Last Thanksgiving, just as a jubilant Santa Claus was making his way across 34th Street on TV, I noticed something alarming in the kitchen of my childhood home. The oven I had preheated for my stuffing had not, in fact, heated.
My dad, flashlight in hand and flanked by a gaggle of panicked observers, crouched down on the floor, removed the oven drawer and began troubleshooting.
My mom and I took stock of our uncooked dishes. The turkey was safe: My family has been deep-frying our holiday bird for decades, a beloved if controversial method. But the fate of my stuffing, my mom’s sweet potato casserole and cornbread, and the rather gratuitous glazed ham my brother requests every year all hung in the balance like a bloated Snoopy parade balloon.
At 1:38 p.m., with guests scheduled to arrive at 4, we called it: The oven was toast. We quickly devised a plan to spread out the remaining cooking across all our other appliances. The stovetop was still working, sparing us a frantic course correction on the sautéed green beans, gravy and wild rice. My parents’ new toaster oven could miraculously fit a cast-iron skillet inside, so in went the cornbread, followed by the sweet potato casserole. We’d treat the gas Weber grill like an oven, closely monitoring the lid thermometer as the stuffing and ham baked inside.
That chaotic day helped inform NYT Cooking’s Ultimate Guide to Thanksgiving, an interactive planner that distills the holiday into four big decisions: how to cook the turkey, which side dishes to make, what to prepare ahead of time and how to end the meal. The guide steers you toward the perfect recipes based on the size of your party and your favorite flavors.
There is value in preparing as much as you can ahead of time. Doing so provides not just an insurance policy should your most important appliance fail; advance work is good for your sanity, which, on a holiday that can be emotionally taxing, deserves safeguarding. In the rest of this newsletter, I’ll be giving my recommendations for what you can do over the next few days.
Thanksgiving Road Map
Tomorrow: If you haven’t already gotten ahead on a chicken or vegetable stock to fortify your stuffing, gravy and soup (assuming that’s your kind of thing), the time to do so is now. You also don’t need to fuss with gravy on the day itself. Claire Saffitz’s white wine gravy and Eric Kim’s vegetarian umami gravy, bolstered with nutritional yeast, are both excellent make-ahead candidates.
Later in the evening, roast some sweet potatoes, scoop out the flesh and prep it for pie filling or a casserole (though you’ll want to hold off on topping a casserole with nuts, brown sugar or marshmallows until just before baking).
Monday: Assemble, cook and cool creamy casseroles like scalloped potatoes, which will hold up texturally, thanks to their high fat content. It’s also a fine time to make cranberry sauce, which benefits from a few days in the fridge.
Tuesday: It’s time to tackle vegetable prep. Blanch green beans for casseroles, trim your brussels sprouts to glaze with cider, and peel and prep butternut squash to glaze with ginger beer. And don’t forget to leave your stuffing bread out on a baking sheet overnight, to dry out the bread sufficiently before storing it in an airtight container.
Wednesday: Tend to delicate tasks that you might otherwise put off until the big day, like washing and drying leafy herbs and salad greens, and whisking together salad dressing. You can also make your mashed potatoes, then cool and refrigerate them. “When mashed potatoes chill, their starches firm up,” my colleague Genevieve Ko writes in her recipe, “and when reheated gently, they relax into a mash with an even silkier texture.”