Dinner Spinner vs. Recipe Search

As one of the best recipe apps out on Google Play, we decided to confront Dinner Spinner and Recipe Search. You can pack all of your notes and recipe books and throw them away. This recipes apps will help you cook anything you need and cook simple dinners using your smartphone only.

Dinner Spinner 

Dinner Spinner is an app developed from one of the biggest website for recipes out on the web – AllRecipes. The recipes are divided in numerous different categories, from vegetarian recipes, to Italian recipes. So, you can find all recipes from the website on theirs app, called Dinner Spinner.

First you got to choose what you are cooking, is what you cooking a desert, salad, side dish or main dish. Then you have the option to choose the ingredients you want your recipe to have. Also you can choose the time needed to cook the desert.

For example, we selected Main Dish, in which main ingredient will be pork, and with cooking time around 45 minutes. The app then will recommend recipes and will list them according to their ratings. So the best rated recipe is always first. The best rated recipe in our case was Bow Ties with Sausage, Tomatoes and Cream.

If you don’t know what you want to eat, just shake the phone and the app will recommend dish, ingredients cooking time of the recipe.

It is worth to mention that Dinner Spinner was listed in Time magazine’s top 50 apps of 2012.

Recipe Search 

Recipe Search is a product from another great recipe website, AllTheCooks . So the story is the same as Dinner Spinner, all recipes from the site can be found on the app. But, Recipe Search or Recipes, is a bit different from Dinner Spinner. First we like to mention, that we selected Recipe Search in our top 7 apps you must have. When you open the app, there are pictures from the top recipes of that day, which is kind of cool. If you swipe to right, then the main menu will pop out.

There you can search recipes with keywords or you can browse through numerous different categories. Also you can bookmark certain recipes, check what’s new or build a profile and post your own recipes, comment and review recipes.

When you choose a recipe there is a little description from the author, preparation time, and detailed ingredients. We also liked the detailed directions to cook the recipe. In addition, there are features like planning the recipe, add certain products you miss to cart and see nutrition facts about the dish you are about to eat. App is simple and easy to use.

Our verdict: Search Recipe. 

It was a close call. Both apps are great, but, although they offer similar features, we felt like the user interface and experience was slightly better on Search Recipe. We were not impressed by the “fun” feature on Dinner Spinner, where you can shake your phone and the app will recommend recipes. Two or three times the app didn’t find any possible matches.

We felt like Search Recipe is more serious, useful and organized.