Given the current COVID restrictions and the recommendation to limit the size of holiday get-togethers this year, many people will likely be cooking smaller Thanksgiving dinners. If you don’t feel comfortable joining the extended family for fear of infecting grandma (or Cousin Eddie infecting you), you will probably want to keep your holiday dinner small.
Please keep your gathering small. Large gatherings are probably the main cause of the explosion in coronavirus cases this fall. The CDC is recommending gathering only with people in your own household. This means you will have to cook your own dinner.
I’m here to tell you that you can do it. The trick to putting together a fantastic feast is proper planning and preparation. Start early. Start now. The weekend before the holiday is when most people go shopping for ingredients. You can start preparing dishes days ahead of time, though I usually start that the night before.
Set the Menu
Step one is to put together a meal plan. What are you going to serve? You won’t have Aunt Mabel’s pumpkin pie, but maybe she’d be willing to give you the recipe. Cousin Eddie likes the green jello salad with pineapple and cheese, but do you? If you don’t like yams or cranberry sauce, skip them.
In the past, I have usually gone to someone else’s Thanksgiving dinner and then cooked another one for me and my wife a couple days later. That way, we can have leftover Thanksgiving for days. I have a set list of traditional dishes that I like to cook.
Think Smaller
Unless you like having a lot of leftovers like I do or have limited refrigerator or freezer space, you want to set your menu more modestly than you would if you were having the whole extended family over. You have to have a lot of dishes and plenty of them when you have to feed everybody including second cousins and whose kids are those? This year I plan to drop a couple and replace them with one that sort of combines them.
The centerpiece is always the turkey, but do you need a whole one? You could also do something smaller like chicken or duck if you want to have something special. You could also do a beef or pork roast. If you are doing turkey, you could just roast a hindquarter or breast. I don’t recommend the breast for a centerpiece unless you find a recipe that compensates for the dryness of it.
For sides, feel free to have fewer. I like sweet potatoes and squash, stuffing and mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and brussels sprouts. But that’s a lot of food for two people or even four. Even just having three of those is a lot of sides. But it’s supposed to be a feast and there’s room in the fridge for leftovers, right?
It’s a good idea to choose sides that all cook at the same temperature. If you don’t, you will have to cook one dish while another is getting cold. See Plan the Timeline below. This year, I plan on combining the brussels sprout and sweet potatoes into one dish. Be creative. The internet is full of ideas.
Go Shopping
Once you have a menu, put together your shopping list. I recommend going shopping early. You don’t want to get to the store and find that all the turkeys have been sold. There have been rolling shortages of various items throughout the year, from toilet paper to canned tomatoes. There will probably be more shortages this year because 2020.
If you have a well-stocked pantry, you probably only need a few things, like a turkey. Most people don’t keep an extra turkey on hand. ahem…
If you are a casual cook, chances are you’ll need to buy most of what you will need. One thing I always have on hand, but always seem to need more of come Thanksgiving is butter. Lots and lots of butter.
Also, if you are a casual cook, there might be a few kitchen implements you will need to do the dinner right. For example, I highly recommend getting a meat thermometer. I like the electronic kind. You can get some relatively cheap ones. Do not rely on the little popup thingy that comes with the turkey. Those things are no more than crappy plastic darts. Also don’t rely on the recipe’s cook time. Turkeys vary in size and temperature, so their cook times will as well. If you want to know whether your bird is done, use a thermometer.
Other things you might need are roaster pans for the turkey or other pans or dishes for all the sides you have planned. You might need more serving spoons as well. Take stock of your kitchen and figure out what will be needed for each dish.
Plan the Timeline
This is probably the one thing that new cooks don’t think about. I never did. The trick to getting multiple dishes ready and on the table at the same time is to set a schedule. Set a goal for when you want dinner on the table. Figure out the time each dish takes to cook and work backward. Add about a half hour to an hour to the timeline because things always take longer than expected. It’s better to eat early than have people waiting, eyeing your kitchen hungrily.
You’re going to have a bird in the oven at anywhere from 325° to 500° and probably changing at some point during the cooking process. The sweet potatoes need to cook at 350° and the pie at 400°. Plan for times that each dish needs to be in the oven.
You can be preparing the side dishes while the turkey is cooking. If you have a large turkey, you have more time to prep, usually a couple of hours at least. If you are doing a smaller bird such as a chicken, duck, or turkey thigh, you might just have an hour.
One advantage you have is that the turkey needs to rest for 30 minutes once it comes out of the oven (less for a smaller bird). That is the perfect time to finish off those side dishes you have already prepared.
Start preparing early.
That’s right, you don’t have to cook everything on Thanksgiving day. I usually cook the pumpkin pie (or other pie you like to have) the day before. You can also make the cranberry sauce early. It needs to refrigerated anyway. If you are making rolls from scratch, good luck, but now would be the time to start them.
Thaw the bird!
If you don’t, you can still cook it, but it will take longer and you’ll have to take it out of the oven after an hour or so while it’s hot so you can extract the giblets bag that was frozen to the inside of the cavity. This is another good reason to go shopping early. As soon as you get it, put the turkey in the refrigerator or a cooler on ice. If you want to brine it, that will need to start early as well, usually the day before.
Other turkey recipes require preparation that can happen the night before. If you like to have dinner early, I recommend doing as much as you can the night before. Otherwise you will be up at o-dark-thirty to start the prep. I like to have dinner at about 5pm, so it’s not necessary to get up too early.
You can prep other dishes or even just parts of dishes. I usually prep the stuffing aromatics the day before and add the bread to it the next day just before I cook the final dish. Putting it all together early makes the bread soggy, but the onions and celery can be cooked the previous day to await the bread on Thanksgiving itself.
Thanksgiving Day
If you have figured out your schedule, you probably know when things need to go in the oven. The turkey usually goes in first. The longer cook time lets you prep other dishes.
If you have planned and prepared, this should go like clockwork. Keep your timeline and recipes handy so you know what step you are on and what needs to happen next.
While the turkey cooks, you will be preparing the side dishes, putting them in their cooking vessel, and getting the serving dish ready. If you serve them in the same dish they are cooked in, that makes it a lot easier, but be sure you have enough trivets to put them all on the table. They will be hot.
When the turkey is done (about 165° in the breast), take it out of the oven and cover with foil to rest while you finish the sides. The sides should all be prepped and ready to pop in the oven. Set the temperature as needed. If the final temperature for the bird is the same as needed for the sides, all the better.
Dig in!
If you have everything properly planned and prepped, you should be able to sit down with your family to enjoy a wonderful dinner. No last minute oops I forgot this or working in the kitchen while everyone else is eating.
My Thanksgiving Plan
I will share my normal Thanksgiving plan here. It is actually my plan for 2nd Thanksgiving, you know, the one for the Sunday after. I just can’t get enough turkey!
Gravy base – Saturday
Flour, butter
giblets, celery, onion, sage (for turkey stock to add on Sunday)
Stuffing – Prep Saturday, assemble & cook Sunday 1-1/2 hr
Bread cubes, chicken stock, sausage, Celery, Onion, mushrooms, thyme, butter
http://food52.com/recipes/1452-what-we-call-stuffing-challah-mushroom-and-celery
Cranberry Sauce – Saturday
Apple Cider, Sugar, Pectin, Cranberries
http://food52.com/blog/9084-homemade-cranberry-sauce-in-a-can
Pumpkin Pie – Saturday
Grandma Haniszewski’s Recipe (this is probably from the back of the Libby’s pumpkin puree can in the 50’s)
Eggs, flour, butter, evaporated milk, pumpkin, sugar, cinnamon
Whipped Cream – Saturday
Cream, sugar
http://food52.com/blog/8956-how-to-make-whipped-cream-ahead-yes-you-can
Glazed Sweet Potatoes – Glaze Saturday, assemble & cook Sunday 1 hr
Brown Sugar, Sweet Potatoes, Butter
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/patrick-and-gina-neely/glazed-sweet-potatoes-recipe.html
Turkey – Sunday
Thaw 8-10 hrs (Sat Morning), brine 8-12 hrs (overnight), cook 3-4 hrs
Onion, butter, celery, sage, salt, spray oil, kitchen gloves, vegetable broth (128 oz)
http://www.bonappetit.com/test-kitchen/cooking-tips/article/alton-brown-s-perfect-roast-turkey?mbid=social_facebook
Garlic Mashed Potatoes – Sunday 1 hr
Potatoes, Garlic, Butter, cream
http://food52.com/recipes/2947-mr-l-s-mashed-potatoes
Schedule:
Turkey Noon
Giblet stock – 1pm
Stuffing – 2:30pm
Sweet Potatoes – 3pm
Mashed Potatoes – 3pm
Gravy – 3:30 pm
