Make your First Thanksgiving Dinner Simple and Easy

Still a bit useful to pros but aimed at beginners, CHOW Thanksgiving Dinner Coach provides guidance in the time-honoured craft of preparing a huge meal with many courses for Thanksgiving evening. Whether you’re hosting a dinner party for multiple families or a quieter one for just your own, CHOW can provide a little guidance through its short but sweet list of Thanksgiving cooking-related features. And it’s free!

A Simple Plan

CHOW Thanksgiving Dinner Coach provides a short list of recipes: roasted turkey, apple and sage stuffing, turkey gravy, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, sauteed green beans, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, and brandy-apple punch. It doesn’t provide many real variations on these recipes, either, which is a little beginner-unfriendly. That said, these are all Thanksgiving staples, so if you’re willing to shop for what the recipe calls for, you’ll find that this list of recipes together creates just what you need, and nothing more. The recipes themselves are good, but the guidance, with extremely readable and useful instructions, is invaluable.

Best for Beginners

It bears repeating what was said at the start of this review: CHOW Thanksgiving Dinner Coach is intended for beginners. If this is your third or fourth Thanksgiving dinner, you probably already have an idea of how to do things about on par with what the app can provide. But if you’ve never put together as much food before as a Thanksgiving dinner demands, CHOW could be a lifesaver.