There are a lot of delicious aspects to an American Thanksgiving feast — the perfectly roasted turkey, the fluffy mashed potatoes and the silky pumpkin pie with the crispy, yet buttery, crust. While these dishes may sound easy enough to make on print, we all know that they are way more difficult to perfect once we’re in the kitchen. Luckily for us, there are a few apps on the market to help solve our cooking woes.
Thanksgiving Menu Maker
Cost: $0.99
Compatibility: iOS
Plan and personalize your Thanksgiving dinner with this app from Fine Cooking Magazine. The Thanksgiving Menu Maker comes with 75 recipes that are sorting into four categories: starters, main dishes, sides and desserts. Simply select the recipes you want to become a reality on your dining table and the app computes a schedule and shopping list. The schedule keeps you on track of your preparations days out from Thanksgiving and the shopping list organizes everything you need so you don’t have to rush to the store on Thanksgiving day to buy that can of cranberries. Other features include bonus content on finecooking.com, such as tips on roasting a turkey and wine pairings.
Butterball Cookbook Plus
Cost: Free
Compatibility: iOS and Android
Basting: What even is that? The words sounds intimidating to us Turkey-making novices, but luckily Butterball has gone digital to answer all of our questions about how to perfect our turkey for Thanksgiving. Whether you want to grill, bake, cook or even deep fry your bird, the app comes with tips on how to master these culinary techniques. Along with this, the Butterball Cookbook Plus has a cooking calculator to properly estimate the thawing and cooking times of your turkey so that its ready to eat on Thanksgiving. Other features include recipes that you can bookmark and share on social media, as well as nutritional information and serving sizes.
Thanksgiving: A Bon Appétit Manual
Cost: Free
Compatibility: iOS and Android
For those of you feeling adventurous and a bit daring with your Thanksgiving menu, Bon Appétit has created its own guide to the perfect Thanksgiving. The app comes complete with 101 recipes such as spatchcocked turkey with anise and orange (ooh la la!) and a scheduling assistant to make sure your fancy dinner is well planned. Besides its drool-worthy photos, Bon Appétit also included tips and how-to videos in the app so that you can make sure your dinner is très magnifique.
SideChef
Cost: Free
Compatibility: iOS and Android
It’s without a doubt that Thanksgiving is a national food holiday. But what about the other 364 days of the year? For those of you who love great food no matter what day of the year it is, there’s SideChef. Funded by Kickstarter, SideChef is a voice-enabled app that provides step-by-step videos and international recipes created by professional chefs and food bloggers. No more dirty iPad screens, my friends! Simply give the app verbal commands when you’re ready for the next step. SideChef also comes complete with automatic times and a built-in recipe box for you to create and share your own recipes with fellow SideChefers.
Gluten-free Recipes by iCookbook
Cost: $2.99
Compatibility: iOS
Stuffing, pies, rolls… the list goes on and on for Thanksgiving dishes that are off-limits for anyone with celiac disease or a gluten-free diet. To help make Thanksgiving (and meals in general) more enjoyable for everyone, iCookbook created a gluten-free recipe app. The recipes in this app have been crafted by registered dietitians and food experts to create satisfying meals that fit in with a gluten-free lifestyle. With new recipes added every month at no additional cost, there is always something new to try. Other features on the app include voice commands, printing and kitchen tools such as timers, healthy substitution lists and measurement conversion charts.
Kitchenbowl
Cost: Free
Compatibility: iOS (soon)
Calling all bloggers, foodies and early adopters! Have you ever seen a photo of food on Instagram that you want to make yourself? Well, Kitchenbowl is currently an app in beta that creates a social cooking community that looks like Instagram but has the functionality of a traditional recipe site. The concept is simple: take attractive photos of your meal as you make it, tack on a step-by-step recipe and share it with the Kitchenbowl community. To promote high-quality recipes, members have to be approved by Kitchenbowl in order to post their own recipes, but anyone is able to browse Kitchenbowl’s archive of recipes. If you’re up for the challenge, you can sign up and find recipes on Kitchenbowl here.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai5WserZuvg[/youtube]
Graphics courtesy of Fine Cooking Magazine, Butterball, Bon Appétit, SideChef, iCookbook and Kitchenbowl
