Cooking is easy when you know what you're doing. However, for those who aren't exactly domestic gods and goddesses already, getting into the kitchen may require a leap of faith.
What are the best apps to learn cooking? Better yet: where can you learn how to cook healthy food that tastes like it came from a restaurant?
These apps make the best smartphone kitchen tools for beginners who want to cook healthier meals.
1. KitchenPal
For the ultimate smart pantry assistant, there is no cooking app quite like KitchenPal. It has a kitchen inventory manager, shopping lists, and it can even pull up recipes based on ingredients you've already got.
When you first sign up, this food recipe app asks you to swipe left or right on a long list of pantry staples, Tinder-style. Once you've made it through the entire thing, you can add everything else that you have on hand.
Once your rations have been depleted, you're ready to dive into KitchenPal's grab-and-go grocery shopping section, complete with a scanner to add anything that you don't see on its default list. Add grocery items from a huge selection of stock options, and you're ready to hit the town; you can sort items by aisle, marking everything off to add it to your virtual pantry automatically.
Aside from being an awesome pantry manager app, KitchenPal is also one of the best apps for recipes. You'll be shown different categories composed of everything you've currently got in stock, as well as the rest of the KitchenPal collection of home cook-approved recipes.
This feature helps prevent food waste and stretch your dollar further, all without compromising the quality of your meal.
Ready-to-cook meals, healthy options, vegetarian and vegan recipes, and budget meals can all be explored through KitchenPal's Recipes tab. If you do a bit of searching and find something that interests you, the app will even tell you which ingredients you're missing.
Download: KitchenPal for iOS | Android (Free, in-app purchases available)
2. Yummly
We hate to play favorites, but Yummly may be the best cookbook app of all time, period.
Not only are these recipes all professionally written, gorgeously photographed, and absolutely delicious, but many also include guided videos to walk you through the entire cooking process.
The Just for You tab is where you'll find all of your own meal recommendations, but you're free to use the Explore tab if you're feeling adventurous.
These walkthroughs are all incredibly detailed, which is perfect for total noobs in the kitchen. Yummly is also an excellent resource for those trying to eat healthier and be more mindful at mealtime.
Download: Yummly for iOS | Android (Free, subscription available)
3. Oven Timer
Oven Timer is a kitchen multi-timer with a charming visual twist. You're able to customize a digital oven and stovetop to match your set-up at home.
On each burner, you can assign a different pan or dish, and the clock will tick down on each of them independently. You can also assign simple timers under another tab for other kitchen tasks—the chicken marinating in the fridge, for example.
When you've always got your hands full in the kitchen, time tends to get ahead of you. This is one of the best apps for cooking if you hate over-cooking or burning your food.
Download: Oven Timer: Kitchen Multi-Timer for Android (Free)
4. Cupful
Cupful is a deceptively simple app for baking conversions and ratios. It makes translating recipes from one unit to another incredibly easy.
Not only is every possible type of flour represented here, but you'll also find legumes, rice, other grains, and even spices. No matter what you happen to be cooking, this app for food recipes of all varieties will have you covered.
Simply choose an ingredient and plug in your metric or imperial units of measurement. There are even three convenient fraction buttons when working in quarter teaspoons or thirds of a cup—no mental math required.
Measurements like packed cups versus scant cups, looser items like vegetables, and liquids of differing weight and volume are all supported. These features make Cupful one of the best cooking apps for beginner bakers, especially.
Download: Cupful for Android (Free)
5. Eat This Much
Eat This Much lives up to its motto: "Put your diet on autopilot." It's probably the most popular app for cooking recipes that all fit within daily nutritional and caloric goals.
Once you've established yourself in the app, it's able to cater to any type of diet—vegan, Paleo, ketogenic, gluten-free diets, and many others. You'll be able to browse an extensive library of recipes, all curated to your personal food diary settings.
First, take the app's quick survey to describe your needs and goals. Then, plug in the number of calories you plan on consuming daily and the number of meals that you prefer. You can choose your desired macronutrient profile, divvying your daily allotment between carbs, protein, and fat.
You can document each day by following some of the recipes that the app has to show, adding the meal to your food diary as a single unit. You can also add each ingredient individually if you're more experienced in the kitchen or just need an app to track calories and macros for simple ingredients.
The premium version of the app includes a shopping list feature and other advanced options that you can use to plan out each week of meals with incredible precision.
If you're serious about getting healthy this year, Eat This Much is a fantastic food diary app. Lunchtime at home or the office is about to receive a much-needed upgrade.
Download: Eat This Much for iOS | Android (Free, subscription available)
Cooking App Recipes That'll Get You Started in the Kitchen
This year, forget the excuses—it's time to learn how to cook healthier meals and get the good nutrition you need to succeed.
When you burn clean fuel, you feel better. You might find that you're more focused at work or at school with a balanced, homemade meal in your belly than you are with the usual junk.
Try these cooking apps to cure that chronic, pervasive drive-thru syndrome and make this the beginning of a brand new lifestyle.