How to Really Enjoy Thanksgiving, Even When You Cook Yourself
You can smell it in the ground. You can feel it in the air. It’s every home cook’s favorite holiday and worst nightmare: Thanksgiving dinner. Weeks are spent planning, studying food magazines, and planning a menu that is different from the old turkey. When day comes, you spend hours working on cooking pots, pans and a very full oven before finally sitting down and spending your entire meal worrying about getting down to cooking.
No more. I’ve missed too many social events and celebrations trying to do all of this, and at this point in my life, I’d rather be a real host than a part-time chef. In the chaos of the kitchen on this day, there is something that can only be taken once a year. This experience is worth sharing with our guests, and many of us have forgotten about it for the sake of a picturesque meal.
Ask for help
This is the hardest part, where you have to swallow your pride and admit that you need help. You don’t need to invite six people into a 35-square-foot kitchen, but there is no reason why you need to be alone on vacation, which, from what greeting cards tell me, values togetherness. For a long time I wanted to give my mother a day off and do everything myself. After several bouts of intense anxiety, I finished my meal and cooked everything on the table hot, but I did not have a single snack, it took me almost seven hours from start to finish, and all this, and I need to sit down for minutes. 10. There is nothing pleasant about it.
It’s too long a day to be alone in the kitchen and lugging guests into the living room while you brush off gravy and worry about buns is unlikely to be warm or inviting behavior, especially if you haven’t seen these guests for months – or years. People congregate in the kitchen anyway, so make them work as they wander around and use that time to catch up. There are a lot of things to do in the kitchen, regardless of the culinary skill set: peel and grind, melt the oils in the microwave, reheat those pathetic pearl onions, or just make sure everyone is hydrated enough.
Spread it out
A wise man once said to his son, ” Many hands do light work .” You are not going to use your dining table for hours, so cover it with a newspaper and have yourself a round table cooking session. You will end up slicing raw meat, peeling potatoes, and slicing green beans together much faster than you could alone, but you can use those extra hands and slow yourself down to a much more leisurely pace while enjoying the company of your guests with work parted.
Make lists and delegate
In the midst of the moment when you come to a defining moment, it is worth having someone who is on the same page with you (literally). Print out the recipe and glue it near where you work and give people a copy of your timeline (if you have one). You can even move multicooker and multi-functional pressure cookers to their own little “stations” with a recipe card and tools next to the stove and create a miz-en-place at each station. If my dad can handle ” check the potatoes in four hours, ” you have someone at home who can do the same. And if you want to go further, arrange side dishes and other finishing ingredients and serving utensils so people don’t have to squeeze into the kitchen to get them. Many Thanksgiving dishes can be collected in one pot, so be sure to use this one.
If guests want to prepare their own meal in your kitchen and are not traveling hundreds of miles, ask them to measure the ingredients ahead of time and bring their own dishes and serving utensils. Crockery is easy to find at a thrift store , but Goodwill doesn’t work on Thanksgiving.
Rip out the circulator su-vide
Not every helping hand is attached to the body. Since it is very likely that you will run into some synchronization issues, you may need a way to keep warm. Sous vide not only meets these requirements, but also makes it a fantastic side dish . Dust off your immersion circulation pump and that big old Cambro you should have had , and set the submersible circulation pump to 140 ° F. Boil and mash the potatoes as much as you like, bag them and move on.
Customize the buffet
This is undoubtedly the best way to serve Thanksgiving dinner, and the humble buffet also allows you to skip serving and passing around an already crowded table while things cool down. You’ll spend more time sending the sauce train on the rails than, so to speak, in the lunch cart, so find yourself a folding table or counter and line up your turkeys. The line is always a good place to chat, giggle at the last minute, and grab more beer on the way to the table.