Cooking From a Cookbook With Your Phone at Hand

Cooking from a cookbook with your phone nearby works best when each has one job: the book holds the recipe, open flat and out of the splash zone, and the phone runs the timers and answers the odd question. Prop the book on a stand or hold it open with a weight, mark your place on the page as you go, and keep the phone where you can hear it rather than where you’ll keep touching it.

How to keep a cookbook open while cooking

A new cookbook with a tight spine will close itself the moment you look away. A few ways to stop it:

A cookbook stand. The simplest answer, and it lifts the page to a readable angle. Many have clear arms that hold the pages down.
A weight across the pages. A heavy jar, a small chopping board or a rolling pin laid across the bottom edge of both pages.
Clips. A pair of binder clips on the outer edges holds a thick book open without marking it.
Break it in gently. Lay the book on its spine and press a few pages flat at a time from the middle outward. It’ll lie flatter for every recipe after.

Spiral-bound and lay-flat books avoid the problem altogether.

Keep the book clean

Put the book on the side of the counter away from the stove and the sink, and above the work surface if you can, on a shelf or a stand at the back of the counter. Splashes travel further than you’d expect when something is frying or a blender is running.

A clear plastic sleeve or a large zip-top bag over the open pages keeps them readable and wipeable. Wipe or rinse your hands before you turn a page, especially after handling raw meat; a page isn’t something you can disinfect.

Mark your place on a printed page

A screen can highlight the step you’re on; a page can’t, so you have to do it yourself.

Move a sticky note down the method as you finish each step.
Tick each step lightly in pencil. It also tells you, next time, that you’ve made it before.
For the ingredient list, set out what you’ve measured in a row on the counter, in order of use. What’s left in the cupboard is what’s still to come.

When a recipe sends you to another page, for a sauce or a pastry, mark that page too, with a second sticky note or a strip of paper, so you’re not hunting through the index with floury hands. If you do lose your place, look at what’s in the pan, find that in the method and carry on from there.

What your phone is for

With the book doing the reading, the phone can do the things a book can’t:

Timers. Name each one, so “beans” and “oven” don’t get confused. The guide to hands-free cooking covers setting your phone up so you can talk to it instead of touching it.
Conversions and terms. A cookbook from another country may use grams, gas marks or words you don’t know. Look them up before you start, not with butter on your fingers.
A backup of the page. A snapshot of the open page on your phone means you can glance at it from across the kitchen, or keep going if the book gets moved.

Keep the phone propped up, not lying flat in the work area where it’ll collect flour.

Copy out what you’ll need at a glance

For a long recipe, write the oven temperature, the timings and any “meanwhile” steps on a sticky note and put it somewhere you’ll see from the stove. It saves walking back to the book every few minutes. Many cookbook recipes are also published on the author’s or publisher’s website; if you find yours there, getting just the recipe from a website shows how to strip it back to the essentials.

Cooking a cookbook recipe with Kre

Cook with Kre works from text. Type or paste the recipe from your cookbook into the app, or bring it by link if the publisher has it online, and Kre talks you through it one step at a time with the amounts beside each step. It keeps your place and the timers, so the book can stay on its stand and your hands can stay in the bowl. Ask about a step and it answers from the recipe. Kre doesn’t read pictures of pages, so the recipe has to go in as text. See how Kre cooks with you.