Jamie Oliver's pucker iPhone app

Ah, modern life. When it takes you an hour to travel home after an eight-hour work day, how much time do you have left to prepare dinner, or how much enthusiasm do you have for the task, for that matter. Well, after saving the homeless and UK's school kiddies, Jamie Oliver is here to save you — save you time, money and inches from around your waist line.

Pictures keep you on track through the cooking process. (Screenshots by CBSi)

Jamie Oliver's 20-minute meals is an absolute gem of an iPhone app for anyone who wants to free themselves from the revolving door of fast-food living but who feel their kitchen skills leave a lot to be desired. Sure there are recipes in this app — about 50 of them all up — but it's the extras that really make this app worth the AU$9.99 you'll have to fork out to download it (no pun intended).

The two main tabs next to the recipes are videos and essentials. Essentials gives you a list of all the kitchen equipment you'll need to prepare food quickly; pots, pans, knives, a food processor, etc, plus a list of non-perishable staple ingredients to have ready in the pantry. The videos section has a list of excellent beginner tutorials demonstrating knife skills, how to prepare common vegetables and herbs, and a great guide to cooking the perfect steak.

When browsing through the recipes you can easily build a shopping list of the ingredients you'll need to complete the meals, and you can print this list or email it to a friend. The recipes are broken down into steps, with images attached to each step so you can be sure your dish is shaping up like Mr Oliver's.

Jamie Oliver is an old hat at teaching amateurs how to cook better, and his easy style comes across in the well-produced video content. If you're a lousy chef with ambitions of serving edible food, this iPhone app is a must.