Hello again!
As I promised last week, I’m here to review the Cooking Planit website and app as part of the lead up to my Cooking Planit/T-Fal giveaway coming up in September. I already did a 1st review of Cooking Planit here, but I enjoyed it so much, it’s back for an encore.
Since the last time I reviewed it, things have been heating up for me. Not in the kitchen, unfortunately, but at work — I’m heading into my fall tax season and have practically no time to play around and cook. Boo!
But this is where Cooking Planit comes to the rescue. How would you like a personal kitchen assistant that helps walk you through the meal planning, preparation, and cooking process? Especially on those nights after a long day at work when you don’t want to think? I don’t know about you, but right now I will take all the help I can get!
One of my favorite things about Cooking Planit is browsing all the recipes and meal ideas. You can browse by ingredient, type of dish, occasion, or dietary restriction. You can then filter results to see all results, meals only, or recipes. There’s a pretty good variety of recipes and I’m sure more will continue to be added. Once you find some meals or recipes you like, you can then save it to your own cookbook for future reference. I’ve added quite a few more recipes to my cookbook in my account since the last time I reviewed Cooking Planit.
Once you’ve decided what to make, you can easily generate a grocery list for all the ingredients you’ll need to prepare your meal. Another of my favorite features is the Cloud Sync feature that lets you access your cookbook and grocery list from your iPad, iPhone or through the website, so you’re not stuck having to access your info in one place. So when you’re stopping at the supermarket on your way home from work, you can just pull up your grocery list on your phone and you’re on your way!
When you’re ready to get cooking, all you have to do is select your recipe or meal and the app has done all the organization for you so that you can use your time efficiently. You first see the recipes that make up the meal, the total prep and cook time, and the ingredients and tools needed. You can pull up each recipe individually or preview all steps needed for the meal. When you’re ready to start cooking, you enter “Cook Mode,” which lets you use voice control to progress through all the steps hands-free (so handy when you have stuff all over your hands!) or manually navigate through the steps. You can make use of automatic timers, and if you find yourself ahead of schedule the program lets you know to take a break before the next step.
Just like last time, I decided to browse my saved recipes and come up with my own meal. I decided to try the the Rosemary Garlic Chicken Drumsticks, Tomato, Feta, and Basil Orzo, and the Sauteed Broccolini with Crushed Red Pepper, and called this meal “Herby Summer Dinner.”
I decided to sub and tweak a few ingredients so that I could use up what I had at home. For the drumsticks, I added some paprika to the seasoning mix and doubled all the spices. I substituted grape tomatoes for the cherry tomatoes and used whole wheat Israeli couscous instead of orzo. Instead of broccolini, I used fresh broccoli florets. Since I was substituting similar ingredients, everything worked out.
To make up for the last review, where I didn’t have pictures of the finished product (all this rain we’ve been having is not conducive to food photos!), I took plenty this time! I’ll let these pictures speak for themselves:
I can assure you that this tasted every bit as good as it looks! Doesn’t that make you want to explore the recipes on the Cooking Planit website and app to see what you’re going to make? I hope so! I would sign up for a free account on the website first to get the whole experience, then download the app to supplement it.
*Disclosure: Cooking Planit provided me with a copy of the full iPad app for review purposes. I did not receive any compensation and am not obligated to post a positive review. Any opinions are my own.
Don’t forget about my T-Fal cookware giveaway, which begins September 12th, so remember to check back here!
In the meantime, here are the participating bloggers and the dates for their giveaways:
Enjoy!
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I love websites like this. I need organization in the kitchen with a convenient grocery list. I’ll definitely give it a try.
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