Today I’m sharing 8 Tips for Planning A Stress-Free Thanksgiving Meal along with a super helpful Thanksgiving shopping list and cooking planner. Another Meal Plan Monday is at the bottom of the post.
Was it just me or did last week fly by super fast? I think part of is is because it was my birthday week, so Monday (my birthday) was a day off for me and my week was only 4 days long. Can you believe that Thanksgiving is coming up in 10 days?! My calendar reminded me this morning that it’s time to plan out my menu and get everything onto my shopping list so I’m not scrambling at the last minute or forgetting anything. If you’re in the same boat, I wanted to share my 8 favorite tips for planning your thanksgiving meal.
1. Pull out (or print out) ALL the recipes you’re going to use on Thanksgiving day and put them in a folder in your kitchen somewhere easy to find.
I am all for saving paper and using your technology to help you cook (I publish recipes online after all), but for Thanksgiving it’s SO much easier if you print the recipes out and have them ready to go. I even photo copy the ones from my various cookbooks so I don’t worry if they get messy. When you have the chaos of an all day cooking event and the added chaos of extra kitchen helpers (you should have helpers – it’s not a one person job!) it’s so much easier to hand someone a recipe and a pile of ingredients and let them run with it rather than emailing them a recipe and cooking with a phone. It’s also easier to work on more than one dish at once if you don’t have to keep pulling new pages up on your phone.
2. Take those recipes you collected and printed and write ALL the ingredients down on a shopping list.
You can do this today if you like. Writing everything down in one place means you can stop worrying about forgetting the extra onions or needing a grocery run at the last minute on the day-of Thanksgiving and really cuts down the stress. There’s a blank version of the weekly shopping list planner I create for my meal plans you can use down below!
3. Take your shopping list and “shop” your kitchen to collect anything you already have on hand. Gather it into a Thanksgiving box in your pantry and cross it off your list.
If your house is anything like mine, food can disappear on a moments notice. Especially if it contains sugar and my hubby catches wind of it. I avoid last minute missing items and duplicate purchasing by “shopping” my pantry and collecting everything I plan to use into my “Thanksgiving – DO NOT EAT!” box. I put one Thanksgiving box in the pantry with non-perishables and have another plastic bin in the fridge with refrigerated goods. I don’t usually collect my spices until a few days before, but I do check the quantities on hand and stock up if I need something. Sometimes I get hyper organized and make a bin/box for each recipe or pre-measure things like flour and spices into labeled baggies to save time.
4. Take the remaining items on the list and plan 2 shopping trips – one for the non-perishables + frozen foods and one for the perishables. Get groceries delivered to save time and stress.
You can purchase the non-perishables and frozen foods any time between now and Thanksgiving. (I recommend a weekday morning or late evening – grocery stores are almost empty then!) The perishables may need to be purchased on Monday or Tuesday of Thanksgiving week so you won’t have to fight with a fridge stuffed with ingredients or risk something going bad. I love having my groceries delivered by WalMart to-go (referral link) when I can and just placed my turkey-day order to be delivered next Monday.
5. Don’t forget to move your turkey into the fridge to thaw several days ahead of time!
The cheapest turkeys come frozen rather than thawed and the best (and safest) defrost method is leaving it in the fridge for several days. According to Still Tasty, you’ll need to allow about 24 hours for each 4 to 5 pounds of frozen turkey you plan to thaw in the fridge. Approximate times to defrost a whole turkey in the fridge:
10 pounds — 2 days plus 12 hours (Monday am)
15 pounds — 3 days plus 18 hours (Saturday pm)
20 pounds — 5 days (Friday pm)
25 pounds — 6 days plus 6 hours (The Thursday before!)
If you forget, here’s some instructions for alternate thawing methods.
6. Prep or cook anything you can make ahead and freeze or refrigerate.
Things like pie crusts, unbaked fruit pies and various other baked goods can often be made a week ahead and frozen. Cold items like fruit salads, beverages, snack trays, cranberry sauce, and other such recipes can be made the day before so you don’t have quite as much to balance on Thanksgiving Day. I also love to do any prep work ahead of time like chopping and bagging veggies (be sure to label what recipe it’s for!), measuring ingredients and spices, toasting and crumbling bread for the dressing, etc. Pretty much anything you can do on Wednesday to save you some cooking time on Thursday is a great idea.
7. Choose your dinner start time and work backwards to plan recipe start times.
For example, our Thanksgiving is going to be at 3pm. My slow cooker sage cornbread dressing takes 4 hours to cook in the crockpot, so I’ll need to have it start cooking no later than 11am on Thanksgiving day to have it ready in time! I write each recipe down in columns on a piece of paper with their start times so I know I won’t miss something or start on something late. I’ve got a day-of cooking planner printable down below!
8. Outsource anything you can get away with.
If someone offers to bring something, take them up on it! Bread is a great one to outsource, so are things like gravy, cranberry sauce, butter, mashed potatoes, mixed greens salad, a dessert, and drinks. Everyone has their list of “I must have this or it’s not Thanksgiving” recipes, but if you don’t have to have a certain recipe or food, let it go and pass it off on a willing volunteer. (I also won’t tell anyone if you purchase something store bought rather than make it. There’s no shame in that!)
Click this link to download the printable shopping list and cooking planner and here’s an example of how I filled the planner in.
Note how I tried avoiding overlaps in cooking times when I could, especially when the oven temps are different. I also happen to have 2 ovens, so you may have to get a bit more creative if you only have 1 oven by cooking and then keeping dishes warm in a cooler with a heat pack or re-heating right before serving. You can get all creative with washi tape and color coding on this if you want to and feel free to print the second page twice if you have more than 7 dishes on your cooking plan. 🙂
What are your best Thanksgiving tips to cut the stress?
Meal Plan Monday 11/16-11/22
Click Here for the (Mobile-Friendly) Weekly Shopping List Printable!
This meal plan is designed to feed approximately 4 adults at each meal or two adults with lunches left over. Feel free to double or add to it as needed. **You’ll need to open it with the free Adobe Reader App (Android or iOS) to be able to use the check boxes on mobile, so install that first if you don’t have it already.**
Monday: My Slow Cooker Chicken Coconut Curry (gluten-free)
Tuesday: Honey-Lime Sweet Potato, Black Bean and Corn Tacos from Cooking Classy (gluten-free, vegetarian, vegan option)
Wednesday: Slow Cooker Chicken Pot Pie Soup from The Gunny Sack (gluten-free option)
Thursday: My Mini Mushroom, Feta and Spinach Frittatas (gluten-free, vegetarian)
Friday: Pizza Night! Pizza Stuffed Chicken from DIY Budget Girl (gluten-free, low carb)
Saturday: Date Night – Eat Out.
Sunday: Y.O.Y.O. (You’re on your own.)
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WOW! I am beyond impressed with that breakdown! What I would give for a second oven. For now, Im just thankful my MIL is just 2 streets over and I can use hers lol
We have a HUGE microwave that doubles as a convection oven, and I talked hubby into it just for times like this. I actually cooked the turkey in it last year. The only down side is that if you use the microwave as an oven, you don’t have a microwave, so you have to plan ahead there. I also once baked my pies in a toaster oven when I ran out of oven space at our old tiny single oven place – necessity breeds creativity! That must be so nice to have family so close! All of ours are sadly out of state.
These are great tips! I’ve never planned a Thanksgiving meal before but someday it’ll be my turn and I’m going to remember this! <3
Thanks Susannah! It can definitely get overwhelming if it’s your first time, but some planning can definitely ease the stress. I use this same method for planning for parties and other big events with multiple recipes going at once.
Definitely saving for a future Thanksgiving where I have to cook (this year we are traveling and guests for dinner). 🙂
I was a guest for the first time last year (we traveled to DC to have dinner with my SIL and her friends). It was glorious! I made a pecan pie just because I couldn’t seem to show up empty handed, but everything else was done for me. Enjoy it!
Great plan!
Kari
http://www.sweetteasweetie.com
Great tips! My mom started doing 1-3 a few years ago – so smart!
Doesn’t it just make all the difference to cut down on stress?
This was great! I always, always, always forget I can order my groceries online and pick them up later! Your post just reminded me of that!
It is THE BEST thing I ever do. Here in Denver I have to plan a bit ahead to get it when I want them, but it’s so nice to have them come to me and skip all the add on items and the fighting with crowds.
I like to tape my recipes to the inside of my cupboard doors! 🙂
That’s a great idea Branson! Inside cabinet doors are an excellent extra space to utilize.
Thank you Kari!