Cooking can be hard. While your desire to cook might be there, our busy lives mean we don’t always have the time to do it. What’s more, when you start cooking, it’s easy to start repeating the same dishes over and over until you get fed up and decide to go back to the take-out life. So to help you in your quest to becoming a fully-functional adult, we’ve put together a list of 5 essential apps you need to start cooking.

1) Instashop – Grocery delivery? Yes please!

This useful little app will save you SO much time when buying groceries. You can now skip the grocery store altogether! It’s basically an online grocery store that delivers practically anything you may need. It offers a small selection of supermarkets all around the UAE depending on your location. So you just pick what you want, and it’s in your house within the hour – PERF.

2) Epicurious – Recipes for DAYS (Or years..)

A bane in the existence of a home cook? Lack of inspiration. It can put a massive dent in a good cooking streak. So for endless inspiration keep Epicurious handy. A huge database of recipes. There’s guaranteed to be a dish for your every mood!

Want some more “local” inspiration? Get started with some of Athina’s Modern East recipes!

3) Kitchen Stories Recipes – Videos are always a plus!

If you’re still dipping your toes, a few step-by-step tutorials are probably necessary. And that’s exactly what Kitchen Stories Recipes offers! They have some really helpful videos detailing their recipes – no more guessing what “braising” is!

4) Shoplist – Get organized, plan in advance.

Picture this, you’re in the grocery store; there’s too many options – so you either take everything, or you take nothing. We’ve all been there. Shoplist is your perfect grocery shopping buddy – you can create your shopping list in advance, and take all the stress and confusion out of cooking!

5) Cookpad – Your very own recipe book.

What better way to cook than by joining a cooking community? Cookpad is a recipe sharing platform with cooks from all over the world. You can even create and share your own ‘recipe book’ through your profile on the app! How cool is that?! The nice thing is that these recipes have been tried and tested by others with an equally home-cooky level of experience, so you can easily follow the steps.

Make your cooking endeavors easier with these unmissable Kitchen Gadgets!