Early birds: Start planning now for Thanksgiving
If anyone should have known better, it was Debra Smith. Smith, the Sloan village clerk and an accomplished home cook, has produced Thanksgiving dinner for her extended Sloan clan since 1991. But five years ago, captivated by the prospect of cooking a turkey under a charcoal-ringed garbage can, Smith violated Rule No. 1 for ensuring a smooth Thanksgiving meal:
No experiments.
The turkey, meant to cook for two and a half hours, went for four. The result, a carbonized bird, went in the trash.
"It was pretty charred," said Smith, who can laugh now. "We ate all the nice vegetables we had prepared."
Here, courtesy of Smith and other masters of culinary disaster, are the most important rules for Thanksgiving dinner.
Panic now — and avoid the holiday rush — because if you can apply these rules before Thanksgiving morning, you and your guests will all give thanks:
• Decide what's for dinner early. That comes first, said Liz Kolken, who closes her Quaker Bonnet food shop and restaurant on Thanksgiving to host about 60 people for a post Turkey Trot dinner. When it comes to a successful dinner party of any size, planning is what matters, she said.
In Quaker Bonnet's commercial kitchen on Allen Street, deputized guests ready turkeys for roasting and make mashed potatoes, while others mix drinks and children play instruments, Kolken said. Meanwhile, she knows what her guests will add to the table.
Nailing down the menu has to happen early enough to do the preparation that follows, Kolken said. Negotiate with guests to determine what dishes they will bring, then fill in the blanks.
She knows the Tunisian doctor will bring a leg of lamb. The raspberry whipped cream Jell-O mold will appear. "Somebody loves Brussels sprouts, so they always bring them," she said.
Everything else is part of Kolken's plan.
• When making assignments, find the right taker. That's because people don't change their stripes on holidays, said Smith, who once made the mistake of assigning the dinner rolls to a chronic latecomer.
Arriving while dessert was being served, the rolls largely missed their intended audience, Smith said. That's why they were still there later in the afternoon, when a group of vengeance-minded guests used them to pelt the tardy relative.
• Outsource if you like. Letting professionals help isn't a sin. A pie, a cake, a turkey — buying dinner elements can help you solve the puzzle and decrease stress. Cooking driven primarily by guilt isn't what Thanksgiving should be.
"It's supposed to be this big dog and pony show," said Kolken. "People get themselves completely torn apart inside about every neurosis their mother ever imbued into them."
Wegmans, Tops, Boston Market and even Quaker Bonnet can all do your turkey, with some offering a complete dinner under $100.
• Create your shopping list. Once you know what parts of dinner you're responsible for, take your recipes and make a master list of supplies. One main shopping trip early for most things, one closer to Thanksgiving for perishables. "I always get the ingredients for my baking ahead of time," said Smith. "It's so costly otherwise."
Besides, she said, it's a pretty sad feeling looking for a bag of pecans the night before Thanksgiving.
• Do a walk-through. Take a minute to mentally walk through your meal, to ensure everything can be physically accommodated in your kitchen.
If the turkey will be thawing in the refrigerator, where will the pies and the cranberry salad go? On the day, does the cooking schedule require the turkey, sweet potatoes, pan of stuffing and cauliflower gratin to all somehow share the oven, violating laws of solid physics?
That's when you adjust your plan, Kolken said. Precook everything you can. Change some dishes to ones that are good at room temperature. Bring the standby microwave into play.
Clean out the refrigerator to make the room you need, or if it's cold enough, consider using nature's refrigerator, stashing food in the garage, basement, porch or car.
"Where are you going to put stuff?" Smith said. With a list, you can do the math.
• Gather and test your equipment. Go through your recipes and find each pan, spoon and ladle you will need to cook and serve it. Put it in a pile.
"You don't want to, at the last minute, be looking for a pan, or not have enough pans for what you're going to do," Kolken said. "Find everything, every utensil you're going to use. Think it out."
Because Thanksgiving Day is the worst time to hear yourself say, "I know I've got it but where the hell did I put it?"
Now is the time to borrow that extra gravy boat, the soup tureen, the potato ricer, and the last three pie plates you need.
Required dishes includes takeout containers you don't mind never seeing again, Kolken suggested. When dinner is over, you can pack people up, reduce leftovers, and make all of you happy.
Test your oven if it's old by using an oven thermometer. No one wants to follow a recipe to roast a turkey for three hours at 350, only to discover their oven actually produces 315 with the dial set that way.
• Get an instant-read digital meat thermometer if you don't have one, Smith said. With a handy meat doneness temperature chart, it eliminates the guesswork of "Is the turkey done?"
"Spend a little bit of money and buy that thermometer," Smith said. "If you haven't tested your oven and it's cooking at only 325 [degrees] instead of 350, you're going to need that extra half hour. But you won't know it unless you have a meat thermometer."
Four ways to feast
It's not too early to start thinking, so here are four menu ideas, drawn from four top-notch cooking Web sites where you can find the recipes:
Make ahead menu (saveur.com)
Bacon wrapped turkey with pear-cider gravy
Pumpkin soup with sage
Sweet potato casserole
Cranberries with port
Cream-braised brussels sprouts
Chocolate pecan pie
Celebration menu (gourmet.com)
Miso-rubbed turkey with giblet gravy
Herbed oyster stuffing
Maple squash puree
Green beans with ginger butter
Date, goat cheese and mesclun salad
Pumpkin flan
Nontraditional menu (nymag.com)
Bo ssam, whole roasted pork shoulder
Braised savoy cabbage
Grilled eggplant and feta salad
Baby artichokes with capers and pine nuts
Cauliflower bread pudding
Almond float with lychee and pineapple
Vegetarian menu (101cookbooks.com)
Thai-spiced pumpkin soup
Hazelnut and chard ravioli salad
Golden crusted Brussels sprouts
Kale and olive oil mashed potatoes
Firecracker cornbread
Salt-kissed buttermilk cake
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