NYT Cooking

I've used this app for a very long time and loved it, but now it won't allow me to organize any of my recipes into my collections. It asks me to sign in, and when I enter my NY Times subscription ID and password it just gives me the eternal circling wheel. I've written twice to customer support. They replied the first time with a "solution" that showed they did not understand my problem. When I replied clarifying my issue, they simply ignored me. A few months ago I would have given this app 5 stars, but now I can only give it 3. Very disappointing. I wrote the above review a few months ago and today when I tried to write a new review it made me re-send the prior one. So, since I now have a new complaint I’m adding it to the old review. The above problem was resolved after my initial complaint. But now, for the past few weeks when I receive my regular email from NYTimes Cooking and I want to view one of the recipes from it, I am required to sign in EVERY TIME. Once I do that, view and save the recipe and then return to the email to continue looking through it, and I select a different recipe FROM THE SAME email, I am forced to sign in ALL OVER AGAIN. Clicking on the Remember me button is worthless. I do not have this issue with my computer, nor with my iPad. It is only on my iPhone where I have been successfully using the app for years until now. So I’m dropping my rating to two stars.

The NYT cooking app has given a new lease on life to my nightly dinner prep. I search the app almost every evening for inspiration about how to make a tasty meal from the random items in my fridge - that still-snowy-white cauliflower I bought a week ago, the frozen shrimp, the impulse purchase of a new harissa sauce. It never fails me. If I don’t have all the ingredients in a recipe, I don’t run to the store, but improvise. I substitute parsley for cilantro, sweet onions for leeks, or just omit. I love that all the recipes are attributed to chefs I’ve come to know from regular reading of the Times, so I can prioritize my favorites, whose tastes are a good match for my household’s. This alone makes the app far more reliable than the recipes that pop up on a random Google search. If I happen to be connected to a printer, I print a hard copy for reference in the kitchen. If not, I prop up my smart phone or tablet on the kitchen counter, fetch my ingredients from the convenient list at the top, and switch over to a news program to stave off kitchen ennui while I chop and simmer. My only complaint is that the recipes tend to underestimate prep and cooking time, so I’ve learned it’s best to allow some extra time. But the $39/year was a great expenditure.

This is my go-to place for finding and then organizing recipes. It is easy to use, and wonderful for exploring and for finding help on cooking techniques. The ability to add recipes from other online sites is a generous plus. The whole design of the app is elegant and clean. My one (minor, but...) complaint that keeps from getting this 5 stars is that the categories were added a few releases ago and I cannot override or change them. I had already set up my own categories at that point and the “enforced” ones are more numerous and also more general than I like. The Brunch category for example duplicates a category I had set up, but about 80% of our selections match—do I sort through each group and modify (tricky to do on a mobile phone!) so I can delete my old Brunch category, or do I leave both of them.....grrrr. Some of the new categories are general—Dinner for example—where I would rather set up my own according to type of food—casserole, meat, nonmeat, etc. I would like to be able to do away with the NYT defined categories altogether, but can’t see a way to do that. So I am left with all their new categories, many of my own, and lots of duplication. It’s frustrating in an otherwise well designed app. I still consider it my favorite and highly recommend it.

You have to understand that this app is a lot more than a collection of excellent recipes. It’s a talk show, a set of instruction videos, a daily food essay that gets you excited to be back in the kitchen ASAP. AND a collection of recipes from the best of the best. OK - so - there are just a few things that may be less than perfect. 1) I have to go elsewhere for Mexican food (REAL Mexican food) which happens to be my personal yum. I lived in Mexico and know how amazing that food can be - the fresh fruit batidos, the aguas, the taqueria salsas, the rich mole sauces, the soups with squash flowers.... 2) The recipe book can be difficult to manipulate. Deleting recipes from it is not intuitive. I’d love more options - like easily making up a set of recipes for a dinner party then dissolving (or back-filing) the set when the party’s over. Or saving a recipe with my personal fiddles and edits attached. But I LOVE this app, this daily inspiration. And - hey - my family and friends now believe I’m a good cook! Where did THAT come from? Guess!

When I first got it I thought it was great. It has slowly gone downhill though, to the point where it’s not even really useful anymore and definitely not worth the price. It just feels like the app is being neglected, and with every update it gets worse. It was great that you can save recipes from other sites, but now the app no longer shows the pictures of non-NYT recipes so you have to read the title of each one to find what you want. Forget about browsing through your saved recipes to find visual inspiration for dinner! Also, it does not allow you to organize non-NYT recipes into different folders... Thus in order to find anything I have try and remember the exact title of the recipe I’m looking for and scroll through dozens of recipe names hoping to find it. It is literally easier to google it and just find the recipe online again. The final insult was that now it makes you sign in every single time you use it which is a huge PITA... I’m not really worried about someone stealing my recipes! If you’re just saving NYT recipes this would be adequate but if you want to save all your online recipes in one place, look elsewhere. I switched to Paprika.