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Hosting Thanksgiving can be a wonderfully rewarding experience, having your friends and family gather together in your home, to enjoy your food, and appreciate each other’s company. But hosting such an important event can take a lot of effort and preparation, and especially when you’re surrounded by people you want to be talking to, a football game you want to watch, and the desire to just be done making dinner, Thanksgiving can take a toll on the host. We know that even the host wants to be spending time enjoying their holiday, so we’ve put together a few tips to help you get the most out of hosting Thanksgiving.
Before you even start buying anything, start thinking about how Thanksgiving would go in your ideal world. Who is going to be there? Where will everyone sit? What will the meal look like? What do you want to make yourself and what do you want to farm out to your friends and relatives?
Don’t be afraid to write things down as you plan. Creating a schedule can help a lot, though you don’t need to stick precisely to it. Giving yourself general blocks of time to work with will help you get food onto the table while it’s all still warm, and it will help you cut down on wasted time during cooking.
No matter what else you take from this blog, the one thing you must remember is to shop ahead. Stores begin stocking Thanksgiving products well ahead of the 4th Thursday, and plenty of what you’ll need will keep for at least a few weeks. Purchase dry, canned, and frozen ingredients as well as spices a week or two ahead of time and get them organized the way you’ll need them for the day of cooking. If necessary, it can be helpful to reserve an entire section of cabinet for organization.
When it comes to perishables, buy at least a day in advance. Well-calibrated refrigerators will keep food fresh for far longer than you might think, so don’t cut it down to the wire if you don’t have to! This means you’ll have to have space in your fridge for a few days before Thanksgiving. Make sure you plan your shopping to accommodate the extra food you’ll need to buy!
Knowing exactly how many people should be coming (we know things change) can make all the difference in planning. Once you have your final number, count how many table settings you have, how many servings of each dish you’re planning on having, how many seats you have, and any other crowd-size related concerns you have.
For dishes other people are bringing, make sure you confirm the number of guests with them. Consider offering recipes for any specific dishes you’re asking for, as not everyone is comfortable cooking without a reference. Plus, that way you know it’ll be good!
If you’re having younger children over for Thanksgiving, it could be worth taking some time to child-proof your house. If you have valuables or breakable objects on shelves reachable by small hands, we recommend moving them higher up or out of the room entirely. Pick a room or two to close off to all guests and keep items you want safe in those rooms for the day.
If a member of your Thanksgiving group needs special accessibility concerns, make sure to address these well ahead of time. Putting a ramp down over front steps or moving furniture around are easily done in the preceding weeks and, depending on what other set-up you have to do, can make it much easier!
Don’t let yourself start cooking in a kitchen that isn’t prepared. This is a task that is especially good for outsourcing to your “support staff” such as kids and spouses as it might require a good deal of time but doesn’t require much knowledge of the plan.
It’s worth cleaning your range, microwave, and oven a few days beforehand. This will make the clean-up after Thanksgiving so much easier because all the grime and grease will be fresh and easily removed. Make sure that all of your cookware is clean and in the right place. If you need to stack them, try to stack them in the order you will need them!
Some dishes can be prepared well ahead of time, sometimes as much as a day or two in advance. Take advantage of the preceding days to prepare whatever you can, including grating cheese, slicing vegetables, par-boiling pasta, even assembling casseroles to be stored in the fridge.
Make sure if you bought a frozen turkey that you start defrosting it well ahead of time! Allow at least a day in the fridge per four pounds of turkey, so heavier turkeys will have to thaw for a few days.
In short, the key to having a great Thanksgiving as the host is making sure you don’t have to do much on the day of Thanksgiving. Do what you can to remove everything that stands between your two goals: cooking amazing food, and spending time with your loved ones. Happy Turkey Day!
