What’s for dinner? It’s a simple question that can turn into a surprisingly time-consuming decision. With countless recipes competing for attention on social media, a growing collection of dishes you’ve saved but never tried, and a refrigerator full of ingredients that don’t seem to go together, deciding what to cook can sometimes feel like more work than preparing the meal itself.
Bon Appétit wants to change that. The food and lifestyle brand just introduced a new premium cooking app today, bringing thousands of recipes from its Test Kitchen together with personalized recommendations, practical cooking tools, and editorial inspiration. The goal is to make finding, preparing, and sharing great food easier, whether you’re a novice cook or someone who already knows their way around the kitchen.
For Jamila Robinson, editor-in-chief of Bon Appétit and Epicurious, the new app makes the brand’s extensive recipe collection easier to navigate. “Given the numerous recipes and various formats across our brands, it was time to bring them all together in one platform to make the user journey a lot simpler,” she says. Magazine subscribers will receive access to the app as part of their subscriptions.
Making recipes easier to discover is a major focus of the new app. Robinson says. “People are looking for reliability, and helping them cook with confidence is our ultimate goal.” Users can browse thousands of options, from quick weeknight dinners and comfort-food favorites to more elaborate dishes for special occasions, with guidance from Bon Appétit’s chefs, editors and culinary personalities. The brand also hopes its editorial expertise will set the platform apart from the abundance of recipes online, where quality can vary.
Aside from recipes, the app includes hundreds of instructional videos that cover everything from basic cooking skills to advanced techniques. Users can personalize their experience by entering dietary restrictions and allergies, browse curated collections organized around holidays or specific ingredients, and follow Test Kitchen personalities such as Chris Morocco or explore content from the BA Bake Club.
A dedicated “For You” experience will recommend dishes based on individual tastes and dietary preferences. Users can also search the recipe collection, save favorites, and return to dishes they want to make again. Improved recipe pages will include interactive features such as ratings, personal notes, and sharing capabilities. These tools address a familiar problem for some home cooks who struggle to remember where they saved a recipe when it’s time to make it again.
Bon Appétit also plans to introduce additional features as the platform evolves. These include a more interactive cooking mode with step-by-step guidance, serving adjustments, and measurement conversions, plus meal-planning tools, shopping lists, and organized recipe collections. The app will let users ask cooking questions, join community events, participate in virtual cook-alongs, and interact with editors and creators.
The decision to launch the app, which is available on iOS, in early November is strategically timed for Thanksgiving, one of the most important occasions on the home-cooking calendar. From seasoned cooks to first-time hosts, the holiday brings a wide range of people into the kitchen, many searching for recipes that deliver impressive results. The app will feature new Thanksgiving menus and recipes, as well as the brand’s most popular holiday dishes and classics. More broadly, the launch reflects changing expectations around cooking resources, as consumers no longer just want instructions. They want inspiration, confidence, convenience and a little entertainment.
By combining its trusted Test Kitchen recipes with personalized discovery and an increasingly visual experience, Bon Appétit aims to become a year-round resource home cooks return to, not just when a major holiday approaches. And if it can finally answer the daily question of what to cook for dinner, that alone might be worth celebrating.
