This is a recipe and planner for homemade Thanksgiving turkey and gravy, with links mashed potatoes, green beans, and corn that you’ll cook along with the turkey. For the purposes of this post, I’m going to call these the “essential dishes.”
To my way of thinking, these essential dishes are more than enough food to prepare in a single day. So everything else, from the appetizers to the cranberry sauce to the dessert, should consist of something that you make in advance, and bring out day-of. Making a hard-and-fast rule about this can mean the difference between you getting a good workout, and feeling absolutely crushed by the time dinner is served. Some of this is obvious: who ever heard of a pumpkin pie that had to be eaten the day it was baked? Some of it is less obvious: you might have to give some thought to an hors d’oeuvre that can be made a day or two in advance and simply brought out when it’s time.
The only logistics problem you’ll have to solve with regard to the essential dishes, is baking the turkey and stuffing at the same time. If your oven has five rack positions, place one rack in the lowest position, and the second one just above it. Then, see if a 9×13-inch pan will fit on the lower rack. If it does, use it for the stuffing.
Pro Moves:
- If guests offer to bring something, say yes. And make it practical. Start with the “in advance” items, because if it can be made in advance, then it will be easy for a guest to bring.
- Never chop an onion on Thanksgiving Day. In a well-written recipe, the prep is written into the ingredient list. “1 lb. green beans, trimmed,” for instance: “trimming” is prep. In as much as possible, carry out the prep the day before, if not earlier. In all the “essential dishes” recipes referenced in this post, I’ve made sure that all prep items can be done the day before, if not earlier.
- In advance of the day, make sure you’ve laid eyes on every utensil you plan to use. Where is the rack that goes into your roasting pan? Where is the cheesecloth that you’re positive you have?
- If you have an all-day helper (AKA husband), they should have three jobs: 1) setting the table, 2) periodic clean-ups, and 3) pouring cocktails and entertaining guests while you’re handling food. I suggest that once an hour, your helper should sweep through the kitchen, working around you and cleaning up everything. Ideally, when dinner is served, everything used to put the meal together should be already cleaned, or already in the dishwasher (and the dishwasher should be running).
- If you’re someone who can go to bed with dishes in the sink, do it. Load the dishwasher to the gills after your last guest leaves. Whatever won’t fit, get it all well-rinsed or soaking in the sink and/or on the countertop and deal with it tomorrow.
Thanksgiving Dinner
Course: DinnerCuisine: American6
with plenty of leftoversA frozen turkey has four cooking stages: thawing, hot oven, moderate oven, and resting. You’ll prepare the stuffing the day before, and finish it in the “moderate oven” stage. You’ll knock out the remaining dishes as the turkey rests.
Ingredients
- For the turkey:
1 frozen turkey (14 lbs.)
1 stick of butter
1½ cups white wine
1 large white onion, peeled and roughly chopped
3 large carrots, halved and cut into 2-inch chunks
1 Tbs black peppercorns
1 sprig fresh sage (about five leaves)
1 bay leaf
1 tsp chicken stock reduction or bouillon
- For the beans:
1 fistful of fresh green beans per person, trimmed
Salt, to taste
Butter, to taste
- For the gravy:
2 cups gelatinized, defatted chicken stock, rendered from a rotisserie chicken
3 Tbs flour
Salt and pepper, to taste
Directions
- Thawing:
- Move the frozen turkey to the refrigerator without disturbing its packaging. Plan on 24 hour per every 4-5 lbs. of turkey. Plus, once thawed, it can remain refrigerated for another 1-2 days. I suggest that you round up these calculations, leaning toward more time rather than less – but please do not take food safety advice from me. I move a 14-lb. bird to the fridge 6 days in advance, before 9 AM. If I can’t do that, I opt for just before bed the night before. I’d add another full day for a 16-pounder.
- Once you take it out of its packaging, a properly-thawed turkey should feel soft, like raw chicken. When you pull out the neck and giblets, if they’re covered in ice crystals, fine. If they’re so frozen that you have to work like hell to – or cannot – pull them out, you have an emergency on your hands.
- If you want to take all the guesswork out of it, pre-order a fresh turkey.
- Hot Oven:
- 9:00 AM – Place the turkey in the sink, remove it from its wrapper, and remove the neck and giblets. Place the turkey on a rimmed baking sheet, and let it sit at room temperature for two hours. Periodically drain any liquid that may accumulate, including in the cavity. If you’re using the neck and/or giblets for gravy, start your prep for that now. Otherwise, discard them. (This recipe does not make use of them.)
- 10:30 AM – Preheat the oven to 425°F. Prepare a baste for the turkey: heat the butter and wine in a medium-sized saucepan until the butter melts; stir. Cut a piece of cheesecloth so that you can fold it over twice, and it will still be large enough to cover the turkey’s breast. Submerge it in the wine mixture, and soak it. Place a rack into a roaster. Scatter the onion, carrots, peppercorns, sage, and bay leaf into the roaster, making sure that they will not wind up in between the rack and the bird. Stir chicken stock reduction into 2 cups of water and pour it into the roaster. Place the turkey on the rack. Tuck the wings under the thighs. Squeeze excess wine mixture out of the cheesecloth, and lay it over the turkey breast. Insert a temperature probe into the thickest part of the turkey’s thigh, being careful to not hit bone. Set it to 157-165°F (165°F is recommended) and enable it’s alarm. (If you’re using the stuffing recipe linked to this post, stuff the set-aside sausage into the turkey’s neck cavity.)
- 11:00 AM – Slide the turkey into the oven. Every 30 minutes, baste the turkey with the wine mixture. Add water to the roaster if necessary, so it doesn’t go dry.
- Moderate Oven:
- 12:30 PM – Reduce the oven temperature to 350°F. Remove and discard the cheesecloth. Continue basting the turkey every 30 minutes. Meanwhile, complete Step 4 of the stuffing recipe.
- 1:00 PM – Make the mashed potatoes and transfer them to an Instant Pot to keep them warm until dinner time.
- Resting:
- 2:00 PM – The turkey should come to temperature during somewhere around now. If it doesn’t, continue roasting, but baste every 15 minutes until it does. Once it does come to temperature, move the roasting pan to a cooling rack and tent the turkey with foil. It needs to rest for at least 30 minutes, but 1 hour is even better. This hour is ample time to whip up, in this order, the corn, beans (moving them to a warm oven as you finish them) and gravy.
- To make the corn, follow Step 2 only of this corn pudding recipe. Substitute 2 twelve-oz. bags of frozen corn for the fresh corn, if you wish, straight from the freezer. Keep warm in the oven.
- To make the beans, wash out the pot you used for the mashed potatoes, place a steaming basket into it, and steam them to your liking. Toss with salt and butter, and keep warm in oven.
- To make the gravy, move the turkey to a carving board. Strain the pan drippings into a fat separator, and transfer to a small pot. Keep hot over a very low flame. Pour 3 Tbs of the hot drippings into a medium-sized saucepan. Add the flour, and use a sturdy whisk to beat it furiously until combined into a paste. Place the saucepan over medium heat, and continue whisking until the mixture turns a deep golden brown, about 9 minutes. Add the remaining drippings in small increments, whisking until they’re fully incorporated before adding more. Make each addition slightly larger than the last. Add the rotisserie stock, and simmer until the gravy is as thick as cream, about 15 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Strain into a serving container. If you feel the gravy needs something, but you’re not sure what, consider if it has enough salt. If it does, consider tiny bits of soy sauce, Worchestershire sauce, roasted garlic, Madeira or Cognac, dry white wine, butter, cream, a bit of any remaining basting liquid, or Dijon. Go easy! (I don’t usually feel that any of this zhuzhing is necessary, but sometimes it is.)
- 3:00 PM – Dinner Time
Notes
- Substitutions: coffee filters for the cheesecloth.
It’s going to be a long day. There’s no getting around that. The timeline I’ve provided gives you plenty of time to get everything done without working maniacally. If there’s a magic key, it’s taking the prep as seriously as you can. This will result in less day-of work and fewer emergencies, which will result in less stress.
Also, consider this: depending on your situation, a holiday might be one of the few days you get away from your hard-packed, stressful job. The last thing you might need is to cram that time off with so much work, that your job seems like a vacation by comparison. A take-out option can be an excellent alternative.
One of the more difficult aspect of a Thanksgiving meal is that it will keep you occupied right up until everyone sits down to eat. So no matter what time your guests arrive, you’ll be busy when they do. If your helper can’t act as host, then recruit one of your guests for the job. Ask them to arrive a few minutes early, so that they can do this.
I typically invite guests to arrive 15 minutes before I plan to pull the turkey out of the oven. They’ll politely be 15 minutes late, and will have an hour to enjoy cocktails and appetizers before dinner. Sometimes things don’t go according to plan. The turkey could wind up taking longer. (It’s less likely that it will take shorter, but it’s not unheard of.) You just have to flow with it. Here are some flexibility tips:
- The turkey can rest for up to 1½ hours before you have to start taking remedial measures. For remedial measures, look up things like “the cooler trick” or “the flash heat strategy.”
- If the turkey is taking too long, your first go-to is expert hosting. (Remember, you are not the host. You are the chef. Choose your host wisely.) Have the host lead the guests in low-stakes games that stimulate conversation. Pop open a bottle of champagne. Have some frozen appetizers on hand that can be microwaved or baked on the lower oven rack, so you can have a second wave of appetizers. In the meantime, you can raise the oven heat (back to 425°F) and if the skin starts to get too dark, you can tent it with foil.
Thanksgiving Dinner
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