10 Best Food Apps for Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is fast approaching, which means eating, and lots of it. It means turkey, and potatoes, and gravy, and cranberries, and pies. But it also means, at least for some people, the pressure to create a perfect meal. It means cooking a turkey, and potatoes, and gravy, and cranberries, and pies to delicious perfection; and possibly also adding on some unique family favorites, or coming up with new, creative dish options to keep the yearly food-centric holiday interesting. Whether you’re celebrating a full-blown Friendsgiving, hosting Thanksgiving for the first time, or helping your family with one — or all — of the dishes for the big holiday, it can be seriously overwhelming. But, there’s no need to panic. Just turn to your app store instead, and get some help from one of these 10, potentially life- (or at least Thanksgiving) saving food apps.
Photo: itunes.apple.com1/11Forks Over Knives
If you’re looking to take your Thanksgiving dinner in a healthier direction this year, look to Forks Over Knives. The app includes more than 200 recipes, all of which are whole-food, plant-based — and instructions to help you make them all.
Photo: itunes.apple.com2/11Joy of Cooking
Joy of Cooking is probably the most classic cookbook there is. The app brings it into the digital age, combining the cookbook’s treasure trove of recipes with some helpful features, like a menu-maker, audio instructions, and a “Sleep-Block” that prevents your device from going to sleep while you’re trying to keep an eye on the recipe.
Photo: itunes.apple.com3/11Paprika Recipe Manager
Paprika makes it easy to aggregate recipes you find from around the web, and organize them within the app so they’re easy to find when you need them. Use the calendar to lay out each of the dishes you have planned throughout Thanksgiving day (and perhaps the rest of the week, if it’s a big family extravaganza), create easy grocery lists (sorted by section in the store), use pins and timers to easily keep track of multiple dishes you’re cooking at once, and sync everything across your various devices.
Photo: itunes.apple.com4/11Timeglass
When it comes to preparing Thanksgiving dinner, there’s usually a lot going on in the kitchen, including several dishes being cooked all at once — which means you can’t rely on one or two basic microwave or oven timers. Enter: Timeglass, which allows you to set several timers, including ones with multiple steps and ones that talk to you to remind you what’s next.
Photo: itunes.apple.com5/11Epicurious
There’s no question that Epicurious is one of the most popular go-to sites for recipes, and their newly updated app is just as good. It offers a huge selection (more than 35,000) of recipes, video feeds, and tools — like a recipe box, shopping list, and smart kitchen timer — that’ll help you make basically any Thanksgiving dish you want.
Photo: itunes.apple.com6/11Panna
Panna gives you the chance to take cooking lessons from some of the most accomplished, world-class chefs. Search by chef, meal, cuisine, or ingredient through the app’s more than 350 HD video recipes (yep, every recipe comes with an instructional video), then watch, learn, and cook away.
Photo: itunes.apple.com7/11Kitchen Stories
Sometimes finding a recipe among the millions of options out there is the worst part of cooking. What do you search? How do you even begin to filter through the results? Kitchen Stories makes that part a lot easier by packaging recipes together in themed groupings, like “20-Minute Dishes” or “All-Time Classics,” and helps you create a shopping list for the recipes you choose, too. Not only that, but it also takes the guesswork out of reading how to actually make the dishes, by providing video and step-by-step photo lessons and instructions.
Photo: itunes.apple.com8/11Tastemade
Tastemade offers recipe discovery and instructions, but what really makes this app unique is its shows and “Tastemakers” content. Watch food and travel shows, original series, and cooking classes from a variety of personalities, and then take all of that inspiration and new knowledge to find and make some awesome dishes.
Photo: itunes.apple.com9/11Yummly Recipes & Recipe Box
Yummly curates more than one million recipes from big sites like AllRecipes and Epicurious, blogs, and user-submitted content, and gives you personalized recommendations based on what you like. And once you’ve found the recipes you want to make, the app will help you master your chef skills, save your favorite dishes, and even stock up on the necessary kitchen tools.
Photo: itunes.apple.com10/11Blue Apron
Use the Blue Apron app to discover seasonal recipes, (there are 10 added each week), get some cooking tips and how-to videos, and take Insta-worthy shots with the built-in filters and effects. And if you’re a Blue Apron subscription customer (the service delivers portioned ingredients for specific dishes to your door), you can use the app to customize a menu, learn the stories of the farmers and suppliers behind the ingredients, and manage your deliveries for a small, simple Thanksgiving gathering instead.
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