Top 6 Recipe Apps for Vegetarians and Vegans

The VegWeb Vegan Recipe Finder (US$2.99) is a must-have iPhone app for any vegan or vegetarian. It contains over 13,000 vegan recipes, including everything from raw to kid-friendly meals. The recipes are submitted by VegWeb's users, and some include helpful tips from the recipe's author. You can also add individual items to a shopping list, or share any recipe via email, Twitter, or Facebook. It can be difficult to wade through the thousands of recipes, but VegWeb is still an excellent choice for vegans and vegetarians.

VeganYumYum is one of the most popular vegan blogs on the web, and vegans and vegetarians will also enjoy VeganYumYum Mobile (Free). Like the blog, the VeganYumYum iPhone app has gorgeous food photography that will make you want to cook. Pictures are included for each step, which makes even complicated recipes seem easier. The app doesn't include a ton of extra functionality, and there's only 75 recipes, but vegans will love it. 

SparkRecipes isn't devoted solely to vegan and vegetarian cooking, but the app makes it easy to identify meat-free recipes. It includes more than 200,000 user-submitted recipes, and an advanced search option lets you select only vegan or vegetarian dishes. Since the app contains so many recipes, there's a good selection of meat- and animal-free meals. Once you identify a recipe, you can save it to your favorites or share it by email. Nutritional facts are also included for each recipe.

Whole Foods Market Recipes (Free) has a gorgeous interface and a robust selection of recipes for all types of foodies. Vegan and vegetarian recipes are illustrated with a small icon, and the gorgeous pictures make all the recipes seem more appealing. The "On Hand" tab is genius -- it lets you find recipes based on the ingredients you already have. A shopping list, nutritional information, and email sharing round out the functionality. The Whole Foods app is one that everyone can enjoy, but vegetarians will especially like its meat-free recipes. 

If you prefer professional recipes (rather than the user-submitted variety found in the VegWeb or SparkRecipes apps), the free Epicurious app deserves a look. It includes thousands of recipes from Bon Appétit and the now-defunct Gourmet magazine. The app itself is gorgeous, and there are pictures included for most recipes. Under the search tab, you can find specific vegetarian or vegan dishes, and there are plenty of them -- 1,350 vegan recipes alone at the time of this writing. The only downside is that the recipes are displayed in a slideshow format, so it can be tedious to scroll through the results list.

The AllRecipes.com Dinner Spinner app (Free) is another great option for finding vegan and vegetarian recipes. The app contains thousands of user-submitted recipes. The advanced search filters help identify vegan or vegetarian recipes, and there's an option for dairy-free dishes as well. The app's "dinner spinner," which helps you come up with quick recipe ideas, doesn't include a specific vegetarian category, but you can choose vegetables as a main ingredient.