When comparing Allrecipes' Dinner Spinner vs Basil, the Slant community recommends Basil for most people. In the question“What are the best recipe manager apps for iOS?” Basil is ranked 1st while Allrecipes' Dinner Spinner is ranked 5th. The most important reason people chose Basil is:
Basil uses a highlighting system that allows selecting each element of the recipe instead of having to type it in.
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Pros
Pro Some recipes have video instructions
A few recipes have an accompanying video that explains how to prepare and cook the meal. Tapping on directions below the video skips it to the part that explains the step.
Pro Nutritional information for each recipe is available
The app can display how many calories each serving has what percentage of daily recommended intake each nutrient has.
Pro Advanced recipe search
The recipe database search allows specifying if certain ingredients should be present or not, if there are any dietary needs and how long should cooking the meal take.
Pro Access to huge recipe database
With Allrecipes Pro, users can access all 44,000 recipes in the database. Without paying for the pro version, users are only allowed to access a few thousand.
Pro Helpful information and tools for cooking
Each recipe has prep and cook time listed, so it's possible to take into account how long the process will take. All ingredients can be divided into required servings.
Pro Simple shopping list
Items to the shopping list can be added from the recipe view by clicking on the ingredients or manually from the shopping list itself. Items are organized in categories such as produce or beverages and there's a reminder at the bottom for what meals are the ingredients for. Bought items can be ticked off by tapping on them or deleted from the list with a long-tap.
Pro Users can review recipes
It's possible to rate and review recipes.
Pro Manual recipe clipping doesn't require typing
Basil uses a highlighting system that allows selecting each element of the recipe instead of having to type it in.
Pro Good web clipper
Recipes found on the web can be added to Basil by simply navigating to the recipe using the built-in web browser and clicking the plus icon. It will automatically import recipes from a variety of sources including epicurious.com, seriouseats.com and chow.com.
Pro Flexible organizational methods
Recipes added to Basil get automatically tagged. Tags include ingredients as well as meal and cuisine types. It allows quickly finding what recipes can be made from available ingredients.
Pro Tools that help prepare meals
The app includes timers that can be activated from the directions section.
Pro Easy to use grocery list creator
Grocery list creator is easy to use and it does small helpful things such as combine all quantities of ingredients and offers substitution suggestions.
Pro Simple interface
The interface is very clean, clear, easy to understand and pleasant to use.
Cons
Con Only access to allrecipes database
Con Recipes load slowly
Because each recipe contains so much information, it takes about 5 seconds for each one to load. In the meantime, an ad is displayed.
Con Recipes can't be imported from other sites
There is no webclipper or import functionality so it's impossible to save recipes from anywhere else but AllRecipes.
Con No longer maintained
No bug fixed, waste of time
Con iPad only
There's no iPhone version.
Con No meal planner
There are no tools for planning out meals in advance.
Con Web clipper requires using the built-in browser
To import a recipe, Basil's built-in browser has to be used to navigate to the recipe. There's no way to "share" to Basil.