If you’re cooking Thanksgiving dinner for the first time, there’s no need to panic. Plan ahead, keep it simple and delegate when necessary. Below are 18 foolproof recipes to guarantee a memorable meal for you and your guests.
Melissa Clark’s recipe for simple roast turkey will not steer you wrong. So many readers say this is the best turkey they’ve ever made. If you want an organic, farm-raised bird, be sure to place your order a few weeks in advance, and invest in oven and meat thermometers. Yes, both! (Accurate oven temperature is one of the keys to success here.)
Do not fear making your own pie crust. Melissa Clark’s recipe is hard to mess up and practically works with whatever kind of pie you like on your Thanksgiving table.
Recipe: Pie Crust
Hungry guests are not happy guests. While you put the finishing touches on the meal, set out a platter of something that isn’t too filling and tastes completely different from the rest of the menu, like Alexa Weibel’s bright, spicy marinated feta with herbs and peppercorns (which takes just a few minutes to set up the night before).
The peeling, deseeding and cutting involved in prepping butternut squash can be a real bummer, but this dish from Ali Slagle eliminates peeling, so you’re one step closer to getting it on the table. Just roast slices of squash, then toss them with brown butter that’s been spiked with vinegar and red-pepper flakes for a lively holiday side dish.
This stunner of a tart from Sue Li is a great side dish or vegetarian alternative to turkey. Store-bought puff pastry makes this a cinch to put together, and you can use a number of cooked vegetables in place of the carrots: onions, parsnips, beets, zucchini or pumpkin.
Is it stuffing or is it dressing? Whatever you call it, it’s arguably the best part of the Thanksgiving table. This simple version from Mark Bittman, who was inspired by a James Beard recipe, has only six ingredients (not counting salt and pepper). If you don’t have a food processor to make the bread crumbs, just roughly cut stale bread or use store-bought unseasoned stuffing cubes. (Pepperidge Farm makes them.)
Recipe: Bread Stuffing
These perfect mashed potatoes have just a handful of ingredients: salt, potatoes, butter and milk. Use more butter and salt than you think necessary and less milk, which, according to its developer, Julia Moskin, will “flatten out the bright, earthy potato taste.”
Recipe: Mashed Potatoes
An artfully arranged platter of deviled eggs is always a welcome — and maybe a little nostalgic? — addition to the holiday table. This recipe, which was adapted from “U.S.A. Cookbook,” by Sheila Lukins, an author of the Silver Palate cookbooks that were popular in the 1980s and ’90s, is pretty much perfect.
Recipe: Classic Deviled Eggs
You could go to all the trouble of mashing a bunch of sweet potatoes and covering them with a blanket of marshmallows, but it’s not necessary. In this simple recipe from Melissa Clark, baked sweet potatoes are peeled and sliced, then drenched in a mix of melted butter, cider and maple syrup that’s been seasoned with cinnamon, cloves and orange zest.
Recipe: Maple Candied Sweet Potatoes
This is the only way you ever need to cook brussels sprouts: Toss them with salt, pepper and a little olive oil or bacon fat. Roast on a sheet pan until browned and crisp at the edges and tender within. This recipe serves two, but it doubles or triples easily.
Recipe: Roasted Brussels Sprouts
This classic pan gravy from Sam Sifton is whisked together in the same pan you roasted the turkey in, so you make the most of all of those flavorful bits. Warm your gravy boat or pitcher by rinsing it in hot water (or in a warming drawer) before filling it with gravy. This will help keep your gravy warm as it gets passed around the table.
In the category of bright and snappy, we have Julia Moskin’s green beans with fresh ginger and garlic. The beans can be blanched a day ahead, then refrigerated, leaving nothing more to do before the meal than to throw everything together over high heat.
Save yourself the trouble of trying to make gravy under the hungry eyes of your waiting guests. This one from Mark Bittman can be made ahead, so all you have to do is heat it over low heat and add some drippings from the turkey before transferring it to Grandma’s gravy boat.
Recipe: Make-Ahead Gravy
Gather your cranberries, orange juice, orange zest and sugar. Simmer until the berries burst. That’s it. If you’d like, Sam Sifton said you could add an allspice clove or two, a little freshly grated ginger or a handful of chopped nuts.
Recipe: Cranberry Sauce
This is the most adaptable pumpkin pie recipe, and it’s very hard to mess up. Make it with fresh or canned pumpkin purée, homemade or store-bought pie crust, and fresh or ground ginger. Serve it with lots of freshly whipped cream or even that delicious stuff that comes in a can.
Recipe: Pumpkin Pie
Real talk: Samantha Seneviratne’s apple crumble tastes just as good as pie, and it’s so much easier to make. When shopping for apples, select a combination of tart and sweet, like Granny Smith and McIntosh. They’ll cook and soften at slightly different rates, which will make the filling jammy and pleasantly firm all at once.
Recipe: Apple Crumble
In Puerto Rico, yuca is one of the most popular viandas, a regional word for starchy fruits and vegetables, such as plantain and taro. It has a subtly sweet and somewhat nutty flavor that’s complemented nicely by a garlicky citrus mojo dressing in this recipe from Von Diaz.
