1. Amount
QUICK: How many pints are in a half gallon? Do you know how many teaspoons are in a tablespoon? With Amount on your phone, you won't have to rely on your fifth grade math skills to answer. This app conveniently converts measurements for you so you can go confidently knowing math isn't that important.
Available for: iOS
Price: $0.99
2. Thyme: A Kitchen Timer for the Culinary Arts
Thyme is a simple, beautiful app that does one thing – keeps time. What's great about this app and what sets it apart from your phone's stopwatch, though, is that it lets you keep and manage time separately for every burner on your stove and oven.
Available for: iOS and Android
Price: Free with ads or $0.99 for premium
3. Foodgawker
Foodgawker is solid food porn. You can browse gorgeous pictures of food and discover new recipes collected from around the Internet, like Pinterest, but just for food. You can favorite, save, and add notes to recipes you want to make later.
Available for: iOS
Price: Free with ads or $1.99 for All Access
4. Kitchen Stories
This app, which calls itself your video and photo cookbook, has new free recipes every week. The recipes come in complete packages with how-to videos, step-by-step instructions, wine pairings, and downloadable shopping lists.
Available for: iOS
Price: Free
5. Mixologist
Mixologist is a must-have app if you love to play bartender. You can tell the app which ingredients you have on hand, and it will create a list of drinks you can make with what you already have. Andy Samberg unfortunately not included.
Price: Free with ads, $0.99 for iOS, $1.49 for Android
6. Jamie Oliver's Recipes
This app brings the Naked Chef to your iPhone and iPad, with beautiful recipes and how-to videos starring Jamie himself. The free app comes with a taster pack that includes about ten recipes each month, or you can subscribe to monthly updates that include hundreds more.
Available for: iOS
Price: Free with in-app purchases
7. Yummly
Yummly is another recipe discovery app that combines beautiful pictures with recipes from around the web. You can filter recipes by the ingredients you have on hand, create different recipe boxes, and build shopping lists for the week based on the recipes you choose.
Available for: iOS and Android
Price: Free
8. WineGlass
We've all been here: You sit down for a nice meal, take a look at the wine list, and when your server comes over, you pick one basically at random. Wine lists are so long! With WineGlass, you can take take a picture of the menu and the app will create an interactive version that gives you the prices, ratings, and food pairings for each one on the list so you can order like a pro.
Available for: iOS
Price: $4.99
9. Matchbook
Matchbook lets you save bars and restaurants that you want to try to your phone and maps their locations, so when you're out looking for a place to eat, you can find all the places you wanted to remember in one place.
Available for: iOS
Price: Free
10. OpenTable
The essential go-to app for making reservations at most of your favorite restaurants. Browse restaurants in your city, select the date, time, and number in your party. If this isn't on your phone already, download it immediately.
Available for: iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 8
Price: Free
11. Tastemade
Tastemade is a great app for the food lover who also loves to travel. Through a network of "Tastemakers" in 22 cities around the world, Tastemade offers short, one or two minute videos showcasing the coolest places for food lovers. You can also use the app to make your own videos during your travels and creates lists of the places you've been and want to see.
Available for: iOS and Android
Price: Free
12. Humane Eating Project
This app is a gift for people who want to make sure they'll have animal-friendly choices when dining out. The app marks restaurants that are especially vegan or vegetarian-friendly with a green marker and restaurants with humanely-raised meats with a brown marker. It also has a "watch list" of restaurants that serve foie gras, veal, and shark fin soup, marked in red.
Available for: iOS and Android (beta)
Price: Free
13. Fooducate
This app is the coolest. Using your phone's camera, you can use Fooducate to scan products at the grocery store and find out if it's a healthy choice or not. The app assigns a grade to each product based on its nutritional value with a breakdown of what's actually in your food. Fooducate also recommends alternative options and lets you track your daily calories.
Available for: iOS and Android
Price: Free with in-app purchases
14. Milk
Milk is a great new app that lets you link coupons to your grocery store's rewards card. All you have to do is register your rewards card with your account, then use the app to browse for coupons. The coupons will be added to your card and applied automatically at the register. Easy as that.
Available for: iOS, Android coming soon
Price: Free
15. Instacart
Instacart is a grocery delivery service that lets you make specific requests right down to the ripeness of your fruits. Shoppers get your groceries together and deliver to your door in just a few hours. Instacart service is currently available at stores like Whole Foods, Costco, and Kroger in these cities.
Available for: iOS and Android
Price: Free
16. Consumr
Let's say you're at the grocery store and trying to decide between two brands of granola bars. You can use Consumr to read customer reviews of each. Using your iPhone's camera, Consumr scans the item's barcode and returns user reviews for thousands of products ranging from frozen foods and snacks to beauty care products.
Available for: iOS
Price: Free
17. Vivino
Vivino uses your phone's camera to help you research wines while you're at the grocery store wine aisle. All you have to do is take a picture of the label and Vivino will return a list of customer reviews and the average price of the bottle. You can also make a profile to save wines you want to try later and add reviews of your own.
Available for: iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 8
Price: Free with in-app purchases
18. Craft Check
Craft beers are everywhere, which is a wonderful thing, but big manufacturers have caught onto the trend. If you're on a beer run and you want to make sure your choice is truly a craft brew, use Craft Check. Use your phone's camera to scan the barcode, and the app will tell you if your pick is really a craft beer or not.
Available for: iOS
Price: $0.99