Windows 10 Gems: Yummly makes planning dinner more adventurous

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Yummly

In the year 2016, one thing can be said for many people the world over: we're busy. If it's not your job, it's trying to be social, going to the movies, or keeping up with the family. With working couples it's often difficult to find the time to sit down and have a home-cooked meal — it's becoming a rarity. I speak from experience here.

But what if we could use technology to help us make dinner? And I don't mean finding a restaurant either. Yummly is just that app and it is the perfect service for those who need help in finding a quick recipe while also abiding by some unique dietary restrictions.

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The Yummly service

At its core Yummly is an aggregator of unique and interesting recipes for dinner, breakfast, sides, drinks and desserts. However, where it differs from other apps is in the presentation and the rankings of food types presented.

Yummly can link up to your Facebook, Email, or Google+ (alas, they are missing Microsoft Account). Doing so lets Yummly track your saved recipes across your devices (phone, PC) or on the web at Yummly.com.

Under dietary preferences, you can specify allergies, which is super important, as well as type of diet e.g. Paleo, Pescetarian, Lacto vegetarian, etc. The specificity in the diet options is ideal even for the hippest hipsters around and ensures you won't be presented with baby back ribs if you consider yourself a vegan.

From there you can just browse Yummily and pick out trending recipes or anything else by its name and gorgeous accompanying photo. Once you find something you like you can hit the clever 'Yum' button and it saves it to your 'My Yums'.

Why Yummly is awesome

The secret to Yummly is their algorithm.

Similar to how Pandora or Amazon learn from your previous 'likes' or favorites so does Yummly. The result is the more things you like the better the recipes are suited for your likes and preferences. This learning by the app and service is why so many people enjoy using Yummly as it goes beyond just random food recipes or categories.

Now combine that feature with the heavily visual layout with quick access to ingredients and nutrition levels and you have – pardon the pun – a winning recipe for an app.

LEARN TO COOK

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Yummly on Windows 10

Yummly was re-written as a universal app for Windows 10. As a result, the app experience is much better than in previous releases. It is fast to load and animations and transitions are as smooth as you would expect (which is to say that they're great).

The app utilizes the familiar split-view menu system to reveal links to the app's home screen, My Yums, search, settings, and to invite friends. Search is one of the best I have seen around. It doesn't just let you type in random items but instead is context sensitive. Type in 'beans' and you will get a whole list ranging from pinto beans to vanilla beans to bean casserole with each bringing up an assortment of recipes.

Not sure about the ingredient? Just type in 'healthy breakfast' and a huge assortment of related recipes will quickly populate your screen with drool-worthy images.

Under each recipe, you can categorize by meal type or share using the universal Windows share picker to other apps. The latter function is done really well too — sending the recipe to email puts a lot of information in the message like images and not just a hyperlink. You can also share to Twitter, though the message may need to be truncated due to the amount of information shared.

You can even share entire recipe collections using the same share picker.

Ingredients and Nutrition are native app elements to Yummly, but the Directions to use webview to basically embed a web page. Personally, I would have preferred if the instructions for the menu item were natively coded into the app, but due to the complexity of scraping plug legal and ad issues this was likely a purposeful choice. After all, Yummly is pulling content posted by others so it is only fair to show the content as such. It's not a bad experience though just a big different. The app controls let you enlarge the webview window to maximize the view.

Yummly also features a decent Live Tile that brings down images of some of the last meals along with the text of what it is you are looking at. Unfortunately, there is no transparent Live Tile, but that is not a deal breaker.

Dessert Time

I'll be honest: Yummly wasn't on my radar before now, but now that I've given it a try I really like the app layout, performance and overall feel. Yummly is just a very elegant app both for phone and PC.

Yummly does a great job of focusing on the content and suggesting ideas for some home-cooked meals. I really like the estimated time banner that informs you how long it will take to make as that puts things into perspective when planning a meal.

Finally, having the app on my phone and PC means I can browse a recipe while out and have it waiting on my computer when I get home. Even better, I can just as easily share it with my significant other in case I won't' be around to get all the ingredients together.

Bottom line is if you're looking to get into cooking or need some new ideas for meals you'd be mistaken to not take a look at Yummly for Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile!

Day 2 Sweepstakes:Win a Coolest Cooler!

The Prize: One super lucky Windows Central reader will take home a Coolest Cooler!!

How to Enter: Log into Windows Central and leave a comment on this post letting us know what you want to learn to cook with Yummly OR what you'd use the Coolest Cooler for. At the end of your comment you must also indicate you are posting as an entry into the sweepstakes, or use #sweepstakes.

Full rules and regulations can be found here, but please note that due to sponsor restrictions, the sweepstakes is only open to Windows Central readers in the US and Canada.

The sweepstakes is open until March 31st, and winners will be announced on the blog shortly after the close date.

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Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central, head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and for some reason, watches. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.