How To Serve A Bomb A$$ Thanksgiving Dinner Even If You Can’t Cook
Thanksgiving dinner is one of the most cherished times spent with family and friends. It’s about good food but also to spend that quality time with your family and embrace it. We wait all year for this dinner and to come together to enjoy it. There are so many things you can do to ensure your dinner is tasty and fun. Like taking away the stress of cooking dinner when you don’t know how to cook is a start! Here are some guidelines to follow to make sure your bomb Thanksgiving dinner will blow away your family and friends!
Tip # 1: Don’t Take On So Much
We know that we need to incorporate the basics for our thanksgiving dinner, which is the turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing and of course, a pie. If you can make these basics, you’ll crush it! You don’t need to worry about having five different types of pies, or to have every side dish you can think of at the table.
Just think, keeping it simple will mean less for you to cook and worry about ruining. You can find the simplest recipes for each of these meals. A Thanksgiving dinner doesn’t have to be extravagating, but you can turn the basics into much more than just basic.
Putting too much pressure on yourself to get everything exactly as expected will taint your results and your time. Of course, food is an important aspect of Thanksgiving dinner but it’s not the only. You don’t want your time with your family to be spent worrying about food and how much you have of it, or if it’s good enough. Of course, it’s good enough! You did it!
Tip # 2: Create A Potluck Dinner
Similar to tip # 1, if you don’t want to worry about messing up the sacred Thanksgiving dinner, asking family members or friends to contribute a small side dish will help alleviate some stress and help you serve a bomb dinner, without actually having to cook everything.
You can still cook the main dishes, but having others provide different dishes will help boost the probability of a not so bomb dinner turns into an unforgettable one. With this idea, you could possibly get those five different pies or sides you never even dreamed of.
Hosting Thanksgiving dinner is already a daunting task as it is, but to provide all of the many dishes people expect at this dinner is overwhelming. If each friend or family member brings a dish, there are so many to choose from so even if yours isn’t up to par, it’s cool.
Tip # 3: Follow Simple Recipes To A T
There are so many simple and easy Thanksgiving dinner recipes out there floating on the internet. All you have to do is find one you think you can manage and make sure you follow it exactly. Cooking a turkey can seem really overwhelming and it can be if you’re wanting to get fancy with it. However, a simple turkey recipe can be the best of all!
Here’s the one you can follow:
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees
- Gut and clean the turkey (10-12 pound) pulling out all the giblets which you can save for the gravy (discard the liver)
- Rinse well and dry with paper towels then season with your choice of seasoning (to keep it simple stick with salt and pepper)
- You can fill the turkey with onions, herbs, carrots or apples (these aromatics add flavor)
- Place in roasting pan, breast-side up and brush with melted butter
- Cover loosely with foil, making a tent-like cover and roast for 2 hours
- Then remove the foil, adding a bit more melted butter
- Up the heat to 425 degrees, and roast for another hour or until thigh registers 165 degrees
Tip # 4: Practice Before Hosting
Practicing your meals beforehand can be a way to get everything tasting perfect for the big Thanksgiving dinner. This could be months before or weeks before, but going through your trial and error phase before cooking your final meals can benefit you tremendously.
You can learn the dos and don’ts in the kitchen before dishing out your meals to your friends and family. If there’s something you can add to spice things up or something you can do differently, like cook the mashed potatoes longer or add more milk and butter, this is the time to figure it out.
This trial period can allow you to fix the kinks and improve your meal to its finest when Thanksgiving dinner comes around. You’re more likely to feel at ease when the day of hosting comes around because you’ll have fixed all the mistakes you’ve made prior.
Tip # 5: Prepare Your Side Dishes
In similar to practicing, preparing your side dishes the day before will help lighten the load that needs to be done on Thanksgiving Day. You have plenty of things to worry about on top of preparing a bomb a$$ dinner for your family and friends. You have to make sure your home is clean, your decorations are out and in place, that you can cater to kids if there is the need.
Cooking your pies, stuffing, or mashed potatoes the day/night before can allow you to spend your time and focus on cooking the turkey the day of, which we all know can be a big job itself. Preparing the night before cuts down your preparation time, so you have more time to spend with family and friends.
We all know how stressful prepping for Thanksgiving dinner can be, or maybe you haven’t been in this position before. Any bit of preparing before the big day helps. Whether it’s the simplest things like making sure you have enough space and seating for your guests or that your space is comfortable and fits the mood.
