Tasty

Review by eFreeware

Tasty is the official app of the Tasty recipe and video brand, published by BuzzFeed and free to download on Android. It has been out since August 2018, has passed 10 million installs and holds a 4.7 average from more than 180,000 ratings, which tells you it has settled into a large and fairly contented audience. The pitch is straightforward: a big catalog of recipes, a guided cooking mode, and enough filtering that you can find something that fits the ingredients you already have.

What makes it worth a look, in my view, is the combination of scale and hand-holding. A catalog of more than 3,000 recipes is only useful if you can narrow it down, and the app puts real effort into search and personalization. The step-by-step mode is the other half of that promise: rather than handing you a wall of text, it walks through a recipe stage by stage, which is the sort of thing that helps on a busy weeknight.

It is a free app supported by in-app purchases. I would treat it as a general-purpose cooking companion rather than a specialist tool: its focus is everyday home cooking, with the diet and occasion filters doing much of the work of pointing you at the right dish.

A recipe catalog built around how you actually cook

The core of the app is its library of over 3,000 recipes, each with step-by-step instructions. That guided mode is the feature I would expect most people to lean on, since it breaks a dish into stages instead of presenting everything at once. The developer also keeps the screen from sleeping while you work through a recipe, a small touch that matters when your hands are covered in flour and you are not touching the phone.

Search is where the catalog becomes usable. You can filter by ingredients, cuisine, social occasion, dietary needs, difficulty and speed, among other things. That range means you can start from what is in the refrigerator, from a diet you follow, or from the kind of meal you are planning, rather than scrolling until something catches your eye.

There is also a My Recipes page that acts as a personal cookbook, and a likes system for saving dishes you want to come back to. Between the two, the app is designed to accumulate your own collection over time rather than sending you back to search every evening.

Filters that do the deciding for you

Dietary filtering is handled more thoroughly than I expected from a general recipe app. You can narrow results by vegan, gluten-free, low carb, healthy and comfort food, among other categories, and there is a vegetarian setting that hides recipes containing meat. The developer notes that this can be changed later, so it works as a default rather than a permanent commitment.

Suggestions also account for the hour, the weekday and holidays when proposing what to cook next. That is a nice alternative to staring at a search box, particularly on days when the occasion itself dictates what you cook. Occasion-based search covers social plans as well, so the app can be pointed at a dinner with friends as easily as at a quiet Tuesday.

For anyone outside the United States, measurements are given in metric alongside US values on every recipe. It is a detail rather than a headline feature, but it removes a constant source of friction for cooks working in grams and milliliters.

Video, saving and the account behind it

Tasty started as a video brand, and the app carries that side of it: you can watch the latest Tasty videos, with the developer pitching early access to them as one of the draws. For anyone who enjoys the format, having the videos and the written recipes in the same place saves moving between services.

Saving works through the likes system, which stores recipes for later, and through the My Recipes page. If you create a tasty.co account, that collection lives with the account, which is worth knowing before you invest time in building it up.

That account comes with a caveat the developer spells out: deleting it irreversibly removes all account information, including saved recipes and tips. It also does not unsubscribe you from email lists, and it does not touch your accounts on other BuzzFeed platforms. Worth reading before you decide to wipe an account you have been using for a while.

What the app expects from you

The trade-offs here are mostly about scope and setup rather than cost. Tasty is free with in-app purchases.

The app also includes Nielsen measurement software, which the developer describes as contributing to market research along the lines of television ratings. That is disclosed plainly, and it is the sort of thing some people will want to weigh before installing.

In terms of focus, this is a mainstream home-cooking app. It is built around a broad catalog, guided instructions and filtering, and it assumes you want someone else's recipes rather than a place to store your own family notes. The vegetarian setting, the dietary filters and the holiday recommendations all point in the same direction: helping you decide what to make tonight.

Who gets the most from a free recipe library

I would expect Tasty to suit home cooks who want a large, well-organized recipe collection with instructions that walk them through a dish rather than leaving them to interpret a paragraph of steps. If you cook most nights and often start from what is already in the kitchen, the ingredient and dietary filters are the parts you will use most.

It also fits people who follow the Tasty videos and want the recipes in the same place, and anyone cooking outside the US who is tired of converting measurements by hand. The vegetarian default and the diet filters make it a reasonable fit for households where one person eats differently from the rest.

Where it is less useful is as a personal recipe manager for dishes you already know, or as a specialist reference for a single cuisine or technique. Its strength is breadth and guidance, and that is what the app is built to deliver.

A broad, well-guided kitchen companion

Tasty earns a recommendation for what it sets out to be: a free, large-scale recipe app with guided cooking, sensible filtering and a video layer on top. Step-by-step mode, ingredient and diet filters, holiday recommendations and dual measurements cover the practical side of everyday cooking well.

The caveats are modest and specific. It is a mainstream recipe catalog rather than a personal cookbook for your own dishes, it carries in-app purchases alongside its free download, and it includes Nielsen measurement software. None of those change what the app does, but they are part of the picture.

If you want a single place to find something to cook, follow along with the steps and save what worked, this is a sound choice. Cooks who already have a system they like for their own recipes will find less here to change their habits.

What's new in version 2.18.0

Just the usual tweaks and fixes to make your Tasty experience even better!