Thanksgiving is just one week away! Are you prepared? Don’t wait until next Wednesday to begin cooking your Turkey Day feast. Many meals can be started in advance, helping ease your workload come game time. We found these fantastic steps from Serious Eats and we had to share it on here! Follow these for a worry-free Thanksgiving day. Thanks Serious Eats!
The key to a successful Thanksgiving is planning. Know what needs to get done, when it needs to be done, and how much manpower and time it’s going to take you. There’s no better way to derail a calm evening by scrambling at the last minute to make sure your turkey is cooked through, or the gravy isn’t burning.
By far the best way to make sure your kitchen doesn’t turn into a disaster site on the big day is to prepare everything as far in advance as you can.Some foods not only do well prepared in advance, but actuallyimprove with a few days in the fridge.
The Week Before
If you’ve been preparing for it following this guide—barring meddling relatives (who can never be accounted for)—there should be no reason whatsoever that the week of Thanksgiving will be anything but smooth sailing. Here’s what you gotta do.
SATURDAY OR SUNDAY
- Shop for remaining ingredients. You can safely buy most of your ingredients now. Onions, carrots, potatoes, celery, sweet potatoes, Brussels sprouts and green beans, squash, even fresh-looking salad greens will last until Thursday provided you store them properly. Pick up cheeses and cured meats for an easy, no-prep hors d’oeuvre to serve while you’re in the kitchen.
- Have your turkey ready. By Sunday, you should either have your fresh turkey in the fridge ready-to-brine, salt, or dry, or your frozen turkey completely thawed.
- Make the gravy. You can make gravy from the turkey necks and store it in the fridge until the day of. For a last minute flavor boost, add the deglazed pan drippings from the roast turkey.
- If you don’t have it frozen, make pie dough. Pie dough freezes very well, so make it today, save it in the freezer until Wednesday when you bake your pies.
- Make soups and dips. Soups and appetizer dips improve with a few days in the fridge, so it’s actually better to make them in advance.
- Make the cranberry sauce. Cranberries have natural preservatives that give them an extraordinarily long shelf life. You can even make the sauce the week before if you’d like.
MONDAY
If you choose to brine your bird, you should be being doing that today. Large birds can be brined in a cooler filled with water and ice packs (change the ice packs every 12 hours to make sure the water stays cooler than 40°F). Alternatively, salt your bird and leave it in the fridge for a similar juiciness-enhancing effect.
TUESDAY
Take the day off! Watch a movie, play with the dog, rake the lawn, or just drink the day away, but don’t let things get too out of hand: You’ll need all your wits about you for Wednesday and Thursday.
WEDNESDAY
- Get turkey ready for roasting. This can mean removing it from the brine and allowing it to air-dry overnight in the fridge, rubbing it with herb butter, or separating it into various parts, depending on how you like to cook your bird. Check out The Food Lab’s Turkey Guide for recipe ideas and tips.
- Make your pies. Bake off your pies and allow them to cool and rest at room temperature until you need them on Thursday.
- Dry your bread. Cut up your bread and set it out to stale and dry overnight to make dressing or stuffing the next day. (You can also just do this Thursday morning in a low oven).
- Make salad dressings. If you’re planning on having a couple salads, make the dressings today.
- Assemble your casseroles. Any casserole that can be finished in the oven like the dressing (or stuffing, if you prefer that nomenclature), green bean casseroles, sweet potato casserole—whatever—can be assembled ahead of time and refrigerated overnight. Pull ’em out of the fridge about two hours before you plan on baking them to let them come up to room temperature. Leave off any crunchy toppings like fried onions or bread crumbs until ready to bake (or even until after it’s baked).
- Basic vegetable prep. It’s the final stretch, so have all your vegetables washed, cut, and ready. Brussels sprouts can be split or shredded. Carrots can be peeled and cut. Green beans (if they’re not already in your casserole) can be trimmed and washed. Salad greens should be washed, spun, and ready to go. Like beet salads? Roast off those beets today and they’ll be ready to serve tomorrow. You get the idea. The more organization and planning you do today, the less stressful tomorrow will be.
THURSDAY
When planning a Thanksgiving menu, it’s always a balancing act between making sure all of the classics are represented and all of the family members are happy. Whatever route you choose—whole turkey,turkey in parts, sweet potato casserole, or roasted sweet potatoes, braised brussels sprouts or seared—keep in mind the limitations of your kitchen.
The microwave shouldn’t be forgotten either—it’s ideal for heating things like mashed root vegetables
If there’s one problem that people seem to have most, it’s this: There’s just not enough room in my kitchen. To solve this problem, I like to think of my kitchen as a system of individual energy-output devices, each one capable of heating foods in a different way. There’s the oven, which is necessary for the turkey and useful for any casserole-type dishes. The burners are best for heating liquids and long-cooked vegetable dishes.The microwave shouldn’t be forgotten either—it’s ideal for heating things like mashed root vegetables that tend to burn on the stovetop or dry out in the oven.
Once you start thinking of different dishes in terms of how they are heated, you quickly realize that the key to successfully pulling off a big meal is to diversify. If you plan on five casseroles and a turkey, you’re gonna run out of oven space. Don’t do it! Instead, do some dishes that can be heated in the oven, others on the stovetop, others in the microwave, and some to be served cold or at room temperature. Choose hors d’oeuvres and appetizers that can be served at room temperature, or heated in the toaster oven.
THE FINAL COUNTDOWN: Day 0
Now I’ve got only four burners, a microwave, and an oven to complete all these dishes. Here’s how it works.
4 hours before dinner: My turkey goes into the oven, I make the mashed potatoes and set them aside (it’s OK if they get a little cool for now), I par-boil my crispy roast potatoes to get them ready for roasting
I also pull out my green bean casserole and stuffing casserole from the fridge to get ’em ready to pop in the oven. I take an hour to relax with a martini and chat to my sister about why cranberries belong in the sauce, not in the stuffing.
2 hours before dinner: My turkey is about an hour short of hitting 150°F. I sear off my braised leeks and add them to the oven, then I spread my roasted brussels sprouts onto a rimmed baking sheet, and do the same with my par-boiled crispy roast potatoes.
I add my casseroles to the bottom rack of the oven to cook off while the turkey finishes.
1 hour before dinner: My turkey is out of the oven. I place it to the side, tented with aluminum foil to rest, then deglaze the drippings from the pan and add it to my gravy that I’ve placed in a small saucepot on the corner of the stove (no need to heat it yet). I also pull out the casseroles, cover them in foil, and keep them in a warm spot in my kitchen, swatting at my dad’s hand as he reaches for a green bean.
I bang the oven up to 500°F and throw my potatoes in, letting them roast for 20 minutes before flipping them and adding my brussels sprouts. Meanwhile, I start glazing my carrots, holding them warm off to the side once they’re done.
Beets come out of the fridge and into a large bowl. Cranberry sauce goes into its serving bowl on the table.
15 minutes before dinner: Potatoes and sprouts are out of the oven and into serving bowls. Oven back down to 350°F. The foil covers come off the casseroles and they go for one last trip to the oven to crisp up their tops. The mashed potatoes get zapped in the microwave a few times to reheat.
Dinner time! The turkey is done carved, roast potatoes and Brussels sprouts are piping hot in their serving bowls, the casseroles get uncovered, fried onions go on top of the green beans, mashed potatoes emerge from the microwave, gravy is transferred to a boat, cranberry sauce is already waiting for the action to start, the beets and pear salads are tossed with their respective vinaigrettes, wine is poured, and the
arguingjoyful merriment ensues.
