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5 Cooking Apps I Wish Existed

These home kitchen cooking apps would make life so much easier. Somebody invent them!

I’m the editor of a food website, and I’ve been a food writer for a decade. I cook pretty regularly for my family. And I don’t have any cooking apps on my phone.

It’s not because I’m such a pro that I don’t need them — far from it. It’s that I haven’t come across any that are worth my time.

Hand of teenage girl with mobile phone having cornflakes with milk from bowl while sitting by table in front of camera and reading messages

Maybe I just don’t know the full scope of what’s out there. Maybe you’re holding out on me. Either way, I don’t know of any apps that would meaningfully make my life easier in the kitchen. Yet there are a couple I fantasize about regularly, and a few others I think would be popular as well.

If you read this list and are inspired to create one, please give me 20% of profits in perpetuity. Or, at the very least, let me know.

1. Expiration Date Tracker
Picture this: you get an alert on your phone that a can of black beans in your pantry, a bag of green beans in your freezer, and a package of pepperoni in your fridge will all go bad in the next week. Imagine how much less food you’d waste with an automated reminder of foods you bought that will expire soon. I dream of being able to scan the bar code on my groceries with an app that will then track them. It would have the benefit of also showing me — ideally in a searchable list form — what we already have at home, preventing me from doubling up on a grocery run and saving me the trouble of searching deep in the pantry or back of the freezer. Add that to the ability to meal plan based on what’s set to expire soonest, and you’ve got an app that I would be totally willing to pay for.

2. Recipe Suggester Based on Ingredients
What if you could point your phone camera at the inside of your fridge or pantry and it could suggest a recipe based on the ingredients it identified? This app would also need a feature to manually enter options (either for accuracy or for those who preferred the approach). It would be a wildly popular way to encourage creativity using familiar ingredients.

3. Randomized Recipe Suggester
Bored with your regular rinse-and-repeat meals? What if you had an app that would make recipe suggestions based on a couple of easy questions you answered? I think many people would take advantage of an app that helped them find inspiration for dinner based on skill level, time available, cuisine, and dietary restrictions. Of course, you can search our site based on some of these factors (such as dietary preferences and needs), but an app could help you quickly find something like an intermediate-level, gluten-free Thai recipe that takes up to 50 minutes to prepare.

    African American woman on smartphone standing next to chopped vegetables.

    4. Is It Done?
    Ever wonder if the steak you’ve cooked is considered medium or medium rare? Or what about if that shrimp is still a little too translucent or if your onions are sufficiently caramelized? A camera-based app that would tell you if you’ve reached the right amount of doneness wouldn’t be perfect, but it could certainly offer home cooks a helpful second opinion!

    5. Clean Kitchen
    There are a few things in our kitchen that get cleaned pretty regularly — the top of the stove, the sink, the floors, and the countertops in particular. Sure, I can search online for how often to switch the water filter in the refrigerator, how regularly to clean the Keurig, or when to deep clean the dishwasher, but what if an app tracked these things for you? An automated reminder structure based on the actual appliances and elements in your kitchen, with the ability to check each off would be helpful. And maybe the app could incentivize me somehow too, like by gamifying it with streaks, levels, or rewards. That way, I’d do better than just an annual spring cleaning and a few others as I notice they’re getting sketchy.

    What cooking apps would make your life easier in the kitchen?