Finding inspiration for putting tasty, healthy home-cooked meals on the table every night can feel overwhelming. But the right cooking apps offer effortless solutions—delivering thousands of simple recipes, planning tools to organize your kitchen, and tricks to make you feel like a pro behind the stove.
This article spotlights 10 top-performing cooking apps chosen to satisfy all your dining dilemmas. You’ll discover apps offering everything from private video lessons with professional chefs to customizable meal plans perfect for your dietary needs. Read on to find your perfect kitchen companion!
The Dinner Dilemma Driving Everyone Crazy
Coming up with meal ideas is exhausting. In fact, 79% of Americans wish cooking was easier, according to a State of Home Cooking in America study. Yet we still want to serve nourishing food. So what gives?
Everyday obstacles make cooking feel harder than it should:
Decision Fatigue – Choosing what to eat saps our willpower. It feels easier to order takeout.
Lack of Confidence – Cooking new dishes outside our comfort zone intimidates us.
Disorganization – Forgetting ingredients or not knowing what we already have adds hassle.
Limited Variety – Tired of rotating the same 3 meals each week.
Thankfully, cooking apps help tackle all these dinner dilemmas!
Benefits of Cooking Apps
From step-by-step guidance to grocery delivery, cooking apps dissolve dinner frustrations. Benefits include:
Meal Planning – No more racking your brain about what to cook next or forgetting key ingredients halfway through a recipe! Built-in calendars, grocery lists and reminders keep you uber-organized.
Recipes – Search across thousands (even millions) of recipes to spark dinner ideas. Adjust serving sizes or cook time to fit your needs.
Cooking Instructions – Follow along with recipe photos, videos and voice guidance so you nail the cooking technique every time.
Customization – Find recipes perfectly suited to your on-hand ingredients, nutritional preferences (low-carb, vegan, etc.), skill level and more thanks to intelligent filters.
Now let’s explore 10 top-performing cooking apps guaranteed to effortlessly upgrade your home cooking game!
1. Paprika Recipe Manager
Tired of digging through messy cookbooks? Go digital with Paprika—Wirecutter’s choice cooking app praised for its organization skills.
Paprika makes it easy to import, organize and find recipes from anywhere on the web. Simply tap “add” as you browse recipes online to download ingredients, instructions and images into your app recipe box automatically formatted and optimized for mobile use.
Once your recipes are loaded, Paprika helps you make the most of them with handy features like:
- Custom cookbooks to group recipes (holiday meals, healthy dinners, etc.)
- Cross-platform sync so your collection is available anywhere
- Built-in timers and cooking view for hands-free use
Plus, you can scale ingredient amounts by serving size, note substitutions or wine pairings, add photos and more—ensuring each recipe evolves perfectly for your tastes.
With a one-time $4.99 purchase delivering this Swiss army knife recipe manager and meal planning sidekick, Paprika a no-brainer kitchen upgrade.
Standout Features: Recipe clipper and organizer, custom cookbooks, hands-free cooking view, cross-platform sync
Price: $4.99 one-time app purchase
Recipes: Stores all your personal and online recipes
2. Yummly – Best Overall
As Wirecutter‘s "Best Overall" cooking app with nearly 40 million users worldwide, Yummly packs impressive recipe power starting the moment you sign up.
Upon creating your free account, Yummly asks clever questions to learn your food preferences—think spicy vs. mild or vegetarian. This knowledge helps deliver hyper-personalized recipe ideas aligned with your tastes from the 2+ million recipe database.
Yummly shines when it comes to discovering what to cook thanks to nifty features like:
- Ingredient search showing you what you can cook with what’s already stocked in your kitchen
- Advanced filters to find gluten-free, dairy-free and other special diet friendly options
- Recipe recommendations based on your previous Yummly activity
Plus, Yummly helps you cook what you choose with handy tools like:
- Customizable serving sizes
- Organized cooking view consolidating ingredients & tools needed
- Grocery lists that automatically pull items from your planned recipes
Whether you need weeknight or dinner party inspiration, Yummly satisfies with its enormous recipe collection and smart customization for how you cook.
Standout Features: 2 million recipes, intelligent personalization, advanced dietary filters, grocery lists & meal planning
Price: Free membership. $3.99/month upgrades include unlimited access to premium recipes.
Recipes: 2+ million
3. Food Network Kitchen – Best for Beginners
Stumped on cooking techniques or looking to sharpen your skills? Food Network Kitchen brings celebrated chefs right to your screen for virtual cooking lessons suited for any experience level.
Choose from thousands of on-demand cooking classes with famous Food Network faces like Bobby Flay teaching you their tricks for grilling perfect steaks or baking spectacular birthday cakes. Classes range from 30 minutes focusing on a single dish or technique to over an hour offering a full meal prep masterclass—no matter what, you’ll gain confidence.
When you’re ready to take the reins yourself, browse 80K recipes also taught by Food Network talent. Save favorites to your personal recipe box and cook along to video instructions when it‘s time to prepare a dish. Additional assists like built-in timers, how-to tips and glossaries decoding cooking terms help you feel like a kitchen pro.
A 1-month free trial gives you time to experience Food Network Kitchen. But unlimited access to celebrity-led video cooking lessons for just $47.99/year remains a steal compared investing in pricey private instruction.
Standout Features: 80K recipes from famous chefs & celebrities, thousands of on-demand cooking classes ranging 30-90 minutes in length, weekly meal plans
Price: $47.99/year after 1-month free trial
Recipes: 80,000+
4. Weber Grill App – Best for BBQ & Grilling
Smoky BBQ flavors are only a tap away thanks to Weber‘s specialty grilling app.
The experts at Weber apply their nearly 70 years of grilling wisdom into 500+ mouthwatering recipes optimized for outdoor cooking on charcoal, gas and electric grills. You’ll discover awesome inspiration like maple-bacon chicken wings or Mexican street corn chicken tacos.
But where Weber truly helps you sizzle is with their series of grilling video tutorials. Their Grill Skills content teaches essential techniques behind achieving tender, juicy results. Useful visual doneness indicators (like checking temperature or touch/poke tests) eliminate any guesswork so you cook meat and veggies perfectly on your barbecue every single time.
Additional features like equipment recommendations and notifications for controlling indirect heat empower you to “grill like a pro.” Next cookout, impress everyone with your newfound barbecue brilliance thanks to Weber!
Standout Features: 500+ specialized grilling recipes, step-by-step video grilling tutorials, visual doneness indicators
Price: Free
Recipes: 500+ grilling
5. SideChef – Best Hands-Free Help
Fumbling between touching messy food and greasy phone screens? Let SideChef lend a voice-activated hand for cleaner cooking.
SideChef offers 18,000 recipes covering all meals and dietary needs searchable via voice command. As you cook along to recipe step photos, instruct SideChef to set timers, ask about next steps or add missing ingredients to your cart through voice assistant integration.
Their hands-free assistance also works wonders for visually impaired home chefs. Voice guidance combined with braille readable instructions printed on special SideChef tablet sleeves transform cooking into an accessible, enjoyable activity.
While handy hands-free features headline, SideChef still satisfies with expected cooking app conveniences like:
- Personalized weekly meal plans and grocery lists
- Recipe filters accommodating preferences and dietary needs
- Cookbook collections to organize your go-to recipes
Bring SideChef home as your sous chef for $6.99/month following a free 30-day trial.
Standout Features: Voice commands for hands-free guiding, specialized tablet interface & braille instructions tailored for visually impaired
Price: Free 30-day trial, then $6.99/month
Recipes: 18,000
6. Epicurious – Best for Intermediate & Advanced Cooks
Calling all foodies! Epicurious should be your go-to app for elevating home recipes with its professional-yet-practical recipe collection.
Epicurious offers over 50,000 recipes blending dishes from Bon Appetit (known for globally inspired cuisine) together with Gourmet magazine’s high-end recipes prepared kitchen assistant-free for true home cooks. You‘ll discover five-star restaurant quality meals like miso maple salmon or shrimp scampi linguine that somehow feel totally approachable thanks to thoughtful instructions tailored for intermediate skill levels.
Epicurious empowers food creativity through smart features like:
- Advanced search filters to find recipes by protein/veg, cuisine type, seasonal produce, technique & more
- Wine and music pairings accompanying recipes
- Grocery lists that integrate with popular delivery services
- Menu planning tools to organize dinner parties worthy of Michelin star dining rooms
Impress yourself (and any guests) by cooking beyond your abilities with Epicurious recipes and resources guiding you.
Standout Features: 50,000 recipes from Bon Appetit & Gourmet, advanced cooking filters and tools, menu planning, wine pairings
Price: Free membership. $1.99 monthly premium subscription.
Recipes: 50,000+
7. Oh, She Glows – Best for Plant-Based Diets
Struggling to accommodate vegan, gluten-free and other dietary needs at dinnertime? Meet your plant-powered cooking pot of gold with Oh, She Glows.
This beautifully designed app brings favorite plant-packed recipes from blogger Angela Liddon’s award-winning Oh, She Glows website to life. Choose from over 150 healthy vegan dishes like luscious lemon risotto, Thai red curry or protein-rich chia oatmeal.
True to its superfood-promising name, Oh, She Glows helps you feel your best through features like:
- Specialized filters showing allergy-friendly, nut-free, kid-approved and more
- Ability to reconfigure recipes based on ingredients you have/need to buy
- Notes section for making recipes uniquely your own
- Simple weekly meal planning system
The app equally impresses with its blog-style interface spotlighting mouthwatering food photography bound to inspire your next plant-based meal.
Trust certified vegan chef Angela Liddon and Oh, She Glows bold flavors and smart customization to make nourishing meatless magic daily!
Standout Features: 150+ allergy-friendly vegan recipes from award-winning blogger, specialized dietary filters, weekly meal planner, recipe adjustment based on ingredients on-hand
Price: One-time $4.99 purchase
Recipes: 150+ plant-based
8. BigOven – Best Variety
Can’t find the perfect recipe for that random leftover vegetable or exotic cuisine craving? BigOven and its unmatched 350,000+ recipe database can likely help.
Beyond sheer volume, BigOven offers unusually robust filters to track down whatever dish your heart or tastebuds desire like:
- 800+ cuisines from Afghan to Vietnamese
- Course types spanning breakfast, snacks, mains and more
- Holiday, diet, technique and even weather filters
Create a free account to personalize your experience even further. Build cookbooks centered around your specific cooking habits or health needs. Plan weekly meals choosing recipes that align with on-hand ingredients. Print coordinated grocery lists that neatly organize ingredients across planned dishes minimizing shopping and kitchen prep time.
BigOven brings all these sought-after conveniences cooks crave to efficiently feed your household.
Standout Features: Enormous 350K+ recipe database, 800+ global cuisines, diet and other advanced filters, custom cookbooks
Price: Free membership
Recipes: 350,000+
9. Allrecipes – Most Popular
40 million home cooks trust beloved app Allrecipes as their daily cooking companion for good reason.
For starters, Allrecipes impresses with sheer volume — over 40,000 free recipes spanning every meal, diet and craving. But their vivid food photography, practical recipes and personable tone ultimately hooks fans.
Nearly all recipes come from home cooks just like you who share their most requested family favorites. This means you‘ll find dishes actually tailored for busy weeknights like 30-minute skillet lasagnas or 5-ingredient caramel apple crisps rather than gourmetserving restaurant creations requiring a million obscure ingredients and French technique mastery.
Even better, you can cook along to short recipe videos creating an approachable, friend-is-teaching-you cooking vibe. Read comments from fellow Allrecipes members who made tweaks to recipes or certain substitutions that worked for their family to make each dish your own.
When it comes to cooking apps, Allrecipes community pays dividends by making complicated cooking actually feel fun and totally possible.
Standout Features: 40,000+ free recipes with new options daily, recipe video guides, customization ideas from community comments
Price: Free membership
Recipes: 40,000+
10. Cookpad – Most Personalized
Lastly, if you crave rich customization catering recipes precisely to your family‘s tastes, Cookpad offers best-in-class personalization.
At the outset, Cookpad asks you to complete their Taste Profile indicating flavor preferences (e.g. smoky vs. mild), dietary needs (vegetarian, nut allergies) and cooking frequency/variety seeking. This input helps steer your exploration towards recipes your household is guaranteed to love.
From there, clever built-in social features like posting recipes actually cooked or saving favorites to your Love List further trains Cookpad to become intimately tailored to you. Apps utilizing advanced AI algorithms even learn about substitutes or ingredient tweaks you make to recommend more recipes incorporating your unique touches.
You’ll equally appreciate Cookpad’s global content spanning home cooks in over 10 countries worldwide. Exposure to new cultural flavor combinations will have you expanding culinary horizons in no time!
Standout Features: Highly personalized recommendations based on tastes/preferences, global social recipe exchange
Price: Free membership
Recipes: Varies based on personalized recommendation engine
Ready, Set, Cook With Confidence!
Now that you’re equipped with this expert guide to 2022’s top-rated cooking apps, it’s time pull up your sleeves and start concocting amazingly delicious recipes customized just for you!
Dinners suddenly feel exciting again and finally within reach thanks to cooking apps solving near-universal meal planning headaches around grocery lists, recipe discovery and cooking guidance.
From Paprika’s ace organization to Yummly’s unbeatable recipe variety to SideChef‘s clever hands-free help, find the app matching your skill level and dietary needs then get prepping marvelous homecooked meals guaranteed to satisfy everyone at the table.
