James Kenji Lopez-Alt
patreon
All my Favorite Thanksgiving Recipes
🕑 Added 2024-11-27 06:40:07 +0000 UTCI realize it’s the day before Thanksgiving, but if you, like me, are a last-minute planner and still have not decided on which recipes you’re going to be following this year, here’s a guide for you.
I’ve been testing and writing recipes for nearly two decades now, and as any recipe writer will tell you, that means a heckuva lot of turkeys, mashed potatoes, stuffings, cranberry sauces, pies, and sides.
When I used to work for print magazines, it meant that every year we had to come up with the new gimmick. The new “best” way to roast a turkey that supposedly outperformed every other version we’d ever published. This is because those magazines need a reason for people to keep on subscribing year after year.
But since the days when the internet became my main publishing platform, I’ve been bound by no such subscriber base. I can—and have—cooked my turkey exactly how I’ve wanted to every single year.
Does that mean that there’s only a single “best” way to do it? No. But it does mean that when I recommend a method, it’s because I really, really like it, I’ve tested it, and I can guarantee it will deliver results as promised.
Many of the recipes below can be found in my book, The Food Lab
Last year, I answered ALL of the Thanksgiving questions that were submitted to me. You can find my answers in video form here.
I used to write a “Thanksgiving Survival Guide” for Serious Eats every year, where I’d give a timeline of how to plan, assemble, and execute a Thanksgiving meal. You can find that guide here (though it lacks updated recipes).
On to the recipes. (Hey Alexis—this one is for you.)
The Turkey
I truly love turkey and would eat it year-round if the bird came in practical sizes. Oh when will Detroit build a bird for the year-round turkey lover?
Why do I love it? Because when it’s cooked right, it’s juicy, tender, and far more flavorful than chicken. Here are some ways to get there.
My Favorite way: Spatchcocked, Dry-Brined, Slathered in Mayo.
First off, I always dry-brine my turkey (it’s easier than wet-brining and doesn’t dilute flavor the way a wet brine does).
To cook it, the fastest, easiest, most-foolproof method is to spatchcock it. I’ve been advocating this technique since 2008, and I see no reason to diverge. Spatchcocking has three main advantages:
a 10- to 12-pound bird will cook in under 2 hours
the dark and light meat will finish cooking around the same time (no dry, overcooked breast meat)
the skin crisps up even and golden
it gives you a turkey backbone with which to enhance your gravy.
These days, I’ll also rub the turkey with herb mayo before I roast it, which works better than butter as far as evenly browning the bird and getting flavors to adhere to the skin goes. (It’s also the recipe that got Kevin Bacon to write my name on his hand.)
Here’s my recipe for mayo-roasted turkey (NYT cooking paywall).
Here’s my original spatchcock turkey writeup on Serious Eats. (And here’s a REAL old video on it)
What if I like my turkey whole?
The difficulty with roasting a whole turkey is that the breast meat—which is best when cooked only to 155°F (70°C) or lower—overcooks before the dark meat reaches its ideal temperature of 180°F (83°C). This is exacerbated by roasting pans, which tend to shield the dark meat from the direct heat of the oven.
My trick to overcome these disadvantages and evenly roast the whole bird is first of all to ditch the roasting pan in lieu of a simple rimmed baking sheet with a wire rack (I use this one from Nordicware).
The second, more important trick is to preheat a baking steel or baking stone in the oven before placing the baking sheet with the turkey directly on top of it. The stone acts as a battery for heat, giving those legs and thighs a boost.
What if I like my turkey boneless and fancy?
If you feel like going all-out and want to serve a boneless, sliceable, juicy, flavor-packed centerpiece, you could make my turchetta, which is a turkey breast that’s cured, wrapped in its own skin, and roasted like a porchetta.
Can I smoke it?
If you want to smoke a turkey, I’ve also got you covered there.
The Gravy and Sauce
I like to keep my cranberry sauce real simple. If you want to gussy it up, add a cinnamon stick, some orange zest, and maybe a splash of port or madeira if you like it winey.
For gravy, I use homemade stock or store-bought stock which I reinforce with the neck and backbone. I always add a splash of soy sauce to my gravy to boost the umami.
The Sides
[Hey Kenji: remember to do that thing all food writers do every darn year and come up with some line about how Thanksgiving is a meal made up of sides all bound together with gravy (or ask ChatGPT to do it for you.), or just leave this placeholder in place because it serves the same purpose.]
Stuffing
Stuffing is the only indispensable part of the Thanksgiving sides pantheon for me. As my friend says, “I live for the solid blob of sticky, bready, buttery stuff.”
So do I.
Potatoes
Mashed Potatoes
As a holiday based on gravy, mashed potatoes makes the most sense for the Thanksgiving table. I typically prefer my mashed potatoes creamy, smooth, and buttery AF.
But I can also get aboard the chunkier or fluffier mashed potato train (so long as we get to keep the buttery AF).
And if you want to make your mashed potatoes ahead, my friend and colleague Daniel Gritzer has some great suggestions here.
Other Potatoes
If, for some reason, you don’t like your potatoes in malleable paste form, I have two potato recipes that are among the most popular I’ve ever written.
The first is my hasselback potato gratin, in which you take a traditional creamy potato gratin and turn it on its side so that your potatoes bake up with crispy edges pointed skyward.
The second recipe is my ultra-crispy roast potatoes, which, as promised, are about as crispy as potatoes get. The trick is to par-boil them with a bit of baking soda in the water to encourage the breakdown of pectin, which helps the potatoes form a starchy slurry on their surface that later adds surface area and crisps up in the oven.
Sweet Potatoes
I’m not a huge fan of the traditional sweet potato casserole with its marshmallow topping. But I do like to slow-roast my sweet potatoes to get them extra sweet (thank you, enzymes and caramelization).
And if you prefer to gum down your sweet potatoes, I like to and to hit them with a little dash of maple syrup and brown butter.
Green Vegetables
Brussels Sprouts
Brussels sprouts are my family’s green vegetable of choice for the holiday, and most of the time, I’ll do them real simple by roasting them in a real hot oven until browned, crisp, and nutty. That said, there’s something magical about deep-frying them (plus it frees up your oven for other things).
If you prefer, broccoli can easily sub for Brussels sprouts in either of these recipes.
Green Beans
Green bean casserole is the classic Thanksgiving green casserole and honestly, there’s nothing wrong (and a whole lot right) with green beans, canned cream of mushroom soup, and canned French’s fried onions. That said, if you want to skip the middleman, you can make everything yourself from scratch. (Note: It’s a whole lot of work and you don’t have much time left before Thanksgiving.)
If you want to keep it simpler, you can sauté green beans with almonds (the French way), or braise them with bacon until they’re pale green, meltingly tender, and amazingly delicious (the American way).
Salads
My friend and former colleague Carey Jones texted me, Erin Zimmer, and Stella Parks (old time Serious Eaters, IYKYK) this morning saying “Ahh, tis the season to Google ‘kenji kale butternut’ like I do every thanksgiving week and probably will forever.”
That salad is also one of my favorites, combining roasted squash, kale, pecans, and dried cranberries in a maple-sherry vinaigrette. It can be made-ahead and served the next day. My mom’s favorite salad recipe of mine, on the other hand, is a roasted pear salad with pomegranate, blue cheese, and a hazelnut vinaigrette.
I love both of them.
Here’s my recipe for make-ahead roasted squash and kale salad.
Here’s my recipe for roasted pear salad with pomegranate, blue cheese, and hazelnut vinaigrette.
Biscuits and Bread
You spent so much time worrying about the other stuff, there’s no need to stress over the bread. For biscuits, my 2-ingredient (really!) biscuits are about as simple as it gets, though if you want to go the extra mile, the buttermilk biscuits from The Food Lab are tall, tender, and flaky.
I’ve worked on (almost) no-knead bread recipes since my early days at Cook’s Illustrated. The most recent incarnation of my recipe can be found in The New York Times, though an earlier (and more free) version exists on Serious Eats. Both of them are dead simple: combine flour, water, yeast, and salt in a bowl. Let it rest overnight with a few turns here and there to build structure. Shape it and bake it the next day. Bread!
Desserts
One of my earliest “viral” recipes was from before the dawn of social media. Or at least it was just as social media was waking up and rubbing its eyes. I’m talking about the vodka pie crust recipe I developed at Cook’s Illustrated magazine in 2006.
The hook of the recipe was that you replace some of the water in pie dough with vodka, the idea being that gluten does not form in alcohol, which allows you to hydrate your pie dough to a malleable, easy-to-roll consistency, but without causing any of the leatheriness or toughness issues that come up when you add too much water.
The more interesting part of that recipe, however, was the way I incorporated butter into the dough. Rather than leaving butter in discrete “pea-sized pieces,” or “coarse meal,” or any of the other arbitrary measures that most recipes suggest, instead you take the butter and half the flour and blend it into a paste before pulsing the remaining flour in with a food processor.
The result is a dough that rolls like Play-Do but bakes up crisp and flaky.
Here’s my updated recipe for foolproof all-butter pie dough.
Here’s my original Cook’s Illustrated vodka pie dough recipe.
Once you’ve got that pie crust, there are a few ways to fill it.
The classic is an apple pie, and I’ve done a couple variations on that. No matter which version I choose, I always par-cook my apples before putting them in the pie. This, paradoxically, helps them retain their shape and taste better as they bake (thank you, enzymes and caramelization).
If you want to go with one of the other classics, I don’t have my own recipe, but I’ve used and trust these recipes for pecan pie and pumpkin pie.
Leftovers
The only mandatory leftovers recipe for me is the Stuffing Waffles that we first published on Serious Eats around 2010, when it was par for the course to waffle EVERYTHING. These were by far the most successful waffling experiment, and have since gone on to become what I'd consider a Thanksgiving classic. At least for the on-line generation. Also great were waffled falafel (AKA wafalafel) and waffled pizza.
And if you want more leftovers recipes, once again I'd trust Serious Eats to never lead you astray. Here is a great big list of leftovers recipes.
More recipes
Make-Ahead Dishes Served With No Reheating
Easy Make-Ahead Carrot and Chickpea Salad With Dill and Pumpkin Seeds
Roasted-Chickpea and Kale Salad With Sun-Dried Tomato Vinaigrette
Carrot and Rye Berry Salad With Celery, Cilantro, and Marcona Almonds
Roasted Cauliflower With Pine Nut, Raisin, and Caper Vinaigrette
Make-Ahead Dishes Finished or Reheated in the Oven
Easy Roasted Mushrooms (quick reheat)
Over-the-Top Creamed Brussels Sprouts Gratin (make ahead through step 2)
Extra-Crispy Herb-Roasted New Potatoes (make ahead through step 2)
Crispy Mashed Potato Casserole With Bacon, Cheese, and Scallions
Cheesy Onion, Bacon, and New Potato Gratin (make ahead through step 4 and transfer mixture to baking dish; continue with step 5 the day of)
Hasselback Potato Gratin (bake halfway through step 3; finish baking until golden brown the day of)
Classic Sausage and Sage Stuffing or Vegan Stuffing (prepare until just before baking step)
The Ultimate Green Bean Casserole (make ahead halfway through step 13; bake and top the day of)
Make-Ahead Dishes Finished on the Stovetop
Creamy Roasted-Broccoli Soup With Buttermilk and Spiced Pepitas
Roasted Pumpkin Soup With Brown Butter and Thyme (really, any of our soups would be a good choice for reheating stovetop or sous vide)
The Best Mashed Sweet Potatoes (best reheated sous vide)
Pressure Cooker Butternut Squash Risotto With Frizzled Sage and Brown Butter (cook through step 9, chill by spreading on a rimmed baking sheet, reheat by stirring in hot stock in a saucepan until creamy)
Ultra-Fluffy or Rich and Creamy Mashed Potatoes (best reheated sous vide)
Desserts
Even more recipes
I publish new content here, but you’ll also find my past work (and some future work!) on Serious Eats, New York Times Cooking (paywall), and Cook’s Illustrated (paywall). I would trust any of these three sources for recipe advice. They are consistently the most well-researched, well-tested sources available.
Comments
Marcy Mann
Incredibly generous! I will keep this treasure trove handy 12 months/year! Thank you, Kenji.
Firestrike
I spatchcocked my turkey this year and I must say, the skin got NEXT LEVEL crispy and flavorful. AMAZING and even browning throughout the entire bird! That being said, if your family is like mine and gets an absolutely MASSIVE turkey (ours was 21.5lbs this year, I believe our biggest ever was 23lbs!), then do make sure you have the equipment to roast it! I ran around town looking for a tray big enough to fit the massive dinosaur of a bird but small enough to fit our oven. Also it took some serious elbow grease to spatchcock it in the first place. Definitely worth it though, I was so proud to serve it!!
Veeral Tolia
Wait a second- did you sneak in this write up some news that you are doing new stuff for serious eats?
James Kenji Lopez-Alt
Sorry, that link is fixed!
Osama Rao
The link to the Deep Fried Brussels Sprouts keeps leading to the Roasted Brussels Sprouts recipe.
Lauren Sharrock
What a treasure trove - thank you so much for compiling and sharing these! Have a wonderful thanksgiving!
Catherine
Woot!! The Ultimate Thanksgiving WWKD? Edition Happy Thanksgiving Kenji!! ♥️🙏🌏🕊️
Kelli B
This is the greatest thing since a spatchcocked turkey. Thanks Kenji.
Chris
So many awesome options, especially for us procrastinators! Thank you so much and Happy Thanksgiving!!
ernie
I thought as much, but in the off chance it wasn't I wanted to give you a heads up 😄 Thanks for the post!
James Kenji Lopez-Alt
That was intentional ;)
ernie
You forgot a comment to yourself under The Sides, Kenji! Unless that was intentional.
Stephen Phayre
Amazing resource Kenji! Thanks for pulling it all together and sharing it! Hope you have a great Thanksgiving!
