Cook with Kre

Hands-Free Cooking: Follow a Recipe Without Touching It

Updated

Hands-free cooking means following a recipe by voice instead of by touch, so raw chicken and flour stay off your screen. You can get part of the way with a smart speaker or your phone’s built-in voice controls, and an app that reads the recipe out loud and listens back covers the rest. Whichever you pick, set the phone up where you can hear it and glance at it without moving.

Why touchscreens fail with messy hands

A touchscreen needs a clean, dry fingertip. Cooking gives you the opposite: butter, dough, marinade, wet hands from rinsing vegetables. So the usual routine goes: wipe a knuckle on a towel, tap the screen, find it has locked, unlock it, scroll back to where you were, and lose a minute while the onions catch.

There is a hygiene side too. Phones travel everywhere, and touching one between handling raw meat and handling salad is exactly the cross-contamination food-safety guidance tells you to avoid. Every touch you skip is one less thing to wash.

And there is the reading problem. Most recipes are written as paragraphs. Finding your place in step 4 of 9, mid-stir, means reading the step again from the top.

Your options: smart speaker, phone dictation, a voice cooking app

Smart speakers

A kitchen speaker is good at timers, conversions and quick questions: “how many tablespoons in a quarter cup” while your hands are in a bowl. Following a full recipe is another matter, and support has changed over time. Google, for example, lists step-by-step recipes and its cookbook among the features it has removed from Google Assistant, while timers remain. If you rely on a speaker for recipes, check your device’s current help pages before you plan a meal around it. We compare the assistants in more detail in can Alexa or Siri read a recipe step by step.

Phone voice controls

Your phone can already do some hands-free work:

  • Siri sets timers on request, such as “Set the timer for 3 minutes”.
  • Voice Control on iPhone lets you operate the screen by speaking. You turn it on under Accessibility, then say commands such as “Tap” followed by an item’s name, or “Show numbers” to label every button you can tap. It works, but it is built for controlling the whole phone, so moving through a recipe this way takes a lot of commands.
  • Dictation types what you say into any text field. That is handy for adding a note to a recipe, less so for reading one back.

None of these knows where you are in the recipe. You still keep the place yourself.

A voice cooking app

A cooking app built around voice reads the step aloud, waits for you to say you’re ready, and moves to the next one. The good ones keep your place so you never scroll, and let you ask a question without losing it.

What a good voice cook does

Whatever you use, these are the behaviours worth looking for:

  • One step at a time. You hear the step you need now, with its amounts, not the whole method in one go.
  • You can cut in. If it is talking and you need it to stop, it stops when you speak.
  • A clear pause. Stepping away to answer the door shouldn’t lose your place or cancel your timers.
  • Touch as backup. Voice is not always right: a loud extractor, a sleeping baby, a guest at the counter. Tapping should always be an option.
  • Short answers. Quick explanations with more on request beat a lecture while the pan is hot.

Cook with Kre is our take on this. Before you cook, you pick Talk with Kre or Tap through it, and you can change it any time by tapping Kre. You can interrupt Kre while it speaks. To pause, say “hold on”, “pause”, “hang on” or “wait a sec”, or tap Quiet for now; your timers keep running. Say “I’m back”, “keep going” or “carry on” to pick up again. See how Kre cooks with you.

Setting your phone up at the counter

Hands-free only works if the phone can hear you and you can see it.

  • Height and distance. A stand at the back of the counter, at roughly eye level when you are standing, is better than flat on the worktop. You read it at a glance and splashes miss it.
  • Away from heat and water. Keep it out of steam from the kettle or a pot, and away from the sink.
  • Keep the microphone clear. Don’t wedge the phone behind a jar or under a cupboard ledge.
  • Screen on. Your phone may lock before you reach the next step. See how to keep your iPhone screen on while cooking for the settings that help.
  • Volume up, Focus off. Check before you start that alerts will sound.

FAQ

Can I cook hands-free with just my phone?

Partly. Siri handles timers and Voice Control can operate the screen by voice, but neither keeps your place in a recipe. A voice cooking app fills that gap.

Do I have to talk the whole time?

No. A good voice cooking app lets you switch to tapping whenever you want, and back again when your hands are messy.

What if I need to step away?

Pause rather than stop. Look for a pause that holds your place and leaves the timers running, so nothing on the stove is forgotten while you’re gone.

Sources

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