Anthony Bourdain: eight things you are doing wrong with your Thanksgiving dinner
It’s too late to start cooking on Thanksgiving day. Prepare two to three days in advance, writes Laurie Woolever
If there’s one meal at which family drama is on full display, it’s Thanksgiving. Expectations and emotions run high, and there are a lot of moving parts to cause friction. Even Anthony Bourdain, who is seemingly immune to the criticism of others, feels the pressure to pull off the most anticipated meal of the year.
In fact, he dedicated a whole chapter to Thanksgiving in the book I co-wrote with him last year, Appetites: A Cookbook. There, you’ll find recipes from Tony that are capable of distracting from any and all uncomfortable conversations.
1. Don’t start cooking on Thanksgiving Day.
Preparing your whole meal in one day – even two – is a recipe for system failure. Order your fancy farmer-raised turkey now. Or, if you are going to buy a more plebeian bird from a regular market, get your hands on it no later than the Monday before Thanksgiving.
Plan for three days – that’s right, three days – of full-on Thanksgiving prep. Make a list of everything that needs to get done and follow it. The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, you should be organising your supplies and tools, making sure you have enough roasting pans, mixing bowls, and storage containers, and banging out advance vegetable prep.
3. You’re not giving yourself enough time to thaw everything out.
Do not wait until Thanksgiving to lay out your non-perishables and frozen items. The vast majority of holiday turkeys are sold frozen, and it takes about 13 hours per kilogramto defrost in the refrigerator. No amount of prayer, salting or hastily applied hairdryers can speed up this process if you’ve waited until Wednesday to thaw a 5kg bird. Your microwave isn’t big enough. You can jolly it along a bit with a cold water bath, but do not float your turkey in your bathtub.