I’m not a chef. Never have been, and I probably never will… But when a simple iPhone app actually gets me in the kitchen to cook, it must be doing something right. That’s exactly what the AllRecipes.com Dinner Spinner app has done for me.

The app is divided into two main sections. The first and most important is the actual ‘Dinner Spinner’. This area features three rows of information for you to ’spin’ and come up with a unique category of dish. There is a ‘type’ row, an ‘ingredients’ row, and a ‘ready in’ row. If you know you feel like Pasta, you can lock that down in the Ingredients row by tapping it, and then hit the ‘Spin Categories’ button to come up with a unique combo. The app then shows you recipes available in that particular category to browse.

Recipes are clear and feature a nice image of the dish, the ingredients, and all of the steps necessary to make the dish. There is even nutritional information for you if you need to keep track of that sort of thing. Very handy.

The second section is your ‘Favorites’ area. At any time you can favorite a recipe and it gets thrown into this category for quick and easy reference at any time. I’ve got 5 or 6 dishes in my favorites at the moment… Kind of cool to use this instead of locking down the categories you like in the spinner, running the search, getting your matches and then finding the recipe within the results… The favorites category is simply a time saver.

Ever since I’ve started playing around with the app, I’ve made Asian Beef with Snow Peas (on a few occasions), and even tried out a Chicken Cacciatore recipe. Not bad for a guy that takes pride in his ability to make a mean pot of Kraft Dinner.

Check out the AllRecipes Dinner Spinner right here in the App Store. It’s a free download.