Epicurious

Get it here.

I’ve browsed Epicurious online on more than one occasion… ok, on several. Ok, pretty much weekly. It is a massive collection of recipes and culinary articles. So it’s no surprise that they have an app. And, since I use their website so often, I figured I’d add the app to the list.

Automatically, my first head scratcher was that the only way to register was with email. Nowadays almost everyone has a social media sign-in option – which I prefer, for some reason. When you first sign in, the home screen has three sliders – new recipes, featured recipes (all centered on a main theme) and new videos.

Recipe selection & format

Epicurious provides users with a selection of recipes from Gourmet, bon appétit, SELF, Penguin Random House cookbooks, Weelicious and Harper Collins Publishers cookbooks.
Recipes have reviews – including what percentage of the reviewers would try the recipe again – button to add the ingredients to your shopping list, an option to save the recipe to your favourites and more.

Much like Kitchen Stories, the recipe page is a bit crowded with content. One function I really enjoyed, especially when I was covered in flour while making scones, was that I could click on a little measuring beaker icon to see the ingredients list, without losing my place in the directions.

Search function

On the search page, you can search for recipes by a keyword or select from popular categories, meal/course, dish type, dietary concerns, ingredient, cuisine, holiday and technique. When you’re on your search results page, you can then filter by the aforementioned categories. So, it’s neither easier, nor harder, to find recipes with Epicurious than the other apps on this list. Each just offers a different searching experience – and a different selection of recipes.

Additional Perks

One feature I loved about Epicurious is their in-app timer. You can set a timer for cooking steak, veggies, chicken, pork, seafood and eggs. An incredibly helpful feature for people like me who burn everything. The steak timer can be set for different cuts, weight and preferred doneness/cook.

Once start the timer, you can follow the steps in the recipe and the app will tell you when it’s time to move to the next step. It will keep counting for you too, even if you’re browsing the app or checking other apps while you cook.

Drawbacks

Epicurious is, I think, very US-centric. So while it does have the option to show you seasonal recipes tailored to your region (by using your location) this feature is only available in the states. Hopefully this will expand in the future to include Canada and other countries.