The internet is a spectacular resource for finding and sharing information, and recipes are no exception. BigOven is a cooking app that fosters a community of culinary adventurers, giving subscribers the tools they need to share, rate, and save recipes. This community-oriented approach is unique among cooking apps, and it nicely complements the service’s video content and well-designed meal-planning tool. That said, BigOven is annoying to navigate on mobile devices, and, surprisingly, it lacks a pantry system. If you want the ultimate kitchen helper, check out Paprika, our Editors’ Choice pick for cooking apps.
Heating Up BigOven
BigOven is available on Android and iOS devices, as well as on the web via a browser. It’s free to download and use, but premium content (more on that in a bit) is locked behind a $2.99-per-month subscription. This is cheaper than Chefling and Yummly’ premium plans, which charge $4.99 per month. Paprika differs from the other cooking apps we’ve tested, because it carries a one-time, $4.99 purchase.
Free users can save up to 200 recipes to their digital recipe box, create grocery lists, share lists among synced devices, and search a catalog that contains more than 300,000 recipes. Subscribers, on the other hand, can access the meal planner, recipe scanning and editing features, and a dietary preference search. They also enjoy an ad-free experience. Like Chefling and Yummly, BigOven offers a free trial period. You can test the app for 30 days, which is considerably longer than Chefling and SideChef‘s 7-day trials.
Once you create an account with an email address, or by using your Gmail or Facebook credentials, you can search for recipes (or add your own). BigOven doesn’t require you to set up preferences or answer dietary questions, so you don’t receive tailored recipe recommendations. You can add an eating style in your profile, including pescatarian, vegetarian, vegan, paleo, and low-carb. However, this didn’t influence the recipe suggestions in our tests. I entered low-carb on a lark, and received suggestions for Tres Leches Donuts, spring cake, and one-pot spinach and chickpea pilaf.
BigOven’s Home tab showcases numerous categories, including Weekly Suggestions, Holiday Guides, and Leftover Ideas. It even features editors’ picks from BigOven’s own writing team. In this respect, BigOven’s Home tab is similar to Chefling’s category-rich Explore tab. BigOven isn’t quite as organized as Chefling, however, and tends to jumble suggestions one after another with no apparent rhyme or reason.
The layout sits somewhere between the Chefling’s panel-driven interface and Yummly’s large, image-focused visuals. BigOven features big image panels that are broken up by small text descriptions and links. It is an attractive design and, if more coherently listed, would easily top rival apps from a visual standpoint. Like Paprika, BigOven uses a white background with red accents to highlight important icons and tabs. Aside from the Home tab, BigOven also features icons for Recipes, Groceries, Meal Plan, and More, which reveals a new page with tabs for videos, editorials, a leftover suggestion tool, and popular new recipes.
Browsing Recipes
BigOven’s recipe category leverages the fairly standard cooking app layout that includes a screen-filling image with a star rating, prep and cooking times, serving size, ingredients, and directions. With user-created recipes, you find cooking directions within the app. With web-suggested recipes, BigOven provides a link to the original recipe. This resembles Yummly’s system, which I don’t like. I much prefer when an app presents all the information at once, rather than forcing me to load another page to follow a recipe. This is especially frustrating when cooking, as I prefer to manipulate my phone as little as possible.
Still, BigOven features many user-created recipes, and as mentioned, these present all the vital information on one page. That said, community recipes don’t always have photos, so you’ll occasionally find recipes with a generic camera icon image instead of the dish.
Like Chefling and Paprika, BigOven features a handy yield-modifying function to alter your meal’s serving size. Clicking the serving icon beneath the recipe image opens a wheel to cycle between serving amounts, which makes it easy to scale meals.
Planning Your Next Meal
BigOven has an excellent meal planner that’s on par with Paprika’s in terms of function and ease of use. Tapping the Meal Plan icon takes you to a calendar with the upcoming days of the week. Clicking a day takes you to a list of saved recipes. Click the recipe you want, adjust the servings, enter the meal type (breakfast, lunch, or dinner), and then select Add. BigOven automatically adds it to the slot under the day you choose at the start of the process. Like Paprika, BigOven’s meal planning is addictive due to its simplicity. Chefling has a similar interface, but bogs down its meal planner with repetitive questions and confirmation that makes the process tedious. Unfortunately, this useful meal-planning feature is unavailable to free users.
Recipe editing is not quite as fun, despite the app featuring all the necessary tools to make it so. BigOven is oddly obtuse in how it presents information, and recipe editing is a function hidden behind several tabs and convoluted steps. With a recipe open, you click the ellipses icon at the top of the screen to open Recipe Options. From there, you select More Options, then Edit Recipe, and scroll past the Customization tutorial. Click Copy and Customize at the bottom of the page. After doing all that, you’re finally taken to an edit page, and from here you can make recipe modifications.
The editing function is excellent, giving you the ability to change anything, including the image, recipe name, description, category (main dish, dessert, etc.), yields, and, of course, ingredients. Ingredient data is tabulated, so you can add lines if needed. You can include the ingredient information, quantity and measure, general notes, and preparation instructions. Unfortunately, this tool is terribly formatted on mobile devices. The text is tiny and borderline illegible, and the text boxes are difficult to accurately select due to their small size. This feature’s browser-based version looks and works just fine, but on mobile, it is extremely awkward and not worth using.
Chefling requires you to copy a recipe before editing, but the feature isn’t nearly as cumbersome as BigOven’s. Paprika’s editing tools let you modify your recipes right from the recipe page, making the process easy and painless.
Groceries and Pantry
Unlike Paprika, BigOven lacks a pantry. You can add ingredients to your grocery list as you plan your meals, but the app has no effective means of inventorying foodstuffs you have at home. This is a major shortcoming, since Chefling and Paprika feature pantry data entry and management as part of their kit.
You can create a grocery list by tapping on the shopping cart icon at the top of the page while perusing recipes, but all other cooking apps do this. Yummly and SideChef even go as far as letting you order these items through the app, via Instacart and Walmart, respectively. BigOven lacks this particular, so all you get is a grocery list to reference while shopping. BigOven doesn’t consolidate grocery items well, either, so you’ll often see repeat entries in your list if multiple recipes call for the same ingredient.
BigOven’s Bizarre Recipe-Scanning Monetization
BigOven uses your phone’s camera to scan hand-written recipes, and saves the data for later retrieval. To use it, you must take three photos of your written recipe, and upload them to BigOven. However, you’ll receive a message that the feature has limits. Free users are allowed three scans, while subscribers get 25 more on top of that. BigOven prominently displays a credit card icon at the bottom of the RecipeScan page, in case you want to “top off.” 12 extra scans cost $10, 40 cost $29.99, and 100 cost $59.99.
However, the recipe uploads aren’t immediate. It takes at least two days to get the recipe into the system, so you’re better off manually entering the data. In my tests, I uploaded a basic pasta dough recipe from my scratch book. I received an email from the BigOven team the next day, explaining that my RecipeScan request could not be processed due to illegibility. The feature is oddly pricey, and not very useful. Rival food apps tap your phone’s camera in superior ways. Chefling features a barcode scanner for pantry data entry, while Yummly utilizes a produce scanner to suggest recipes. Those tools can be used without limit (if you have a subscription).
Cooking With BigOven
BigOven’s layout makes it easy to use the app while cooking. Text is large and easily legible on mobile devices, and the app doesn’t let your screen go to sleep while it’s in use. Sure, you need to scroll more than Chefling or Paprika to read the directions, but this alone is a minor annoyance rather than a major detriment.
What’s more, BigOven also features video content with some of the company’s own recipes. Currently promoted is BigOven’s Tres Leches Donuts, a donut confection with a snappy minute-long recipe breakdown. All of BigOven’s video content utilizes this format; they’re short, minute-or-less videos that contain ingredients and directions. These are a stark contrast to Yummly’s long-form video content. Still, I appreciate bite-sized videos when working with a mobile format, especially as I cook.
The cooking experience is on par with what Yummly offers. BigOven would be would closer to Chefling or Paprika if you didn’t have to scroll so much to read directions, or need to click a link to a recipe’s source page for those pulled from the web.
BigOven requires an internet connection to work. You can’t browse recipes, or read any you’ve collected, without an internet connection. This is a relatively minor issue, but it can lead to irritation if your service is interrupted mid-cook. Paprika is the only cooking app that I’ve tested that can be used to browse your saved recipes without an internet connection.
Needs More Time in the Oven
Budding chefs will like BigOven’s community features, short video content, and meal-planning options, but the service’s numerous flaws may prevent them from truly loving the app. The lack of a pantry system is a major ding, as are the difficult-to-edit recipes on mobile. If you want to invest in an excellent cooking app, check out Paprika, our Editors’ Choice pick. Paprika lacks video and recipe recommendations, but it’s a highly customizable, one-time purchase with a top-tier pantry system and well-consolidated grocery list system.
