The One Food Magazine You Should Buy This November

Zach Patton and Clay Dunn
Zach Patton and Clay Dunn
Clay Dunn and Zach Patton spent nine years covering food magazines on their website TheBittenWord.com which chronicled their adventures cooking through a stack of food magazines each month. Clay and Zach live and cook in Washington, D.C.
updated May 30, 2019
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(Image credit: Joe Lingeman)

It’s time to get serious about your Thanksgiving menu.

Sure, there’s nearly a month still to go before the big day, but it’s time to start thinking about what you’ll be serving. Because let’s face it: Thanksgiving is intense. There’s far more cooking, bigger crowds, and weirder relatives than nearly any other meal of the year. This is the Super Bowl of home cooking. And there’s no better to place to find inspiration for it than in food magazines.

(Image credit: Joe Lingeman)

Our pick for best food magazine of November goes, hands-down, to Cooking Light. Their “Thanksgiving Vegetable Cookbook” is an imaginative guide designed to bring new life to Thanksgiving staples (and don’t worry, there’s a turkey recipe too). It’s absolutely jam-packed with recipes we want to try. Our faves include a sweet potato casserole with pumpkin oat crumble; triple-onion mashed potatoes; a pear, sage, and golden raisin stuffing; and crispy cauliflower with Italian salsa verde. If you want some serious inspiration for your Thanksgiving table, this is the issue to pick up.

Buy it now: Cooking Light, $5 on newsstands

(Image credit: Joe Lingeman)

But there’s a lot to love from other magazines this month, too. We especially liked Bon Appétit‘s Thanksgiving feature, which is a straightforward, comprehensive guide to all the Thanksgiving staples. Need to make a stock, a punch, a mash, or a stuffing? Bon App has you covered. The feature has a fresh voice and is filled with useful tips, even if it doesn’t overwhelm with recipes. This is the perfect issue if you’re hosting your first Thanksgiving.

(Image credit: Joe Lingeman)

We swooned over Martha Stewart Living‘s pie feature, where the magazine’s food editors share their favorite pies and little stories to go along with them. We’re dying to make the Meyer lemon and hazelnut tart, a bird’s-nest pudding pie, and the deep-dish pumpkin custard pie.

(Image credit: Joe Lingeman)

“Thanksgiving in the USA” in Rachael Ray Magazine features first- and second-generation American chefs and their favorite Thanksgiving dishes. Aarón Sánchez’s chorizo and cornbread stuffing and Nina Compton’s jerk sweet potatoes had our mouths watering.

(Image credit: Joe Lingeman)

Southern Living won our hearts with a feature on mac and cheese recipes for Thanksgiving. Their herbed breadcrumb-topped macaroni and cheese sounds especially delicious. And a second feature, called “Lost Pies of the South,” will get you to baking, with fascinating recipes like a South Carolina grapefruit chess pie, a Kentucky transparent pie (which reminds us of a family favorite we wrote about on our blog a few years ago), and an Alabama sliced sweet potato pie.

That’s just a small sampling of the best of this month’s food magazine issues. Which have you already read? And which recipes are you planning to make?