Amazon Echo has just gotten its killer app, and it's a taste sensation

[sincity]

The Amazon Echo is great for quickly getting small bits of information, playing songs, or listening to the radio, but we’ve also found it’s a useful accompaniment for cooks since it allows you to quickly set a timer without having to touch your phone with your grubby hands. 

While this timer functionality has certainly been helpful, we can’t help but think that Alexa has more to offer as a cooking aide. 

Now, a new Skill developed by the cookery website All Recipes is about to deliver on this promise, and will be able to talk you through entire recipes without you ever having to take your phone out of your pocket. 

Skill popping

The ‘skill’, which is what Amazon’s taken to calling apps made for its smart assistant, allows you to search for recipes based on ingredients or recipe title, and you can also filter recipes by cook time. 

You can have the skill text ingredients to your phone before you head out to the shop, and it will also offer you step-by-step instructions while you’re cooking, giving you the information you need without having to get your phone’s screen covered in flour (or meat, or water, or egg). 

However before you rush out and buy a bushel of Amazon Echo Dots, it seems that for now the skill is US-only. So far we haven’t been able to verify that the skill is available in the UK’s Alexa app, and all the recipes shown in the trailer appear to be American, with quantities given as volumes rather than weights for example. 

We’re hoping that the skill is successful enough for All Recipes to make it available worldwide in the future, but this raises an interesting question about how developers are able to monetize their Alexa skills. 

We have contacted Amazon for clarification on how developers are able to monetize their Alexa skills, and we’ve contacted All Recipes for more details on international availability of the skill. 

• Check out our full Amazon Echo and Amazon Echo Dot reviews

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