Thanksgiving is a couple weeks away, and I don’t want to put any pressure on you, but guess what? There are several things you can make the day before the feast, and a ton of tasks you can just cross right off your loooong to-do list this weekend, or even right now. Here are nine ideas…
1. Email the Squad: In my house — or, technically, my sister’s house — the Thanksgiving meal is always a village undertaking. Everyone in the family has an assignment, whether it’s securing the turkey and roasting it, or ordering two dozen oysters, or…
…drawing place cards for the table (thanks, Phoebe). If you happen to be the conductor of this orchestra of helpers, like I am, one thing you can do a few weeks ahead of time is send out people’s assignments. The real bonus of this task is that it forces you to get the ball rolling on planning exactly what you want to make.
2. Tackle the Low-Hanging Fruit: When you’re hosting, there are a lot of Thanksgiving tasks that require real effort and concentration (looking at you, gravy), but there are also a zillion things that are only hard because we tend to forget about them until the last minute. Solution: Start crossing the non-cooking things off the list now. For instance, make sure you have enough place settings, including napkins, wine glasses, drinking glasses, and dessert forks; if not, order or borrow more, as needed. Go through your menu and make sure you have enough serving platters, salad bowls, water pitchers, baking pans, roasting pans, frying pans, cutting boards, etc. Pick up beverages: wine, non-alcoholic drinks, and seltzer, and make your shopping list. And the day before the feast, if you can spare the surface area, set the dining room table so it’s ready to go.
3. Make Your Pie Dough: Even if you don’t know what kind of pie you’re baking yet — shown here, apple-berry, bourbon-pecan, pumpkin, cranberry-lime — chances are there will be one that makes excellent use of a pâte brisée. This recipe makes 1 double-crust or 2 single-crust for 9- to 10-inch pies. Freeze, then thaw at room temperature for about an hour before rolling out. (Dough will keep for three months; in other words, make them any time between now and baking day.)
4. Prep Your Gravy: Yes, you can pick up a container of pre-made gravy at almost any supermarket, but here’s the basic truth: homemade gravy will always be superior. Especially when it’s not whisked up in crunchiest-crunch-times of all crunch times, i.e. the half hour in between when the turkey comes out of the oven (at which point the crucial pan juices are finally available) and everyone sits down to eat. Why subject yourself to such stress when you can do it weeks before in a calm, quiet kitchen? I don’t have a surefire gravy recipe — for me it’s one of those instinctive things I’ve never been able to wrangle into words — but Claire Saffitz has a good one (NYTimes gift link), which freezes for up to three months.
5. Clear the Fridge: One thing I really miss about my old house is that I had a basement, which is another way of saying, I had a basement refrigerator. (Did I know how lucky I was? I did, right?) In the weeks leading up to the holiday, I thought of it as a bank account where I would regularly make delicious deposits. Now that we’ve moved, I have a single small fridge, so I have to remind myself to be vigilant about food shopping the week before Thanksgiving and to make way for the gravy, wine, and pies.
6. Make Mashed Potatoes: When it comes to, imho, the most important dish on the Thanksgiving table, I do not want to sacrifice anything in terms of creaminess and heat. (Are they even mashed potatoes if they’re not piping hot with butter melting down a river before your eyes?) I was skeptical when I first learned about the casserole technique, where you make them ahead of time, and reheat in a casserole dish, but it works. The how-to: Make mashed potatoes how you normally would. Place them in a casserole dish, cover the dish tightly with plastic wrap, and refrigerate overnight or up to two days ahead. When ready to make: Heat the oven to 400°F. Grate Parm or sharp cheddar cheese top of the potatoes, cover with foil, and bake for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake another 10, until golden and crisp on top.
7. Par-Boil Vegetables: On Thanksgiving, I almost always sauté brussels sprouts, instead of roasting, because, again: Oven space. The risk of sautéing, though, is not cooking the little things all the way through, so I prevent this by prepping and par-boiling ahead of time. Then, when they go into the pan for frying, it’s just a question of heating them through and browning if that’s what the recipe calls for. The how-to: Trim and halve brussels, then simmer in salted water for 3 minutes, immediately plunging them into an ice bath when finished. Store in a ziptop bag in the fridge. Bring to room temperature before proceeding with sautéing.
8. Bake Those Pies: Check the specific recipes that you are using, but most pies can be made up to two days in advance. And lucky you, you’ve already made the crusts, so you might even be halfway there. The day before Thanksgiving is usually when both of our girls are home, so pie-baking day has become its own ritual within the holiday. That’s my daughter brushing milk on the crust of her apple pie — neither of us can remember why there are blackberries in there, but it does look delicious.
9. Prepare Yourself for Chaos Anyway: No matter how ahead-of-the-game you are, don’t worry if your kitchen ends up looking like this on feast day. Ours always does. Remember my #1 Thanksgiving rule: Chaos is the point.
When do you start prepping for the holidays? Please share any tips! And you can follow Jenny’s newsletter Dinner: A Love Story, if you’d like.
P.S. Three very opinionated Thanksgiving rules, and what’s your Thanksgiving specialty?
(Photo by Curated Lifestyle/Unsplash. A longer version of this post was first published by Jenny on Dinner: A Love Story in 2023.)
