iFood: Kraft's Nice Kitchen Helper

When it comes to the kitchen I bet a lot of you are like me. I can boil some noodles with Ragu, microwave frozen food and heat a can of soup, but that’s about it. Thus, I decided to give iFood Assistant by KRAFT, $0.99, a try. Now there a lot of cooking apps out there, but this is the only one I’ve tried so I have no basis for comparison. I’m just writing this as an idiot in the kitchen that wants to see if his iPhone can help. Overall, it does a pretty nice job whether I’m looking for something to make for dinner tonight or for brunch on the weekend. The amount of recipes in the app probably rivals that of thickest cookbooks. When you launch the app you are taken to the screen seen here on the left. Options include browse recipes (filtered by over a dozen categories such as appetizers, beverages, chicken etc.), dinner tonight, simple shortcuts, snacks and treats and cooking videos. The bottom tab includes options for shopping list, search, recipe box, settings and store locator. Frankly, at first I felt there were too many options and didn’t always find what I was looking for. For example, what is the difference between browse recipes and recipe box? I’m still not sure. Nevertheless, more options are better than too few. What I use most is the dinner tonight option. After work part of my 5:30 phone call to my wife always includes two lines. “Whose getting the kids and what’s for dinner?” Well, this app has been helpful in answering the second question on more than one occasion. When you select the dinner tonight option you are taken picture here on the right which lists many choices complete with pictures, user ratings and estimated prep and cook times. After clicking on a potential meal you are taken to a screen below that gives you a shopping list and directions. I find this to be great to use on the way home to pick up a meal for the family. My only complaint is that I can never make the meal look as good as the picture but that’s operator error. A few nights ago I made the speedy salsa-chicken quesadillas. Simple enough for a clown like me and they tasted great. My red and yellow pepper garnish looked like a rat had been nibbling on it for awhile, but isn’t taste more important that appearance?  For $0.99, I’d have to say this is one of the few apps that actually may be worth the price. For other app reviews or downloads for your iDevice.