Crouton: Recipe Manager 4+

Crouton is by far the best recipe organizer app on the App Store. I’ve tried other options and they’re either missing an important feature or the interface is cumbersome to use. Crouton has a simple UI that is simple and intuitive. There’s more advanced features within the app but it gives the user the choice to use them. Most importantly, it’s satisfying to use and I can’t say the same for the other options. There’s small details that show there was a lot of thought put into the user experience. The grocery list syncing with the Reminders app feature is a very nice implementation that I’ve never seen before and found very useful. The same applies for the scaling feature, which sounds very simple but can be a huge time saver. The hands-free mode is another very useful feature that I have yet to see anywhere else. It allows you to swipe through the directions in a recipe using blinking expressions and opening your mouth. However, I did notice it was inconsistent at times. While it could use some work, I still found it very impressive, especially in pinch when your hands are covered in food. Overall, I’m very happy with Crouton and I’m excited to see any further improvements. That being said, I’m very satisfied with the current release and am glad to support it.

If I lost my phone, I could find other ways to call or email people, but this app is indispensable! I use this app every single day. I love how I can copy recipes I find online and easily paste them in this app. Also, I just scanned a recipe from a magazine into this app! Who would think it could be possible? I figured out that you have to scan ingredients and steps separately, but the learning curve was low. Also, you have to proofread, because as miraculous as this feature is, it still needs the user to help it out a little. I think there are features on this app I don’t even know how to use, and some day I’ll get around to trying them, but in the meantime I’m going to scan the recipes I use out of my cookbooks and then get rid of them! But a note to the developer: please don’t leave users high and dry like the developer of my other recipe app: I can’t access my recipes on that app any more because they won’t update the app for use in updated iOS. Such a bummer because inputting them was way more work than for Crouton!

This is the most efficient and cost-effective recipe app I have used. I have tried (& paid for) Paprika, Any List, Grocery, and SO many others.

I went to each for the ease of a particular feature (or a few) and they always managed to either change/break the feature, have another feature that made the app frustrating to use, or require a subscription to be able to use it.

Crouton beautifully imports recipes from 99% of the sites I get recipes from. It brings over most of the information I need. I really only need to manually put in what I want in the notes. The last app I used did not have scaling and it was SO FRUSTRATING. The fact that it can also AUTOMATICALLY convert standard to metric within the recipe and the hands free features are GAME CHANGERS! I love that it also has the option to show the ingredients you need at that particular step while looking at the instructions. And so many ways to sort-folders, tagging, smart folders (with more than one sort option!).

For an app that is billed as a “hobby,” you can tell this is someone who cooks themselves and put so much thought into the app because they use it themselves.

Thank you for this app!