America’s Test Kitchen: Let’s Get Cooking is the latest piece of software that turns a Nintendo DS from a handheld game system into a helpful kitchen tool. It’s a digital cookbook with 300 recipes that have been tested and perfected by the test cooks at America’s Test Kitchen.
Users can scroll through recipes using several search criteria such as ingredients, difficulty and calorie count. The on-screen chef will then walk you through the recipe step by step with video tutorials and audio instructions. There is also a voice command feature that allows you to tell the DS to repeat a step without touching it.
There are a couple of extras in Let’s Get Cooking that I really like and both are great ways of getting kids involved with the cooking. The first is the age-appropriate tasks, which are great ways to involve younger kids who want to be part of the cooking process but need something to do that won’t require an adult hovering over them to make sure it’s done properly. The other feature will have older kids and tweens (who might think that helping you cook is lame) eager to get involved. Just like other tech toys, Get Cooking allows you to wirelessly send select recipes to another DS, which is just plain cool.
Look for Let’s Get Cooking in stores and on Internet now for a suggested retail price of $19.99