QuickAdvice: Spice Up Your Cooking With Levi Roots Sunshine Food - Plus, Win A Promo Code!
Levi Roots - Sunshine Food ($6.99) by Touch Fantastic Limited is a new app from the makers of one of my favorite recipe/cooking apps, Dishy (featured in our AppGuide, Best Cooking and Recipe Apps). This one has a Caribbean flavor courtesy of Levi Roots, a Rastafarian musician turned celebrity chef. Roots has a popular TV show in the UK called, “Caribbean Food Made Easy”. It is now airing in the US as well.
Sunshine Food has the same easy-to-use features as Dishy; it is designed to help you plan a multi-course meal with suggested pairings, one-tap shopping list creation, step-by-step directions, in-app timers, and more. In the settings, you can customize the app depending on where you live -- select British or American English; choose your preferred units of measure.
Start by tapping Your Menu. Tap “+ Add an Item” to build your menu. Browse over 60 recipes by course, ingredient, diet, occasion, or cooking time. Choose a recipe and select your serving size. Tap Shop to create an instant shopping list with the exact amounts of each item you need for the recipe. Add as many recipes as you wish, tap Shop, and the app will keep adding to your shopping list. The shopping list is smartly designed as a checklist so you can cross off items in your cart, and divided up by type of food to help you find items quickly.
When you’ve got your ingredients and you’re ready to cook, tap the recipe and you’ll see a photo of the finished product, a “spice-meter”, and cooking time broken down by “hands-on” time vs. “ready in” time. The recipes are written step by step, so that even a culinary beginner can cook exotic meals with ease. If you have selected several recipes in order to create a multi-course meal, a tap on the hourglass symbol will tell you when to start each dish so that they are all finished at the same time.
As I mentioned earlier, Levi Roots is a musician -- 11 of his music tracks entertain you while you cook and to get you into the island spirit. Six videos are included to both instruct (learn how to smash a coconut!) and entertain.
I decided to try the Vital Veggie Soup with Cilantro Butter. It was easy enough to make, absolutely delicious, and I confess I danced to the reggae beat while I cooked! This is definitely a dish I’ll make again, and I look forward to trying other recipes in the app.
If you’re looking for a general cooking app with hundreds or thousands of recipes, this is not the one for you. If you’re looking for a professional, curated recipe app and are interested in Caribbean-themed cooking, this is definitely your app! Turn your own kitchen into a Rasta’rant with Levi Roots Sunshine Foods!
Win one of 20 promo codes with comment or retweet! Good luck to you all! Must have a US iTunes account to redeem. Contest ends Monday, Sept 27 at 10:00 a.m. EDT.
