Thanksgiving is quickly approaching. Don’t worry if you’re not quite ready just yet; that’s why we’re here. As with any dinner party, last-minute tasks have a way of sneaking up on you when you’re hosting Thanksgiving. Because of this, it’s important to complete as much as you can in advance, beginning with these 10 wise things you can do right away.
- Inspect your kitchen equipment and cookware.
Making sure you have all the cookware and kitchen tools you’ll need to prepare dinner is as vital as organizing your meal. Do you require more pie dishes, a meat thermometer, or a roasting pan? If you haven’t already, take stock of your possessions and determine what you still require.
- Prepare to begin defrosting your turkey.
The moment has come to consider defrosting your frozen turkey. For every four pounds of weight, a totally frozen turkey needs a day to thaw. Additionally, your turkey needs to be defrosted one day earlier if you intend to brine it.
- Be aware of alternative methods for roasting a turkey.
Considering that a roasting pan is used, at most, a few times per year, roasting pans can be expensive pieces of cookware to purchase. There are numerous ways to cook your chicken without one, so don’t worry if you don’t have one or aren’t sure whether to get one.
- Prepare the gravy and freeze it.
On Thanksgiving, you can never have enough gravy, so why not start on this necessity now? You can always add leftover turkey drippings to the gravy for a more authentic flavor, so don’t worry about them.
Create the cranberry sauce in step 5.
Although cranberry sauce is a Thanksgiving staple, my family occasionally forgets to serve it. Make your cranberry sauce now to ensure that you have it when you sit down to supper. It is essentially a quick jam that can be frozen or kept in the refrigerator until the big day because it has a lot of sugar in it.
- Make the mashed potatoes and freeze them.
Although potatoes don’t often freeze well, mashed potatoes are an exception. Your potatoes will freeze just fine as long as they are well-coated with butter and cream.
- Prepare the dinner buns and freeze them.
This is one recipe that is simple to prepare in advance and freeze until your holiday dinner, whether you love rolls with your meal or would rather keep the bread for a tiny turkey sandwich after the initial food coma has worn off.
Make the pie crust, step 8.
Whether you have ideas for apple, pumpkin, or pecan pie, get a head start on pie preparation by creating the crust this weekend.
- Alternatively, make the entire pie right now.
However, if you’re going to create any fruit-filled pies this year, it’s simple to get an early start. This doesn’t work with custard-based pies, like pumpkin. Before Thanksgiving, prepare the entire pie, place it in the pie plate, and freeze it.
- Make a schedule of what will happen on Thanksgiving.
Even if you’ve done most of the labor-intensive work in advance, having a calendar of the day’s events and what has to happen when is helpful, especially when it comes to dishes that need to be baked.
