Freaking brilliant:'How to Cook Everything' app for your mobile phone

This is simply the best damn app on my entire phone. Bar none. It’s total wowza! If you are a cook, or would even like to be someday, and have an iPhone -

YOU NEED THIS APP!

I downloaded this today, and played through it for nearly an hour, and it just simply rocks. I’m deleting any other food/cooking app that I might have. Mark Bittman - New York Times food editor and cookbook author - scores a home run with this. It’s all you’re gonna need.

This is the only cookbook you need on the fly!

Everything you love about the cookbook: 2,000 recipes and recipe variations; 400 how-to illustrations; hundreds of menu ideas; and Mark Bittman’s straightforward cooking advice for simple good food. Plus more…

“The search and shopping list capabilities and cross-referencing alone make the HTCE app invaluable, but when you consider it has every single recipe and variation that you’d find in the big red book it becomes unbelievable.” —Mark Bittman

Honestly, I can’t think of anything he’s forgotten or left out. And the interface is so well thought out - and I’m saying that from a developer standpoint - you can tap seamlessly from the main menu page, to recipe suggestions, to technique, to twists on the basic recipe to your shopping list. It even has a timer function built into the recipes!

You will use this in the grocery store, the housewares store and continue to use it right into the kitchen.

For a freaking $4.99.

The search engine for recipes is so intuitive and well designed - taking you from quick and easy, make-ahead and vegetarian suggestions to key ingredient to flavor profile.

Does the recipe you’ve chosen call for a poached egg? If you don’t know how to poach an egg, no worries - there will be a link to How-To. The beauty of the technique and steps on all the recipes is that they’ve been pared down to the essentials - usually just three steps - with built in kitchen timers embedded right in the steps.

This app truly makes full use of the features we’ve come to love about our iPhones.

Love a recipe you’ve found, but want to save it for later? No worries, tap the Save to Favorites. Want to shop for the ingredients right now? No worries there either - just tap the recipe into the Grocery List or send it via email to the person doing the shopping.

How great is that? This is an iPhone app on steroids. It’s one - or several - steps ahead, knowing exactly how people need this information presented, and how they will use it now or later.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stood in the grocery store - looking at some great thing that is on special - wanting it, but wondering how to cook it. I’ve messed with other similar apps, trying to dredge up basic information on a recipe before I buy, but they’ve all been completely lame - until now, until the How to Cook Everything app by Mark Bittman.

What would I change or want that isn’t here? A wine component. I’d love to be able to go through the wine section of a store and have a damn clue.

I have most of Mark Bittman’s cookbooks in my kitchen - and they are my bibles. This is the logical extension of those.

Here’s the link to iTunes for the How to Cook Everything app.

Developers should take note of this app. It will rock their world.

-maven