Cooking Thanksgiving dinner can be daunting. Not only must you prepare tons of food—some of it you’ve rarely cooked before—you’ve also got to make sure that it’s all ready to hit the table at the same time. And you’ve got to keep all those plates spinning under the watchful eye of family members ready to remind you of every overcooked turkey breast, lumpy gravy or overheated green bean casserole at every future get-together.
Luckily, you don’t have to tackle Thanksgiving dinner alone, provided your kitchen arsenal includes an Android tablet or an iPad. Both mobile platforms can boast a cornucopia of cooking apps that you’ll be giving thanks for when it’s time to get cooking.
We’ve rounded up six tablet-optimized apps that aim to help you prepare Thanksgiving dinner, whether your menu calls for a turkey or a tofurkey. These apps will help you at every step, from picking recipes and planning a menu, to cooking multiple dishes at one time, to figuring out what to do with 20 pounds of leftovers.
Thanksgiving Menu Maker
Thanksgiving Menu Maker includes a schedule tab that helps you plan out when you need to take care of cooking.
An attractive tablet-optimized cooking app produced by Fine Cookingmagazine, Thanksgiving Menu Maker is completely free and geared toward the Thanksgiving gourmet. Recipes include such tantalizing dishes as brined roast turkey with sage-butter rub and mushroom gravy and beet salad with oregano, pecans, and goat cheese.
The app offers more than just menu-making, though, with tabs devoted to recipes, forming a shopping list, scheduling cook times, and assorted cooking tips. You start out by taking a look at the recipes, which are categorized by dish (starters, main dish, sides, and desserts). You can add recipes to your menu, and then view your entire meal via the app’s Menu tab.
The Shopping List tab creates a grocery list based on your menu, while the Schedule tab lets you know when you need to complete certain tasks, such as making turkey giblet broth the day before or heating the oven four hours before dinner. Finally, the Tips tab directs you to the Fine Cooking’s website for tips on wine pairings and what to do with leftovers. (Free; iOS)
Thanksgiving Recipes HD
In addition to video instructions, Thanksgiving Recipes HD includes written recipes and tips.
Mahalo’s Thanksgiving Recipes HD app takes a different approach from Fine Cooking’s Menu Maker. Instead of a recipe book, this app presents Thanksgiving as a course. The app features multiple chapters, each with subsections, for a total of 25 video-based tutorials on how to make Thanksgiving dinner.
The app starts out with an introductory course, and then moves onto a chapter called “Turkey 101.” Other chapters include “Alternative Cooking Methods”—in which you’ll master the making of turducken—and “Vegan Thanksgiving.” Each lesson features a YouTube video tutorial with hostess Tristan Blash. Lessons also feature written recipes and tips, so you don’t have to watch the entire video as you’re cooking. You can download recipes, favorite them, and mark them as complete; the latter action shows up on a progress screen within the app in case you take Thanksgiving dinner as seriously as you would a college course. Because Thanksgiving Recipes HD focuses on alternative methods, such as deep-frying a turkey or making tofurkey, it’s great for people who have non-traditional feasts in mind. ($2; Android,iOS)
BigOven 250,000+ Recipes and Grocery List
BigOven’s 250,000+ Recipes and Grocery List app is a more generic recipe and shopping list app than our previous two offerings. It’s not just focused on Thanksgiving, so it’s worth a look for anyone who wants some guidance in the kitchen.
The Thanksgiving-friendly features in BigOven include a Use Up Leftovers option for figuring out ways to dispense with all that extra turkey.
This app has more than 250,000 recipes to search through, using filters such as ingredients to include or exclude, and dietary restrictions. You can also browse recipe collections, such as the current Thanksgiving-oriented collections (“Thanksgiving Favorites” and “Savory Sides”).
Though BigOven isn’t Thanksgiving-exclusive, it does have a couple of particularly useful tools for Turkey Day beyond those Thanksgiving recipe collections. A Use Up Leftovers feature helps you come up with creative ways to work that fridge full of leftover turkey into your post-Thanksgiving meals. Just input the ingredients you need to use, and the app searches for menus that include them.
BigOven works in tandem with the BigOven.com website; you’ll need to create a free account in order to save menus, sync grocery lists, and add recipes to your favorites list. You can also upgrade to a Pro account for $2-per-month or $20-per-year for access to features such as a monthly menu planner, recipe nutrition info, and 25 free recipe scans. (Free; Android, iOS)
Epicurious Recipes & Shopping List
Epicurious is another free recipe and grocery list app with thousands of recipes in its database. This app has a seasonally-changing sidebar of featured recipes, so right now you’ll find plenty of recipes for turkey, gravy, stuffing, green beans, and other Thanksgiving-themed dishes.
You’ll find ingredients on the left side of the screen in Epicurious; instructions display on the right in this straightforward interface.
Epicurious doesn’t have as many features as does BigOven does—a menu planner is MIA, for instance—but it’s also simpler and more straight-forward. Recipes you find on Epicurious can be favorited, added to your grocery list, and emailed or shared on Twitter, Facebook, or other social networks. The app presents recipes in a simple format, with an ingredient list on the left side of the screen and instructions on the right. There aren’t as many pictures as there are in other tablet recipe books, so you’ll have to have a general idea of what you’re doing in the kitchen.
Epicurious does have a nice feature—an orange tab that you can slide along the instructions so you don’t loser your place. This app is great for people who just want a no-nonsense recipe app—nothing more, and nothing less. (Free; Android,iOS)
KitchenPad Timer
You probably already have a timer (or two) in your kitchen, whether it’s one built into your oven or just a generic egg timer. But it’s likely that your timer supply won’t live up to the demands of Thanksgiving Day, when you’ll probably be cooking up multiple dishes at once, each of which requiring their own timer.
Keep track of the cook times for up to nine separate dishes with KitchenPad Timer.
Enter the KitchenPad Timer app. This universal iOS app is perfect for people cooking multiple dishes since it allows you to time up to nine dishes simultaneously. You can customize each time: Just name the dish, choose the flame height or oven temperature (there are five burner timers and four oven timers), and pick a ringtone for the alarm. You can also save timer presets to your favorites list, which is a great feature if you happen to be making multiple servings of the same dish. ($1; iOS)
Time to Roast
Roasting a turkey is not rocket science—heck, it’s not even high school physics. That said, if you’ve never done it before, the process can be a bit intimidating.
Time to Roast has information on all kinds of meat, but Thanksgiving cooks will find the section on turkey instructive.
Time to Roast is an app that’s all about roasting. And that means roasting anything and everything—turkey, beef, duck, pork, chicken, you name it. This app is perfect for the amateur turkey-maker and is also useful for veteran turkey-makers whose minds are otherwise occupied in the kitchen.
First, select your oven type (conventional, fan, gas), preheat time (10, 15, or 20 minutes), and units (Celsius/Fahrenheit, pounds/kilograms) in the settings menu. Then, select your meat (turkey’s just one option alongside beef, lamb, pork, chicken, duck, or goose) and its weight. Once you’ve entered in all these values, the app will spit out some instructions, including how long to sear and roast the meat.
Next, tap on Alarms. Here you can choose a time to eat, or you can choose to start cooking right away. If you pick a time to eat, the app will present you with a timeline of things to do (starting with “preheat oven” and ending with “carve and serve”) based on when you want the turkey to be ready. If you choose to start cooking right away, you’ll get the same timeline that will start immediately. ($1;iOS)
