Crouton is a hot new recipe app option

I cook a lot (follow those escapades over on my Panzer Cooks insta). Roughly 5-6 nights a week and many other baking experiments aside. I've been using various recipe apps over the years but landed on Paprika back in 2010 after finding it on Hacker News (founder's post here).

I think Paprika still works pretty well and it's definitely familiar, but I had been wanting an app that felt a little more 'process forward' for a while. While Paprika does fine ingesting and collecting recipes and even automatically generating grocery lists, its 'during cooking' process leaves a lot to be desired.

Crouton is a snazzy option that I found on Threads that adds a bunch of 'while you cook' conveniences like in-recipe deep linking and, now, step by step from meal plans letting you put together a whole meal instead of swiping between recipes.

The big problem with cooking a multi-recipe meal is the overlap. You generally have to prepare one dish in the gaps between another dish in order to land them all on the table hot and fresh. This is why chefs are so amazing at what they do in a professional kitchen – they're able to do that across multiple hot dishes with consistency day after day.

For the rest of us, having a recipe app that feels more helpful in getting you to the landing spot in order is nice to see. I've been using it for a few weeks now and enjoying the modular card-style design that keeps steps distinct and the linking to ingredients that allows you to check quantities.

I'd eventually love to see the ability to choose a particular serving time and then have the app tell you when you need to begin (even if it's the day before for a brine or marinade) to deliver your meal on time. But the developer, Devin Davies, seems responsive and active so here's hoping for more.

Crouton on the App Store.