Are you an aspiring amateur chef looking for a big hit with the family? Got a BIG dinner with the boss planned and have no idea what to cook? Kid tells you at the last second that you need to bring an appetizer to school that night? If you said YES to any of the above, or if you just want to have a nifty electronic cookbook, then Allrecipes.com Dinner Spinner is the perfect iPhone or iPod Touch application for you.
Dinner Spinner is a small (1.8MB) application for your iPhone or iPod Touch that accesses Allrecipes.com’s database of user-submitted easy-to-make recipes. You pick a type of course, a main component, and the cooking time (or scramble them if you wish) and it finds recipes for you. Take a look at the shopping list, hit the store, and then do some cooking. By connecting to Allrepcipes.com’s database of thousands of homemade recipes, Dinner Spinner is able to give you a large selection, or exactly what you want, in no time at all. Plus, it does this all for free.
The Good
One of the nicest features about Dinner Spinner is the interface. Simplicity is not only a goal of Feng Shui, but it seemed to be the primary philosophy of the application designers. The interface has three real options: a type of meal, a type of ingredient, and a cooking time. That's it, pure simplicity. The application works perfectly with both the touch features and the accelerometer of the iPhone. If you want to randomize one, two, or even all three parts of the selection process, just shake your phone. This interface along with the great way the application works within the iPhone makes it stand out from the crowd.
Another nice feature is how the recipes are set up. You get a step-by-step guide on how to cook the meal (just like any cookbook) and you get perfect instructions on every aspect. You also will get a shopping list and the full nutrition information. This is helpful to both people at the store and those dieting. Also, there are ratings (as done by other users) that help you decide exactly what you will and will not like. Along with the ratings are user comments that sometimes tell you little hints or add-ins that make the meal even better and easier. Additionally, as all of these recipes are user-submitted, you can trust that they are easy to make and quite tasty.
Article comments
1 - Loren Bast
Hi, Robert "
I’m one of the folks who’s working on the Dinner Spinner app, and we appreciate your review!
We just wanted to let you know we just released version 1.1, and as part of the new version we’ve cleaned up some of the more egregious recipe matches (in other words, “Shrimp Scampi” won’t show as a Fruit dish simply because it has some lemon juice in it). In addition, we’ve added a new Favorites section, as well as more popular recipes.
We have some other features in the queue for 1.2…stay tuned.
Loren Bast
Allrecipes.com
2 - Robert M. Barga
thanks for the update