With the Amazon Echo you can control your lights, play music, add items to your shopping list, and with a little effort you can also use it to read recipes to you while you cook in the kitchen. All it takes is a few simple steps to create an audio recipe library, and you'll never have to look at a cookbook or website while you chop, whisk, fry, and cook the content ever again.
In three steps, you can convert a recipe to an audio file, upload it to your Amazon account, and ask Alexa to play it for you. Follow these steps for each recipe you want Alexa to read to you, and you can create your personal library of audio recipes, which you can then add to a playlist on Amazon.
Once you've selected the recipe you want to save to your recipes playlist, go to TextToSpeech to convert the instructions to an mp3 file. Paste the ingredients and their amounts, and recipe instructions on the website and press 'Create Audio File'.
You have a few options you can choose from, including language, speed, and a variety of male and female voices.
There are plenty of other text-to-speech options online, including the Windows Text to Mp3 Converter apps, which offers a free trial, and the free Balabolka.
If you're not a fan of the artificial sound of the text-to-speech options, you can also record the audio files yourself using your phone, although that will obviously take a lot longer.
The next step is to upload each recipe as an individual mp3 file to your Amazon account, using the Amazon Music desktop app. You can upload up to 250 files for free. You may need to enter and edit song information, which is very important to ask Alexa to play them. To do this, go to your Amazon account's song listing, right-click the file, and select 'Edit Song Info'.
Next, go into the kitchen and play the recipe of your choice, using the command, “Alexa Play [Recipe Title].”
As you prepare ingredients and review recipe instructions, you can pause and resume playback with basic playback voice commands. If you need Alexa to repeat something, use the command, “Alexa rewind 5 seconds.” You can adjust the time according to your needs..
Have you used the Amazon Echo in the kitchen to read your recipes to you? What other creative uses have you found for your Amazon Echo? Let us know in the comments.
