This is the second year we’ll be hosting Thanksgiving and let me tell you – we learned a lot the first time around. I have a whole new appreciation for the energy and effort that my Mom put forth to create a flawlessly executed, delicious Thanksgiving meal, year after year! I had been dreaming of the day we would finally host my favorite holiday since the day we bought our house and last year – in the midst of my first pregnancy no less – was the year.

I’m meticulous about planning when we host, so Marc and I got started a good month before T-day. Partly, this was because we didn’t have all of the essential Thanksgiving cooking tools in our arsenal (see our guide below!) and we needed time to do our homework and order everything, but mostly because I’m a perfectionist and I wanted our first Thanksgiving to go off without a hitch. I sat down to post this menu and planning guide for all of you, because it ended up being a pretty full proof system for us and truly helped minimize the stress and maximize the enjoyment of the big day.

Since this was our first year hosting, I was particularly obsessed with setting my Thanksgiving table – the first time we would be using our new dining room table and our wedding china. I had a vision in my mind, involving candelabras, gold chargers, and shimmering pine cones that I just couldn’t shake. Achieving my vision (in a somewhat cost-effective manner) was a challenge and involved 3 separate expeditions to Pier I, hours on Pinterest and a lot of trips to UPS to return all of the silly stuff we didn’t need. All in all, I am pretty proud of the finished product, so it was worth all of the fuss. If you want links to any of my table decor, post in the comments below! I was so obsessed with my table that I forgot to photograph almost all of the food, so I’ll be coming back to add photos this year once we cook everything again!

When you’re planning to host, preparation is key. I cannot stress this enough. With Thanksgiving, I would plan out your menu at least two weeks in advance, especially if you are planning to assign dishes to anyone to bring, potluck style. In our family, Marc’s parents bring the wine, my mom brings the pies (+ her famous artichoke dip and creamed onions) and my dad brings his electric carving knife. Even with all of those hands on deck, it’s a lot to prepare for and plan out, especially when you’re doing it for the first time, so I broke down our strategy and timeline below. Obviously, do what works for you, when it works for you. Just don’t wait and plan it until the Sunday before Thanksgiving or you’ll be stressing big-time.

 

STRATEGY/TIMELINE: 

Two Weeks Before:

• Plan the menu at least two weeks in advance. And write it down. Your memory will fail you when you’re juggling all of these different dishes, so why leave room for error. At this point, also evaluate if you need any more cooking tools, cutlery, decor etc. You do not want to be running around on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving buying everything, I guarantee it.
• Order your turkey! Don’t forget to do this early and always order more than you think you’ll need.  You never want to run out of anything when you’re hosting!  A note about ordering the turkey – the rule of thumb you can always count on, 1 lb of turkey per person. If you want to have leftovers, go a little bigger. We’re hosting 14 people this year (but one doesn’t eat turkey) so I’m ordering a 16 pounder.
• Decide which dishes can be made ahead of time and draft a schedule for each night of the week leading up to Thanksgiving.  Anything you can make ahead and reheat, DO.

One Week Before:

• Avoid the rush and go grocery shopping now. Inevitably, you will have to make another run (or some kind soul will volunteer!) but try to get there early, ideally the Friday before (during the day) if you can.
• Starting the Sunday before Thanksgiving, begin preparing a few dishes a night so I don’t have a ton of last minute cooking. Some dishes cannot be made ahead of time – the salad, fresh bread, gravy and obviously the star protein – but why not get ahead start on everything else.  Then you can just reheat everything and not spend the whole day.

The Day Before:

• Set the table the day before (if not earlier!). There’s no reason you can’t get this task out of the way. Disclaimer: Do this as long as you don’t have little kiddos running through your dining room who may disturb the fine china! You don’t want to start your Thanksgiving off on the wrong foot with broken anything.
• Straighten up the house and common areas as much as possible. You’ll be running around crazy tomorrow, so don’t leave it until the last minute.
• Pick up the turkey!  I know you think you’ll remember, but I’ve heard my fair share of horror stories. So make a note, set an alarm, do what you need to do! As we learned this year, you may need to thaw your turkey in advance. Fresh turkeys will sometimes feel hard on the outside because they are chilled to 28 degrees for safe shipping. … Fresh turkeys are never frozen. Thaw your turkey 1 to 3 days in advance of cookiny by placing in your kitchen sink (or a tub) with COLD WATER in the original packaging.

The Day Of:

• If you’ve followed your timeline, you should be ahead of the game today. Now you can just focus on the remaining dishes (the easiest ones) and entertaining your family.
• Prep your turkey in the manner you prefer and just make sure you start cooking it well enough in advance. Work backwards from when you expect to serve dinner. Serve apps two hours before that. We will tell you why we prefer roasting ours in an electric roaster oven. (Ingenious idea – credit to my best friend Courtney!) and the mistake we learned the hard way from last year.

 

Here’s an example of the timeline I created last year, color coded and sorted by course, then by day of cooking/prep:

 

 

TOOLS:

These are the what & why of our Thanksgiving essentials.

• Oster Roaster Oven: This gadget is the trick to the moistest turkey you’ll ever eat, we guarantee it. It also frees up a ton of space in your oven for other day-of cooking and reheating. Follow our directions below to follow our step by step roasting guide!
• Baker’s Advantage Ceramic Pie Dish: A beautiful way to present that Thanksgiving pie (or galette in my case). Comes in two vibrant colors, but we have the blue.
• Luigi Bormioli Michelangelo Gravy Boat: We forgot to register for a gravy dish so we threw this in the cart at the last minute. A surprisingly elegant addition to our Thanksgiving table, at a fraction of the cost you’d expect!
• Farberware Bamboo Cutting Board: You’ll want a board big enough to carve that bird and this one was perfect, plus it has the groove to catch any runaway juices from the turkey.  This set comes with two!
• Norpro Nylon Baster: We didn’t even end up needing this, since our electric roaster is self-basting, but we’ve used it with many other dishes in our house. A good kitchen staple to have on hand.
• Hamilton Beach Carve Set: A great alternative to the carver my Dad still uses that’s literally duct-taped together. “It still works,” he’ll argue!  But this one is great too.

 

MENU:

Last, but not least, the reason you spent hours planning, prepping, stressing, but most importantly dreaming — the menu! Depending on the size of the party you’re hosting (this year we’re having 14), I suggest using this formula for your menu: at least 4 appetizers, 1 salad, fresh corn bread or rolls, cranberry sauce, gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing, 2+ additional vegetable dishes (I served 3 last year) and one turkey (16 lbs so I’ll have leftovers). Then 3 desserts. These are our tried and true favorites, almost all which we served last year, but by all means, get creative! Just make sure you have enough servings of each, dishes to serve from, and serving utensils. I like to set out each dish the night before, with the printed menu inside just to double check I’m covered.

 

Appetizers:

I aim to have at least 4 appetizer offerings, this year I’ll serve these two dips alongside my mom’s secret slow-cooker family meatballs (sorry – my lips are sealed!) and a cheese plate. If you want a good substitute meatball recipe check out this recipe from the spruce.

Or make my newest twist on this classic dip (with spinach and sun dried tomatoes), posted here.

 

The Main Course: 

This year we’re serving:

• Turkey, roasted in our electric roaster
• Our farmhouse rolls with our homemade butter
• Fall Harvest Salad with Pumpkin Goddess Dressing, credit to The Seasoned Mom
• Pressure Cooker Mashed Potatoes
• Stuffing – I wimped out last year and made Trader Joe’s Cornbread Stuffing Mix (the best by the way!). This year, we added two additional stuffings to our repertoire: a super healthy, low-carb, gluten free Cauliflower Stuffing from Delish (something on Thanksgiving can be healthy right?!) AND a mushroom sausage stuffing I literally invented the day before Thanksgiving (what happens when you’re super anal about being organized and prepared and have extra time to make up new side dishes! #sorrynotsorry)
• Roasted Root Vegetables (an ode to my Grandma Grace)
• My very own Cranberry Orange Brussels Sprouts 
• Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Marshmallow (Marc’s childhood favorite – the marshmallow part anyways!)
• Haricot Verts with Pine Nuts
• Orange Maple Cranberry Sauce, credit to the Kitchen Treaty, for a twist on Cranberry Sauce, try my recipe for Cranberry Chard instead.
• Creamed Onions – another Mom dish, I beg her to bring this every year!
• Giblet Gravy – my Mom always makes this too, but here’s a good recipe I’d recommend from The Pioneer Woman.  

Although I don’t have a lot of photos of last year’s final dishes, I do have this photo of my “leftover” plate from the next night. I think I got almost everything on it, clockwise from top: creamed onions, root vegetables, mashed potatoes, stuffing, turkey, harvest salad, topped with haricot verts and gravy! New photos to come for the rest of these dishes post-Turkey Day 2018!

 

Clearly I’m going to lead with the turkey, since this is the most labor-intensive and arguably the most important! I was so terrified of having an overcooked, dried out turkey that I was obsessed with finding the perfect way to roast it. My friend recommend buying an electric roaster oven, boasting that it would produce the most moist turkey ever, so I was game to take the challenge. And over the course of the afternoon, as the turkey roasted away, I was increasingly confident that we would have the perfect bird at our first thanksgiving. After 4 hours, the designated cooking time according to extensive web research (check out this calculator on Butterball’s website), our turkey was picture-perfect moist from the outside, but fairly undercooked when we cut into a leg. Embarrassing? Yes. Frustrating? Yes. Solvable? Totally!

The thanksgiving veterans in the room chimed in with all sorts of advice and after polling the group, we decided on the following: we cranked up the convection oven to 450 and popped the bird in for another 30 minutes of roasting. This cooked the bird through in no time, but also crisped up the skin just enough to give it that million dollar turkey glow. In the end, we were quite pleased with ourselves. So much so that we’re sharing it with you and repeating the same steps this year, just adding on a little extra time than we did last year. Note that the roaster oven is intended to cook the whole way through, so this may be the case for you and you can skip the convection oven altogether. We just found this worked well for us, plus it crisped up the skin just the way we like it. The only thing I’m planning to mix up this year is my seasoning. Last year, we went basic – salt and a little poultry seasoning. This year, I’m going more herbal. Check it out and let us know what you think.

 

Dessert:

Once again, Mom to the rescue! She is the pie lady in our family (I’m still working on upping my baking skills) so every year she makes 2-3 pies for our Thanksgiving (generally pecan, pumpkin and apple) – even though hardly anyone in our family eats them (sad, but true!). Since Marc’s family are also not pie people, I tried to get creative last year and made this Chocolate S’mores Galete (courtesy of Country Living). While yes, it may look like a pie it tastes like a dark chocolate pudding and it tricked everyone into trying it. It was actually a hit last year, so I think I’ll definitely make it again. And one of these days, I’ll take some baking lessons too 🙂