Easy Thanksgiving Meal Tips

In the last couple of posts, we have made quite a bit of progress in thinking about emergency food storage. But just as last month, you don’t have time to complete a thought before another holiday pops up. This month, Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is THE culinary holiday of the entire year! The main celebration of the holiday focuses entirely around food. Since most of us cook little if at all Thanksgiving can bring on stress of enormous proportions! I am starting to read more and more blog posts fretting about what to make for Thanksgiving so I thought I would throw some stress relief out there with some easy alternatives.

When I was first married, my husband and I were alone for the holidays and I was glad to have the chance to try cooking an entire Thanksgiving meal myself in our tiny apartment kitchen without fear of complete humiliation. I quickly discovered that Thanksgiving dinner is an incredibly complex meal. While each individual food (turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, a vegetable, rolls and pumpkin pie) poses its challenges, the key difficulty in Thanksgiving dinner for the novice cook is getting all of the foods ready simultaneously. An organizational challenge indeed!

On Thursday, we’ll look at tips from professional chefs on Thanksgiving but today we’ll discuss truly easy alternatives to the traditional Thanksgiving dinner that you could make for a party of one or a huge crowd.

One of the first mistakes I made in my early Thanksgiving cooking years was not buying the turkey early enough. Here in the D.C. area (or DMV for D.C., Maryland, Virginia if you are local), if you wait to buy your turkey until the days before Thanksgiving, all of the most popular turkey sizes will be gone. Generally, the small to medium size turkeys are the most popular. The first Thanksgiving turkey I cooked it was an enormous 20-pound bird, which was all that was left to choose. We were so incredibly sick of eating that turkey that we probably threw half of it away. So, if you really want a whole turkey, it is time to start thinking about shopping for that bird now. If you buy it frozen, you don’t have to worry about it spoiling.

Thanksgiving Planning Tip: Be aware that a frozen turkey can several days to thaw in the refrigerator. Butterball recommends 1 day of thawing in the refrigerator for every 4 pounds of your turkey. You can speed up the thawing process if you use cold water baths but the safer food preparation technique is the fridge. You might want to click here to consult Butterball’s calculators for how big a turkey you should buy based on the number of people you are serving, how long it will take to thaw that bird and how long it will take to cook. Mark these general guidelines on your calendar—when to shop, when to thaw, when to put the bird in the oven.

Of course, you can still have a wonderful holiday and experience the flavors of Thanksgiving without all the hassle of making the traditional foods. Below are 6 easy, low-stress ways to enjoy a delicious Thanksgiving turkey dinner without spending all day cooking.

1) Turkey Sandwiches. Turkey comes in a variety of preparations that don’t require handling giblets or roasting. One of the easiest is deli-counter turkey breast. Pick a good brand and have the butcher slice it to the thickness of your liking. Pick up a bag of really good rolls from the bakery, a jar of gravy, a can of jellied cranberry sauce and a box of instant mashed potatoes (or make your own, from scratch if you are a potato purist). On the big day, you can heat up the turkey in the microwave, put it on the rolls with cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy and Voila! Thanksgiving on a bun! One year we did this with rotisserie chicken instead of turkey and that was delicious too!

2) Turkey burgers. Ground turkey is a healthy alternative to ground beef and makes a great burger. You could do something similar to the turkey sandwich or get a little fancier and use Gwyneth Paltrow’s recipe for Stuffed Turkey Burgers from her GOOP newsletter We make these one year and they are so easy and good.

3) Turkey Enchiladas. We are venturing a little away from traditional Thanksgiving here but hey, anything with turkey in it counts! An easy recipe can be found at Epicurious. This is designed as an after-Thanksgiving meal but there is no reason you couldn’t make it for the main meal.

4) Turkey Pizza. Pizza is a great crowd-pleaser, easy to make and offers nearly endless flavor combinations. You could use turkey sausage to make a pizza with traditional Thanksgiving flavors like this one from Luxist.com.  Or you could get a little creative with flavors like this Artichoke Turkey pizza from Butterball or this Greek Turkey pizza from MonkeyDish.com

5) Turkey for Breakfast. Who says that you can’t eat a Thanksgiving breakfast? Grill up some turkey sausage and serve it with hash browns, Sweet Potato Pancakes and Cranberry Syrup. Food Network just posted a tip on Twitter to boil down cranberry juice to make a quick cranberry syrup to put on the pancakes or drizzle over ice cream.

6) Crockpot Turkey. If you want to make a turkey but aren’t sure how or you have a small kitchen with limited oven space, you might take a tip from RVcookingshow.com and do it in your Crockpot slow cooker.

Some other Thanksgiving tips:

• If you are a vegetarian (or cooking for a vegetarian), The New York Times’ Well Blog recently posted 36 vegetarian Thanksgiving recipes. I am not sure how “easy” the recipes are but they look delicious.
• My mom shared a tip with me last night for an easy Thanksgiving dessert. Pick up a quart of pumpkin pie ice cream from the freezer case and some gingersnap cookies or a pre-made graham cracker crust to make pumpkin pie ice cream sandwiches or a frozen pie.
• The Reluctant Entertainer is doing a great series on her blog about organizing Thanksgiving preparations. One of her best tips so far is simple. Ask for help! Loved this quote:

“Thanksgiving is a time to include everyone in the meal. If you feel you have to do it all, to be honest, I feel sorry for you. You will be exhausted. I am not super-woman and I need the help.”

–Sandy Coughlin, Week 1: Stress-Free Thanksgiving – Invite, Plan, and Delegate!, The Reluctant Entertainer blog

Do you have an easy twist on Thanksgiving cooking? Please share in the comments.