Mobile devices â€" including the iPhone and the iPad â€" are now making their way into home and restaurant kitchens, proving Apple's popular tag line turned buzzword, "There's an app for that" to be true.
Celebrated cookbooks such as "Joy of Cooking" by Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer, and "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" by famed celebrity chef Julia Childs are sharing counter space with iPads and other mobile devices.
Mobile devices are capable of adding life in the form of audio and video to recipes, but they cannot replicate special recipes that may have been passed through generations as explained by Abilene resident Jennifer Hass.
"I like the idea of apps and I understand that they may be useful for some people but I would not use them," Hass said. "My mom taught me all that I know about cooking, and our family recipes have been passed down from as far back as we can trace."
According to app review blog, Appmodo, 40 percent of iPad owners are currently using their devices in their kitchens. That has created a flood of apps competing for attention from professional chefs and casual chefs looking for a bit of variety.
Currently, the second most popular app in Apple's App Store is The Culinary Institute of America's "The Professional Chef." The app also is listed as the most popular lifestyle app in the store.
The app boasts an impressive 800 restaurant-worthy recipes and more than 750 high-resolution photographs of ingredients, kitchen tools and finished recipes for $49.99. This particular app may not be practical for casual users, but many other apps are more accessible including a long list of free apps.
One of the first available and most downloaded cooking apps to be developed around the iPad is Conde Nast's "Epicurious." The app, which started as the spinoff of a popular website, is designed to bring recipes together from sources that include Bon Appétit magazine and Gourmet magazine. It also features recipes designed by professional chefs specifically for the app.
A fully-functional free version of Epicurious features more than 30,000 searchable recipes and has the ability to manage a shopping list can be downloaded for free. One of the apps most sought after features â€" the ability to incorporate and catalog your own recipes â€" can be added as a separate download for $1.99.
According to Abilene resident Hilary Frazier, that feature would be a reason for her to use the app.
"I would use a cookbook app in addition to my cookbooks, but I will never stop using my cookbooks altogether," Frazier said. "I would only use an app that would provide recipes that I don't have in my cookbooks."
Local pros are up in the air about using cooking apps, but at least one popular shop has not totally ruled out the idea.
Mezamiz Coffee House's Jess Else explained, "Apps are not something that we would ever completely rely on, but they might be useful in creating new recipes that complement our existing recipes."
No comments:
Post a Comment