Jamie's 20 Minute Meals

Summary

 Homecooked meals–’nuff said. Feeling down in the dumps, feel a cold brewing, want to spend a pleasant evening at home alone or treat your friends to some yummy food? There’s nothing like a homecooked meal. (And, yes, I have a great green curry recipe that will boost your immune system and is great for when you feel like you’re getting a cold.)

Aside from being able to make and eat exactly what you’re in the mood for, cooking food yourself has other advantages: first of all, it’s a cheaper alternative than eating out or getting take-away. Secondly, it’s healthier than buying ready-made, frozen dinners (the bane of my existence), and thirdly you can be the kind of shopper you want to be: a conscientious shopper (opting for cruelty-free / organic / fair-trade / regional produce), shopper on a budget or full-on gourmet shopper.

A portable recipe book is just the ticket for users who like to cook their own food and tend to grocery shop spontaneously. Jamie Oliver’s digital cook book comprises 60 recipes for easy to prepare, quick meals.

Read on and find out what we make of Jamie's 20 Minute Meals.

Jamie's 20 Minute Meals is a collection of 60 recipes that can be prepared within 20 minutes (excluding, of course, the time it takes to purchase groceries).

Thorough reviewer that I am, I tried out several recipes for you guys and can honestly say that they don’t disappoint. They’re yummy and easy to make. What’s more, the app is set up very logically and following recipes is easy as pie.

Hit the ‘Recipes’ tab to check out - you guessed it - the different recipe categories, i.e. soups, pastas and curries.

I have to admit that my gastronomic instincts led me straight to the ‘banana split’ recipe. I was greeted by an absolutely delicious picture of the popular dessert. There’s also a video (more details in a little while) and brief anecdotes from Jamie Oliver’s personal life in relation to the meal.
There are two options: the entire list of ingredients can be forwarded to the grocery list, or else you can check out a step by step tutorial on how to prepare the meal.

The shopping cart offers only two options for the number of people for whom a meal is being prepared (two or four), which is a shame, but users who have a little bit of experience with preparing meals can adapt the amount of ingredients needed for their own purposes. Luckily, cooking isn’t an exact science and there’s a lot of room for improvisation.

Shopping lists can also be shared with whomever you’re shopping or preparing the meal with. There’s no integrated to-do list, which is a pity IMO.

The step by step tutorials are well made and easy to follow. Portrait format displays text only, whereas landscape format also displays images and Jamie’s comments (some of which are in the form of videos). The pics are high quality and quite tantalising.

There are also videos which serve as tutorials or sources of information in regards to ingredients, utensils and tools and tips and tricks. Videos must be downloaded separately and are stored on the SD card or external storage, which means they won’t clog up the device itself, which is a good thing.

Bottom line:

Jamie's 20 Minute Meals make a great first impression. The recipes are delicious and overall the app is easy to use.

My biggest bone of contention with this application is that it seems limited to the 60 recipes that are currently available–there doesn’t seem to be an option for purchasing more recipes. Let’s hope this will become an option in the future.

The Jamie's 20 Minute Meals design is great. My only complaint would be that the app isn’t adapted to Android ISC and that swiping from one recipe to the next isn’t possible.

Jamie's 20 Minute Meals performed absolutely flawlessly throughout my test runs.

Jamie's 20 Minute Meals is available for EUR 4.99 from Google Play and is free of ads.

If you compare the app to a hardcopy cook book, the price seems okay, keeping in mind that the production cost for producing a book or an app are completely different.

Overall we feel the price / performance ratio is ‘good’.