work on smart phone app
  • Some features were free on tablet but not smart phone
  • Different user interface on tablet vs. smart phone

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“MealGuru®”

MealGuruFrancie’s rating: 4.1

4.1GoldRatingStars

Pro’s:

  • Excellent meal planning features
  • Beautiful meal pictures
  • Easily mark “Favorites” & “Not for Me”
  • Good nutritional information
  • Excellent cooking instructions
  • Offline useage

Con’s:

  • Needs more recipes (pay for additional)
  • Could not modify Number of servings (defaulted to 1)
  • Only available on iPad

These are all great apps! Pick the one that best meets your needs.

If you have comments, I would love to hear from you!