Since its first show aired nearly 20 years ago, the Food Network has sliced, diced, baked, grilled, and fried its way into the homes of viewers ravenous for a steady diet of culinary showmanship. Now, the channel that introduced us to celebrity chefs and kitchen competitions is poised to change the way we consume recipes–starting with the first course, naturally.

Soup is the focus of the first of a new series of mobile cookbooks that launches October 11th in iTunes. (Amazon will follow in the coming weeks). Dubbed “Food Network Favorites,” the apps explore a single subject, presenting recipes and interactive editorial content along with a heaping helping of photographic food porn. One new title will be released every two months and devotees can subscribe to get new releases as they’re published.





Bob Madden, Food Network’s general manager and senior vice president of online brands, says the Food Network Favorites series will build off the success of its previous offerings such as “In the Kitchen,” which he says is currently the most popular iTunes paid app. Not to mention pull in scores of users to its website Food.com. The site shared over 450,000 recipes with over 7 million monthly uniques, according to Nielsen NPower, comScore in 2011.

But it’s also not quite going to duplicate the technical bells and whistles within its recently released Cupcakes! app. Though Madden maintains the title is consistently ranking in the top 10 in iTunes’ food and beverage category, thanks to the magic of analytics they discovered that home cooks were more interested in the actual recipes than, say, a bunch of bees flying out of a hive made of cheery, yellow cupcakes.

“We have a little of that in Soups but scaled back to focus on photography and the utility,” he says. So much so that if you’re salivating at that glimpse of a steaming bowl of creamy butternut squash soup, you can swipe the screen to move the copy off the page for a better view.

Interactivity isn’t totally missing. There are embedded videos and select pages that allow foodies to take a deeper dive into specific ingredients such as garnishes.





But the most intriguing thing about Soups–beyond turning mac and cheese or pizza into bowlfuls of spoonable comfort–is the potential to go back to the future of cookbooks.