Seven October Recipes To Try Right Now

We couldn't in good conscience let you go through another cold season without a foolproof recipe for spaghetti and meatballs, one that comes to us from chef Patrick McKee of Paley's Place in Portland, Oregon.

And while we were on our meatball kick, we asked Rachel Yang, chef at Joule in Seattle, for her twist on the classic, and she supplied us with a recipe for spicy pork meatballs, flavored with Korean gochujang.

Not all spaghetti requires meatballs, of course. Brooklyn-based chef Dale Talde's quicker-than-quick spaghetti with anchovies and tomatoes (seven ingredients, 30 minutes) can be made with pantry staples; this recipe for clam, bacon and beer spaghetti (10 ingredients, 25 minutes) is another weeknight option.

Spend your weekend on bigger projects: baking a cast-iron skillet of cornbread, braising a five-spice-rubbed pork loin with oranges and dried plums, and making a batch of maple-caramel popcorn balls, a recipe that our Test Kitchen perfected after four attempts and 60 cups of popcorn.