The Pies Are Here

The pies are here! Four words, so much joy (and butter). This year’s batch of beauties from Claire Saffitz (above) is particularly lovely, both in the eating and the sharing: pumpkin pie with pepitas, lemon cream pie with honey and ginger, caramel apple pie, pecan slab pie and a cranberry cheesecake tart. She also has a clever new pie dough recipe, in case you can’t pull yourself or your family from one of our many other fantastic Thanksgiving pie recipes. Push up those sleeves, cube that butter and flour that bench: It’s pie time.

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Thanksgiving Pie Recipes

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All that butter can make a person crave something green, and it’s hard to go greener than this kale sauce pasta, a recipe by Joshua McFadden adapted by Tejal Rao. A pound of kale goes into this velvety sauce; to make it vegan, swap nutritional yeast for the cheese and add pine nuts, a helpful reader notes.

Two cold-weather classics that are easier than you may think: chicken cordon bleu, which comes together in just over an hour and involves some fun pounding and rolling, and this five-star beef pho recipe, made in a pressure cooker for maximum flavor with minimal effort in minimal time.

While Naz Deravian’s new potato soup recipe does take a bit more time, most of it is hands-off simmering, punctuated by some lazy stirring. As with most soups, the toppings are the key here — shredded Cheddar, snipped chives, fried onions and sour cream would all be welcome additions to this comforting pot of potato.

And because the holidays call for cocktails, but not something so strong that you’ll forget about the timer on your pie: a whiskey highball, fizzy and refreshing.

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• You’ve picked out the pie (pies) you want to make (eat); now you need the right pie-making tools for rolling, cutting, mixing and baking. Lesley Stockton at Wirecutter has baked hundreds of pies, and these are the tools she uses every time.

• Go ahead and freeze that pie dough now. Melissa Clark’s all-butter pie crust recipe keeps in the freezer for three months; defrost it in the fridge overnight before you need to bake.

• After writing out your Thanksgiving menu (not just the pies), divide your grocery list into perishables and non-perishables. Get those non-perishables this weekend, if you can!

• And you’ll need space in the fridge for all those perishables (and pies). Use Kenji López-Alt’s guide to food expiration dates to help clean out the fridge, and treat yourself to a countertop-worthy compost bin.