Handpick Review

It’s a good sign when looking through a cookery app makes you hungry. Handpick is not only simple to use, but offers plenty of tantalizing imagery to make your tastebuds water.

The app collects various food ideas from Instagram, bloggers, and numerous other sources. That means you have access to over 10 million dish posts from around the world, so you should never be short of great ideas in future; plus it’s easy to browse. You can opt to delve into dishes, which highlights a bunch of recipe ideas by photo. You can browse individually or view lists of them, easily scanning through what’s on offer.

Elsewhere, you can look stuff up according to the ingredients you wish to use. Handpick is pretty clever in this regard, highlighting what ingredients work particularly well with what you’ve already chosen. It’s a convenient way of coming up with an idea when you’ve only got a certain amount of items in your cupboard or just for when you’re craving something with particular ingredients.

A topics section offers themed recipes, which focuses on Superbowl/Game day items at the moment. It’s a fun concept to browse through, again offering some different insight.

There’s no timer feature or shopping list functionality, but that’s because Handpick is more focused on the visual side of things and offering inspiration, rather than the practical features of cooking.

At its simplest level, Handpick is a curated bunch of recipes divided into different categories for browsing, but that works very well when you’re trying to come up with new ideas. It’s simple to use and swipe through, as well as attractive to gaze at. Those are key components for any useful recipe app and Handpick does a fine job of inspiring you to try something new. It’s certainly given me some great ideas for the future. My only main wish is that it was an Universal build, as it'd look great on an iPad.