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Dinner Recipe Apps for the Holidays: The Freemium 411
Whether holiday cooking delights or overwhelms you, recipe apps can make your experience easier and more delicious. We tried the top apps, and here is the Freemium 411.

You can't mess up with this one
Why we chose Food Network:
- Tons of content, holiday-related and otherwise. Videos, classes, recipes, and shows help you learn techniques for all your special occasion favorites, and access many different holiday menu plans.
- Meal planner tool helps you plan and stay organized while preparing complicated meals.
- You can create shopping lists from recipes, and connect to Instacart through the app to have groceries delivered at your convenience, contact-free.
- While the amount of content can be a little overwhelming, the app is well organized and useful.
- The premium version ($39.99/year or $4.99/month) is a significant upgrade, with commercial-free access to Food Network shows, classes, weekly meal plans, and live Q&As with top experts.
- 30-day free trial can help you decide if the extra content is worth it for you.
Convenient and customizable
Why we chose Yummly:
- Lots of holiday recipes in the “Seasonal” section. You can also sort according to various diets and other preferences. Some recipes have video guides.
- Recipes come from a number of different sources, all are easy to follow.
- The meal planner feature lets you set the date and time you want to eat and tells you when to start prepping and cooking — especially important for a complex holiday meal with lots of dishes.
- You can add recipe ingredients to a shopping list and have them delivered from stores near you.
- A pro version, $4.99 per month, lets you access video content from a stable of experts.
For plant-based eaters and Instagram fanatics
- BEAUTIFUL app featuring plant-based recipes. Smooth interface and mouth-watering photos make you want to scroll forever.
- Recipes all come from the app’s creator — they have a uniform (and attractive) look, and are simple and accessible.
- Recipes are arranged with more recent entries to the top, so you see whatever season/holiday is closest first.
- No meal planning, shopping lists, or really anything besides recipes.
- Great for plant-based eaters, people looking for healthier meals, or those who want to browse gorgeous food pictures.
Best curated collections
Why we chose SideChef:
- Features great holiday collections — classic Thanksgiving, reinvented sides, a guide to leftovers.
- Simple and helpful guides may be especially useful to new cooks or people making complex meals or dishes for the first time.
- The Premium version offers content from a variety of experienced cooks.
- The meal planner in the Premium version provides a week of delicious recipes and takes the stress out of planning.
Everything We Recommend
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Our PickKiss kitchen stress goodbye with Food Network Kitchen, a new kind of cooking app that works across Android devices. Make a delicious meal each and every time with step-by-step classes from your favorite Food Network chefs, exclusive recipes and ingredients delivered straight to your door. Download and start your free trial today!
MORE CONFIDENCE IN THE KITCHEN
Brush up on the basics or master a new technique. Choose from 50+ LIVE classes each week taught by your favorite Food Network stars, culinary experts, award-winning chefs, cookbook authors and surprise celebrity guests. With hundreds of on-demand classes, move at your own pace from the comfort of your own kitchen.*
SAVE & ACCESS RECIPES ANYWHERE
With more than 80,000 trusted recipes, you’ll never be without a dish to cook. Save your favorites and access them across multiple devices at any time, no matter where you are — from the kitchen to the living room to the grocery store and beyond.
No subscription required. A free account is necessary to save and access recipes.
PREMIUM STEP-BY-STEP VIDEO RECIPES
When you need to really SEE how it’s made, our video recipes are broken down into segments you can easily watch, rewind and skip to.*
INTEGRATED GROCERY DELIVERY
Find something you want to make? You can have all the ingredients delivered right to your door via Amazon Fresh with a seamless tap of a button, right in the app.
STREAM YOUR FAVORITE SHOWS
Browse and choose from a selection of Food Network exclusive cooking shows and recipes you won’t find anywhere else. Easily save recipes from any show to your recipe library.*
TURN UP & FIGHT CHILDHOOD HUNGER
Your purchase of a premium annual subscription provides up to 100 meals for kids living with hunger through a partnership with No Kid Hungry. One donation per account holder. For more information, see TurnUp.org/meals.
DOWNLOAD THE FREE APP TODAY
*Premium features require a subscription. App free to download.
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Mobile network and WiFi charges may apply to your use of Food Network Kitchen. You must be 18 years or over to create an account and buy a Food Network Kitchen subscription. Your Google Account will be charged when you confirm your purchase of a Food Network Kitchen subscription. These purchases are subject to the terms and conditions of Google Play. Subscription automatically renews unless auto-renew is turned off. Your Google Play Account will be charged for renewal at the then current subscription price. You can manage your subscription at any time and auto-renewal may be turned off by going to your Account Settings after purchase.
By downloading and using this app, purchasing a Food Network Kitchen subscription or purchasing an upgrade, you are agreeing to the Food Network Kitchen Visitor Agreement: kitchen.foodnetwork.com/#/visitor-agreement
For more information about how we use your personal information, please see our Privacy Notice: https://corporate.discovery.com/privacy-policy/. By downloading this app, you acknowledge the terms of our Privacy Notice.
This app uses tracking technologies to understand how users interact with our content and to help personalize our content for you. You can learn more by reading our Tracking Technologies Notice: kitchen.foodnetwork.com/#/tracking-technologies. By downloading this app, you agree to the use of tracking technologies as described in the Tracking Technologies Notice.
California Privacy Notice: https://corporate.discovery.com/privacy-policy/#cappi
California Do Not Sell My Info: https://corporate.discovery.com/california_dns
We may work with third-party advertising companies and other partners that help us deliver tailored advertisements to you. To opt-out of behavioral tracking on mobile devices you may use the DAA AppChoices Tool, available at http://www.aboutads.info/appchoices.CostFreeFreeIn-App Purchases$4.99 - $59.99 per item$4.99 - $59.99 per item -
Runner UpYummly is your smart cooking sidekick, offering personalized guidance every step of the way. From recipe recommendations just for you, to handy tools and helpful videos, Yummly has everything you need to improve life in the kitchen. Experience what millions are enjoying on the web, free on your Android device.
★ 2 million + recipes from the best of the best 👨🍳👩🍳🥇
An endless supply of recipes to fuel your next cooking adventure from Yummly’s test kitchen and top sites like AllRecipes, Epicurious, Food52 to smaller food blogs and everything in between. Every week, thousands of new recipes are added to Yummly for you to discover and Yum.
★ Discover recipe recommendations, just for you 🍽️
Set up your taste and nutrition preferences and we’ll only serve up recipes that match. As you use Yummly, like magic, it learns about your likes (and don’t likes). Yummly will provide you with food recipe recommendations every day that you are sure to love. In a bit of a food rut? Let Yummly help you out with a cornucopia of tasty suggestions for cooking. The more you Yum, the better it gets!
★ Step-by-step guided recipes 🎬⏲🍴
Let Yummly do the thinking for you with our step-by-step recipes, including video tutorials, timers, and more handy tools to make cooking a breeze.
★ Collect, save, and organize your favorites 💾
Saving your favorite recipes couldn’t be easier. With the simple tap of a “Yum” button, your faves are stashed for safekeeping in a digital recipe box. Once saved, create collections for easy organization and viewing when cooking and grocery shopping.
★ Personalized diets & allergies 🍉🍊🌶️🍍🥑🍓
Are you eating vegan, vegetarian, paleo, or gluten free? Do you have a food allergy to dairy, peanuts, or seafood? Simply hate cilantro? Yummly has you covered! We scour recipes from across the web and automatically filter out recipes based on your tastes, allergies, and diets.
★ The most powerful way to search for recipes 🔍
Why waste time sifting through the wrong recipes? Our unique search filters allow you to find the perfect recipe. Filter by cuisine, nutrition requirements (for calories, carbs, fat, or cholesterol), cook time, technique, and more.
★ Recipe scheduling for easy meal planning 📅⏰
Schedule a recipe to the exact time you want to eat and it's instantly added to your calendar. You'll even get a gentle nudge when it's time to start cooking.
★ Add entire recipes to your grocery shopping list 🗒️🛒
With one click you can add a full recipe to your shopping list. Yummly automatically categorizes your shopping list by both aisles and recipes to make your trip to the grocery store a snap.
★Use voice commands to keep your screen clean
Navigate hands-free through our step-by-step Guided Recipes with Yummly Voice Control. Just say "Hey Yummly" to activate voice commands so you can move through recipe steps, see ingredients, start timers and more.
Download the free Yummly app today. Let’s get cookin’!
CA residents - Do Not Sell My Personal Information: https://www.yummly.com/do-not-sell-my-infoCostFreeFreeIn-App Purchases$0.99 - $4.99 per itemNo -
Also GroovyBrought to you by New York Times bestselling author Angela Liddon, The Oh She Glows Recipe App features the most popular fan-favorite plant-based recipes from the award-winning recipe blog OhSheGlows.com, and stunning, vibrant food photography for every recipe. Angela has been creating healthy, veggie-packed recipes for almost 9 years, and she only shares recipes that are hits with her family, friends, and recipe testers, so you can be confident that the recipes in this collection will win over even the biggest skeptic. One thing is for sure, this healthy recipe app—named as one of the Apple App Store's Best of 2016—will have you glowing from the inside out and bursting with cooking inspiration!
Enjoy over 160 mouth-watering plant-based recipes, including more than 140 gluten-free recipes and many exclusive app recipes not shared anywhere else. Be sure to check out the bundles page, where exciting recipe bundles—both free and paid—can be accessed. The Oh She Glows Recipe App will continually have new recipes added to it; each recipe that’s published on OhSheGlows.com will also be uploaded to the app, so it will grow and grow.
Recipes are in English & French language only.
FEATURES:
- Browse through beautiful full-screen high-resolution photography with tablet-optimized UI
- Search for recipes with ease using ingredient keywords or by recipe title
- Find detailed nutritional information available for each recipe located in the "tips" section
- Filter your recipes based on dietary/allergy info, season, dish type, and more
- Strikeout ingredients and directions as you cook so you don’t lose your place
- Customize your own favorites list with your most-loved recipes
- Add your own notes to the recipes if you make any changes
- Take recipes with you on the go with convenient offline access
- Cook without worry that your device will go to sleep with our anti-lock feature
- Browse recipe thumbnails by category (e.g., view all breakfast recipe titles and photos in one spot)
We hope you enjoy cooking with the Oh She Glows - Healthy Plant-Based Recipes app. For any questions please feel free to email us at app_support+android@ohsheglows.com, and we are happy to help!
From our kitchen to yours,
The Liddon FamilyCost$2.49$1.99In-App Purchases$0.99 per item$0.99 - $ree per itemSideChef’s 18,000 step-by-step recipes help you get from “what’s for dinner?” to cooking your next meal in just minutes. Filter by diet and preferences, search by ingredients, create a grocery list, and instantly shop ingredients on Walmart and Amazon Fresh. Called “best app” by USA Today and the New York Times’s “favorite cooking app,” SideChef empowers you to eat healthier, save money, and live your most delicious life.
PERSONALIZED RECIPE RECOMMENDATIONS
Quickly find recipe inspiration tailored to your specific preferences. Filter by dietary requirements, allergies, food preferences, and ingredients you already have at home to find a recipe you like in less than one minute.
INTEGRATED GROCERY SHOPPING
Easily create a grocery list, and shop ingredients directly through Walmart and Amazon Fresh (U.S. only). Ingredients are intelligently matched to in-store products, and updated with real-time prices and availability. Make smarter decisions by seeing the percentage of each ingredient used in a recipe – an easy way to plan for leftovers and minimize food waste, while also saving money.
GREAT FOR BEGINNERS
New to cooking? Our step-by-step recipes include an image or video at every cooking step so you know exactly what to do. Built-in timers ensure you never overcook anything again, while how-to videos teach you valuable culinary skills – from how to properly dice an onion, to how to press tofu. Rate recipes, upload photos, exchange tips, anad share cooking fails and successes with the SideChef home cooking community.
EASY MEAL PLANNING
Use our meal planning tool to select recipes for the week, or save appealing recipes to your cookbook. Browse thousands of curated recipe collections and meal plans for more inspiration and ideas on what you’ll cook next.
AUTOMATED CONTROL OF APPLIANCES
Remotely control your compatible smart appliances with 2,000+ CookAssist-enabled smart recipes. Compatible brands include: LG, GE, and Bosch Home Connect brands including Thermador and Gaggenau. Simply link your devices and start cooking.
RECIPES FOR EVERYONE
Personalized recipe recommendations for these diets and allergens: Vegan, Vegetarian, Pescatarian, Low-Carb, Paleo, Keto, Gluten, Egg, Dairy, Soy, Peanut, Tree Nuts, Fish, Shellfish
Recipes cover a variety of cuisines: American, Italian, Mediterranean, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, French, and more! Browse recipes from your favorite culinary influencers – top food bloggers, writers, and renowned chefs.
PRAISE FROM MEDIA
“Favorite cooking app” – New York Times
”Best App of 2017” – Google Play
“It’s not just recipes, it does everything for you” – The Today Show
”SideChef has become a game-changer in the crowded space of cooking apps” – Forbes
”Best Cooking App” – Tom’s Guide
OPTIONAL SIDECHEF PREMIUM SUBSCRIPTION
SideChef is free to download and use. Should you choose to upgrade to SideChef Premium, we offer an auto-renewing subscription option at a price of $4.99 USD / month or $49.99 USD / year.
By downloading and using this app or purchasing a SideChef Premium subscription, you are agreeing to the SideChef terms of use and service: https://www.sidechef.com/terms
For more information about how we use your personal data, please see our Privacy Policy: https://www.sidechef.com/privacy-policy. By downloading this app, you acknowledge the terms of our Privacy Policy.CostFreeFreeIn-App Purchases$0.99 - $49.99 per item$4.99 - $49.99 per item
The 411 from our Appventurer
How we tested?
After exploring each app to get general impressions on how easy they were to use, how they look and feel, and any special features, I went through a Thanksgiving dinner planning process with each. I noted how easy it was to find recipes, how clearly the recipes were written, whether they were easy to scale down (important this year, as, like many people, I’m gearing up for dinner for two), and if the app could automatically generate a shopping list from recipes. I looked at whether the apps offered meal planning help or tips on everything from cooking techniques to using leftovers. Since many people are avoiding grocery stores this year, I took notice of apps that offer grocery delivery as well. Since people have different needs and preferences, I’ve highlighted a wide swath of apps, so there should be something for everyone.
Why get the app?
Many of these apps have video guides, which would be much easier to use if you can have your device in the kitchen. Epicurious has a timer feature, and many apps have video guides that would be easier to follow along with on a device that you have with you in the kitchen. The apps are all well-designed and provide an experience made for mobile.
More About Food Network: Our Pick
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.
Snags but not drags:
More About Yummly: Runner Up
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.
More About Oh She Glows: Also Groovy
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.
More About SideChef: Also Groovy
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.
This is especially useful for holiday meals, which often involve a lot of dishes, and therefore a lot of choices. By coordinating recipes for you, Sidechef helps take the guesswork out of your holiday feast. For Thanksgiving, I found collections devoted to Last-Minute Thanksgiving Dishes, Reinventing Thanksgiving Sides, and Classic Dishes for a Thanksgiving Gathering. There were recommendations for using leftovers, too. While Christmas recipes were not up yet, going back through past content, I found recipes and articles about Diwali, Rosh Hashanah, and Halloween, so it looks like Sidechef is thorough in their holiday offerings.
The app also has a meal planner, a shopping list, and grocery delivery (via a Walmart partnership). The free version of the app includes most of the content, but an upgrade ($4.99 per month or $49.99 annually) gives you access to expert content, weekly meal plans, and one-click recipes (a single click creates a shopping list and has the items delivered to you). For people looking for weekly meal plans, this might be worthwhile, but many of the recipes are included in the free version.
Other Apps Considered
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.
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Caroline Rothnie
WriterHard as I try to keep a minimalist phone, I can't stop downloading more apps. In addition to my can't-live-without apps for organization, music and podcasts, fitness, and meditation, I'm constantly trying out new ones. So I love apps, but it's a complicated relationship -- some of my favorites are for keeping me off my phone/internet.
In second grade, I attempted to do a book report on a story I had written myself, so you could say I've always thought of myself as a writer. These days, I write a wide variety of web content with a focus on mental health and productivity. I also write personal essays. I live in Kansas with my husband and two dogs.
Introduction