The Best Recipes to Cook During Fall: Gumbo, Chili, Pot Pie, and More

As much as we love subsisting on no-cook sandwiches and chopped salads all summer long, we’re excited to lean into fall cooking; there’s nothing like the first morning chill that indicates it’s time to fire up the stove or turn on the oven again. Whether that means baking a bubbly pan of focaccia, getting out the gumbo pot, or using up a haul of newly picked apples, these are the recipes Eater staff use to celebrate the onset of fall.

Paula Forbes, Texas Monthly

After months of being blasted by the Texas heat, there are few things I look forward to more than the first cool day of fall. After I throw open the windows to let in that crisp air and dig the cozy blankets out of the closet, I immediately set out to make a pot of chili. Or if I’m feeling extra lazy, I use Paula Forbes’s excellent recipe for Instant Pot chili, which allows me to sit on the couch and watch football while the pot does all the work of transforming beef and chiles into a perfect bowl of Texas red. And then, of course, I must immediately make a Fritos chili pie, that most Texan of creations that involves scooping a ton of chili onto corn chips before adorning it with cheese, sour cream, and plenty of pickled jalapeños. — Amy McCarthy, reporter

Daniel Gritzer, Serious Eats

I’m not above inhaling a bowl of gumbo in 80-something degree weather; let’s be clear. But cooler temperatures at least make the idea of spending hours over a roux a little more appealing — or in the case of this Serious Eats recipe, hours with the oven on. I love the hands-off nature of the recipe’s oven roux, and, as someone firmly on team #notomato, its embrace of that flavor profile. It also tastes and thickens just as well if you omit the okra (a summer vegetable around where I live). This recipe makes a lot, but I’m not sure there’s a better gift out there to the future weeknight cook than a quart of freezer gumbo. — Missy Frederick, cities director