Foodie iphone App Review~ Poh’s Kitchen

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Foodie iphone App Review ~ Poh’s Kitchen

App: Pohs Kitchen

Cost: Free

Who? Celebrity Cook/Chef Poh Ling Yeow who was catapulted to fame through her appearance in the Australian prime-time television show Masterchef where she was runner up. Poh’s infectious laughter and colorful Asian cooking style saw her gain popularity amongst the public and ABC television approached her to star in her own cooking show with cookbook and iphone app deals.

What? This is the iphone app to “complement” the ABC TV show.

Will this app help me to cook and eat better? Maybe. It has a decent selection of recipes  with lots of accompanying videos (wifi needed to watch the videos). The recipes lack consistency in layout and the method can be confusing and messy. This app seems to be a rush job and its redeeming quality is – its free! It wont win any awards for cutting edge technology or design and is more of a advertisement for the  ABCs TV show.

Look and Feel: If you download this app you will have the above picture of Pohs smiling severed head on your iphone. Some may find this slightly off putting, but for lovers of Masterchef and all things “Poh” it’s probably a welcome additon to the usual cartoon graphics that make up app thumbnails.

The app itself is gentle on the eyes and not overly flashy in its graphics and photos with the light blue background a continuation of theme from Pohs  ABC TV show.

Usability: The app moves through different screens at tortoise land speed and everytime you open it up, you have to have an active internet connection as the app searches for weekly updates. No coverage means you are unable to use it. The app may still have a few bugs as it freezes often and takes a long time to load certain screens.

Functions: The home screen consists of the next show in the television series of Poh’s kitchen and what you can expect if you tune in, the latest recipes from last weeks show and a snapshot of Pohs latest blog post.

The menu bar at the bottom of the screen has click throughs for the following

Recipes

The app has over 125 recipes at time of review broken up into categories by dish type, key ingredient or A-Z. The recipes are taken directly from the show and updated weekly after the weeks episode goes to air.

Watch

You can watch full length episodes from the show ~ make sure you observe your data usage as you need a wifi connection and video streaming loves to use up your data!

Favourites

This function allows you to save your favorite recipes and convert them to a shopping list with a tick and a click.  The shopping list function could do with an upgrade as it only lists the ingredients of the recipe, and if you have ticked a few recipes the ingredients don’t have the ability to amalgamate, which could make shopping rather tedious. It does have a swipe out function which makes up for it somewhat.

Poh’s Place

The home screen to Poh’s blog with a summary of her latest blog post and a few click through bars for cooking tips and techniques

Recipe selection: With over 125 recipes at time of review, they have an overall Asian influence thanks to Poh’s Malaysian heritage. The recipes are taken directly from the Television show, so there is diversity in recipe range thanks to the chefs and foodies that are showcased on her show.

Recipes for Chinese steamed fish sit next to recipes for Bouillabaisse or you can try your hand at Duck and ginger congee or chocolate eclairs.

Once you have chosen your recipe, you can tap on the picture which takes you to another screen with the ingredients. Another tap gets you the method, and some of the recipes also have a video you can watch which is another tap away. Just remember that any videos you view incur data charges as set by your carrier.

The recipe pictures are a screen shot from the show, so the photos are not that great if you are relying on the picture alone to give you an idea of how the finished dish should look.

Some of the methods are  confusing and they lack consistency. Each step is not laid out individually, but rather grouped together in one long winded paragraph, which can be difficult to follow on such a small screen. I was left to ponder whether the most important part of this app,  the recipes, were somewhat over looked for the videos. If you don’t or cant watch the videos due to the outrageous  data charges of certain carriers, you are reliant on the written recipes which lack in usability.

Overall: If you like Poh, you will like this app. Its most impressive function is the collection of videos it has which can only be viewed with wifi which makes it user-pays despite its being available free. The recipes need work and the bugs need fixing.

Download iphone App Here >> Poh’s Kitchen