Food App Review of the Week: GetCrocking

GetCrocking
Developer: Riley Digital Media, LLC
Cost: $2.99
Runs On: iPhone
Website: www.getcrockingapp.com

I grew up in a family with two brothers and two working parents. We were all busy with activities and without exaggerating, we probably ate at least one slow cooker meal a week. To this day, when I walk through the door and get hit in the face with a whiff of slow cooking, I think of home. GetCrocking is a new app geared for people like me who were weaned on–and still love–slow cooker cooking. And like the food inside the pot, this app is definitely simmering, but let’s find out if it’s hot enough to reach a boil.


GetCrocking offers 200-plus new recipes of inspiration. The opening page of the app offers four ways of navigating the recipes: browsing by topic, viewing the top rated recipes, recently added recipes, and a filtered search. Across the bottom of the screen are four buttons including Home, Search, Favorites, and Shopping.

Finding recipes within the app is very simple and any of the options work well. If browsing by categories you can also sort by alphabetical order, by rating or by cook time. Once in a recipe, the layout is very nice. Brightly colored tabs across the top separate the ingredients, preparation and reviews. Most of the recipes also have nicely shot image thumbnails (unfortunately, they can’t be enlarged). From the recipe overview page, you can add the recipe to your favorites list, add it to your shopping list, or share the recipe via e-mail or Facebook.

Perhaps one of the nicest features of this app is the dynamic serving size adjuster. Clicking up and down changes the ingredient amounts on the fly. As I clicked around this app I did run into some stability issues. On several occasions the app crashed on me. Since the app doesn’t involve a lot of inputting, the crashes didn’t hurt as much as they do in others where your laborious typing is wiped out.

The other really nice feature is the shopping list. You can see the lists by individual recipe or with the click of a button combine the shopping list. You can check off the items you already have and share either by e-mail or text. If you’ve checked off items from the shopping list, only the unchecked items are shared.

The developer, Riley Digital Media, says they’ll continue to add recipes to their database, but in the meantime, users can submit their own recipes for consideration. Unfortunately, you can’t add your own recipe without running them through the developer for approval.

While this app isn’t perfect and it lacks some features (like a timer to alert you when to turn down your crock pot) it looks and feels like some time and effort went into the app. This is version 1.0 and I got a whiff of a really good app so I’m optimistic that the crashing issue will be resolved. Until then, though, I can’t give it a higher score based on promises.

Toque Rating: 3/5