Dinner Recipe Apps for the Holidays: The Freemium 411

More than most TV networks, the Food Network was made for a companion app. Having recipes, tips, step-by-step video guides, classes, and shows accessible on your phone or tablet makes using the content to actually cook much easier. And, for the sometimes-overwhelming task of special occasion cooking, the Food Network app really comes in handy. It will make your Christmas dinner and holiday season easier and more delicious! 

The app has A LOT of content. But while the design is not exactly minimalist, it is easy to navigate. The app displays lots of its options at once and also makes it easy to find what you’re looking for. Testing the week before Thanksgiving, I was looking for tips and recipes to help my husband, and I enjoy a delicious meal for two that included our favorites but didn’t require too much work or generate more leftovers than we could eat. I found curated lists of recipes that were easy to browse for inspiration. 

Once I selected some favorites, it was easy to add the items in the recipe to a shopping list. The app also lets you export your list to Instacart so you can have your grocery stores delivered if you are avoiding going out or just too busy to shop. 

I also wanted to get some tips on prepping, cooking, and using up those leftovers. Food Network classes included offerings from Martha Stewart, Giada DiLaurentis, and other famous experts, and straightforward options like a 35-minute easy class called “Our Make-Ahead Guide to Thanksgiving Dinner.” 

There is also an extensive library of Food Network shows that include great holiday episodes. When I tested the app, these were Thanksgiving related, but expect to see Christmas content now, as the app keeps updated with the seasons. 

Even in November, the app’s “Holiday Central” section was already in full swing, with treats for Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa. There are classes on everything from making cookies to building a holiday cheeseboard along with (delicious-looking) recipes for holiday cookies, eggnog, and edible gifts. 

While the recipes, shopping list, and grocery delivery are available in the free version, the classes, shows, meal planning tools, and other video content require a subscription for $4.99/month or $39.99/year (although check for holiday sales!) This may seem steep, but the app’s constantly updating content library is worth it if you enjoy cooking and want to improve your skills — or watch celebrity cooks do their thing.

A great option for all your recipe needs, Yummly’s holiday content will ensure you have a delicious season. To access these recipes, go to the “Seasonal” section, and you’ll find an array of seasonally-appropriate (which often means holiday-oriented) choices.

Testing the app the week before Thanksgiving, I found a sugar-free cranberry sauce recipe that was just what I was looking for (although I later learned that sugar-free was not what my husband was looking for), lemon and black pepper roasted potatoes that look amazing, and a pomegranate maple-glazed turkey that is probably beyond my skill set but looks mouth-watering. And lots more. 

These recipes are aggregated from a number of different sources, and some have guided videos, so you always know what to do. The video guides are incredibly helpful, especially if you’re trying something new this holiday season. For each step, a video of someone doing it is displayed above the text description. When you’re done, you tap a button to go to the next step, so the video never gets ahead of you.

Yummly is designed around customization. When you first open the app, you’re presented with a wide array of cuisines, dietary preferences, and other options. You can also search by course or dish or call up recipes that are quick and easy or kid-friendly. These options help you narrow down your choices, whether you’re looking for holiday meals or everyday recipes. 

But finding recipes is only the first step: Yummly can help you with every step of your holiday feast. The app has a planning feature that lets you set the date and time you want to eat and tells you when to do each step. This would be especially helpful for a complex holiday meal with lots of different recipes. 

With Yummly, you can also add items from recipes to a shopping list and have them delivered from a store near you. The app has a pro version for $4.99 per month that is probably only worth it for more serious cooks.

Open this beautiful app, and you may never get around to actually cooking — the photographs are so sumptuous that it’s hard to stop scrolling. Oh She Glows is an app featuring plant-based recipes created by Angela Liddon. The founder of a blog of the same name, Liddon created Oh She Glows to share delicious and healthy meals. The app is packed with recipes from the blog and has excellent search functionality that allows users to easily search for gluten-free, sugar-free, vegan, or other specialized recipes. 

I want to live in this app. The pictures are so good that a recipe called “Hot Detox Tonic” looks sumptuous. While it doesn’t have a dedicated holiday section, it does feature seasonal recipes. Bread-free stuffing balls, vegan gravy, and pumpkin pie tarts were prominently displayed on the side. 

Holiday meals are often meat-focused, so Oh She Glows provides an option for vegetarians and vegans who may have a hard time finding holiday recipes elsewhere. It’s also a great source for healthy sides to go along with your traditional Christmas ham. 

The app is a dream to navigate. The main page is a simple scroll of recipe pictures and names. When you click on one, you can see notes on the recipes, ingredients, and instructions, each with its own tab (eliminating the issue many food blog readers encounter of having to scroll through a wall of text in order to get to the recipe). 

While the app is free, you can purchase bundles of recipes that aren’t available on the app. For the holidays, a free bundle of four cookie recipes might sweeten your Christmas season. 

Compared to the other apps here, Oh She Glows has very few features — no shopping list or delivery options, no meal plans. But the quality of the recipes and the design of the app make it a great choice, especially for plant-based eaters. Of all the apps, it was the one I most liked opening.

There is no shortage of recipes on the internet. The difficulty is not in finding recipes but in choosing them. If you’re anything like me, finding something to cook on the internet can be like trying to find something to watch on a TV with too many channels/ too many Netflix options: you scroll, and you scroll and then just quit. That’s why curation is so valuable. Sidechef really shines in this department. Built around meal plans and “collections” of things like Desserts on a Dime, Weeknight Soul-Warming Comfort Food, and Vegetarian Date Night, the app’s team of experts narrow down your choices to help you plan delicious meals.

A fine app, similar to some of our choices, but not as appealing to browse. Allrecipes seemed to have fewer recipes and less holiday content than some of the other apps we tested. It has a truly bizarre tool called the “Dinner Spinner” — you shake your phone, and the app selects a dish type, ingredient, and cooking time, then searches for recipes according to those parameters. Unsurprisingly, it was unable to find a bread with shellfish that would be ready in 20 minutes.

This is BuzzFeed’s cooking app and it is very BuzzFeed. For example, it sent me a notification about the best snacks for my astrological sign. If you like that sort of thing, you will like this app. It has articles and recipes, and also shopping list/delivery tools.

A crowd-sourced recipe site that seems to be trying to be the Instagram of recipes. But the app doesn’t look very good and I found it annoying to navigate. However, it might be more satisfying if you spend more time in the community.

A nice, simple recipe app and meal planner. It doesn’t have a lot of holiday-specific content, but it may be worth checking out for regular use. Like many of these apps, it has grocery list and meal planning features as well as recipes.

More of an app for storing and sorting recipes — if you like to browse lots of sites and are looking for a way to organize them, this is a great app. But it doesn’t have its own content, so it’s less useful if you’re searching for new holiday recipes.