The End of Kitchen Gridlock!
The most complicated part about making a big holiday dinner with all the fixings usually isn’t cooking the food. Many holiday recipes are fairly simple – or so they seem after years of experience making them. The challenge is to get them all prepared in one day and to coordinate your cooking so they are all ready to eat at the same time.
With a little advanced planning and these tips from the SCOTT® Brand, you can put an end to the typical holiday gridlock in your kitchen.
Three to four weeks before: Go through the refrigerator and freezer and use up those foods as much as possible to make room for prepared dishes. If you don’t have a refrigerator thermometer, get an inexpensive one and make sure your freezer is 0 degrees F and your refrigerator is about 37 or 38 degrees F for the safest food storage.
Two to three weeks before the holiday: Grocery stores often start putting their holiday specialties and ingredients on sale well in advance of Thanksgiving. Write up your menu, gather your recipes and make a master list of ingredients you will need. Then, as they start going on sale, start stocking up.
You can start making the foods that can be prepared and frozen, such as hot hors d’oeuvres (meatballs, phyllo dough pockets, mini quiches) and fruit pies.
Two to three days before: Start thawing your frozen turkey in the refrigerator. Make cranberry sauce, green bean casserole and sweet potato casserole, and refrigerate them. Chop, boil and puree your squash.
The day before: Chop veggies for salads or veggie platters, prepare stuffing, defrost desserts, appetizers and side dishes.
While it may seem like an unconventional idea, it’s always an option to cook your turkey the day before Thanksgiving. If you usually get up at dawn to prepare it, then fret because it’s taking up so much space in the oven when you have other things to cook, consider this: cook your turkey the day before, refrigerate it overnight, slice it up (it will slice nicely when it’s cold) and pop a platter of turkey (covered in foil) into the oven to heat it up right before dinner. It gives you time to clean and dispose of the carcass -- one of the least popular jobs when cleaning up after Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner – and makes more room in the fridge.
The big day: Heat up your pies first, so they have time to cool before dessert. Then heat up the hors d’oeuvres as your guests arrive. Casseroles that have been prepared in advance can be heated up in the microwave, then popped in the oven the last half hour, when the turkey (if you cook it that day) is “resting” before you can cut it.
Finally, don’t forget the rolls!
Question: What are your tricks for managing the kitchen traffic during busy holiday meal prep?
