Thanksgiving Tips: A Few Key Additions that Can Make for an Extra Special Meal

Brining the turkey, letting it rest before carving, making use of all your kitchen appliances, and making your own broth are just a few things that make Thanksgiving extra special.

We celebrated Thanksgiving a week early this year to make the plane tickets cheaper for the twelve people who flew into town. The good news is that all my tips and tricks are fresh in my mind and ready to be shared with you.

I have a few key things I do that aren’t too much extra work but really elevate the meal to a whole new level. So here are my tips for making your Thanksgiving extra delicious this year.

1. Make Sure to Brine that Turkey

I’m convinced that overnight brining is the key to the most delicious, moist, and flavorful turkey possible. Although you have to start it the night before, making a brine takes very little hands-on time, usually about 10 minutes.

One advantage of brining is that if your turkey fails to fully defrost in the fridge, as both my turkeys did although I had them defrosting in the fridge for a week, the brining ensures the turkey is completely defrosted.

After trying a number of different brine recipes over the years, I’ve found one that has the exact right balance of salt mixed with some other wonderful flavors. Full recipe is at the end of this post.

2. Try a Covered Slow Roasted Turkey

I like to slow roast my turkey tented in tin foil for about 2 1/2 hours (10 minutes per pound) at 275 before turning the heat up and removing the foil to crisp the skin at 350 (for another hour or two). In my experience, this produces an exceptionally juicy, evenly cooked bird.

The free-range turkeys from my local food co-op were on the small side, so I decided to roast two. One was about 11 lbs and the other 14 lbs. (I usually plan on a pound and a half of meat per person if you want leftovers.) I let the larger turkey cook for about 30 minutes at 275 before adding the smaller turkey. This meant they both got done at the same time.

I roasted the two turkeys in my main oven, side by side on an extra large baking sheet outfitted with a wire rack to allow airflow under the turkeys. Then I used a meat thermometer to make sure they were done.

3. Let the Turkey Rest for One Hour Before Carving

I learned this from Gordon Ramsay. He insists that the turkey must rest for a minimum of one hour before carving to let the juices settle which ensures maximum moistness and flavor.

The good news about doing it this way is that you have your oven free to pop in a bunch of casseroles, dinner rolls, or whatever else for that last hour to hour and a half. True, the turkey will be lukewarm unless you reheat it after carving. But if you serve it with piping hot gravy, no one minds if the turkey isn’t hot.

4. Make Homemade Chicken Broth a Day or Two Ahead

This recommendation will not come as a shocker to those who’ve been reading this stack for a while since I’m always talking about broth. But in this case, it’s not the nutrient boost that I’m primarily after, although that is a welcome addition, it’s the incredible flavor. Nothing can compare in taste to homemade broth.

I mainly use the broth for making an enormous amount of gravy so that people can saturate not just their turkey and mashed potatoes, but so they can cover their entire plate with gravy if they so desire (gravy recipe below). I also use the broth to baste the turkey every 30 minutes while it’s roasting and for other dishes that call for broth such as stuffing.

The day before our Thanksgiving dinner, I boiled two locally raised pastured chickens in one giant stockpot. We don’t always eat chicken meat that is locally-raised but I like to use good quality chicken for special occasions.

After the two whole chickens boiled all day, I strained the broth and used the meat and some of the broth to make a family favorite: chicken artichoke bake (recipe below).

Next, I simmered the remaining broth (about a gallon or so) on low all night with the lid off to reduce it. In the morning, about 3/4 of the water had evaporated making it the most flavorful liquid you can imagine (I now had about a quart of broth).

If you decide to reduce yours, make sure to keep the salt low because it will get much saltier as it concentrates. You can always add more salt at the end.

Full broth recipe below.

5. Put All Your Kitchen Appliances to Work for You

For our group of 20, I roasted two turkeys and a duck. My mom always roasts a duck and it makes sense for my crew because I and all five of my children absolutely love dark meat and much prefer it to white. My husband and some in-laws prefer white meat so a few people do eat that but we are still sometimes low on dark meat. The duck, which is entirely dark meat (even the breast), was a huge hit.

Since my main oven was for the two turkeys, I roasted the duck in a countertop turkey roaster I picked up from a thrift store for $10 a few years back.

I store the roaster in the garage and only drag it out every few months but it’s super handy for occasions like Thanksgiving.

I also have a large air fryer that can fit two 9x13 pans so it serves as a second oven. I have this one:

(The air fryer might be one of the best kitchen purchases I’ve ever made. I use it more often than my full-size oven even though they both have air fry settings. If you’re looking for something to put on Giftster, I recommend it. Note: it’s currently $100 off here.)

Even though I had my local married daughter making food at her house and another married daughter making food at her in-law’s kitchen, we still had many kitchen appliances employed in my kitchen: the main oven baked trays of homemade rolls after the turkeys came out, the air fryer baked the sourdough stuffing, the roaster oven was used for stuffed mushrooms after the duck came out, and the crockpot kept the mashed potatoes hot.

I have this fancy-dancy Ninja crockpot which does a lot more than just slow cook—it does sous vide, sautes your meat, steams, etc. The Instant Pot also does some of that but my Instant Pot does not work well as a slow cooker. The temperature seems too low because the contents are never simmering. (Another idea for Giftster).

New this year: I set up a folding table out of the way for the crockpot and the turkey roaster so I had counter space open for other culinary endeavors. You can see it off to the left in this photo.

In retrospect, I could have cleared it away before we ate so we didn’t have to look at it. Or, I could have put a tablecloth on the folding table to make it look nicer—next year. Anyhoo, it was a helpful hack.

On another note, just look at this adorable kids’ table. 😍

6. Embrace the Homemade

Making my stuffing from homemade sourdough bread was a huge hit. I’m not a fan of the storebought stuffing with all the gross chemical flavorings on it. We had our meal on Friday so I should have started my sourdough Wednesday night and baked my sourdough bread on Thursday.

Instead, I started the sourdough Thursday night and baked the sourdough bread Friday morning. Because I had written up a schedule of when everything would be in what oven, it all worked out fine. But in the future, I’ll bake the bread the day before.

My daughter-in-law makes a green bean casserole from scratch every year. It’s always amazing. She pointed out, as we were cooking together, that we never opened a single can of anything. Everything was from scratch. This isn’t something that is mandated. It just happened naturally as we all learned to make more things from scratch. And once you get in the habit of making things from scratch, you realize that it’s not that much harder.

Our homemade bouquets turned out lovely. December will be here in a week but we still have gorgeous leaves on a broom tree out front. So we made bouquets out of the branches and also used crabapple tree branches from our yard.

7. Fine-Tune Your Timeline

We like to eat around 2 pm so we have the rest of the day to sit around, sip coffee, play games, and eat pie after a few hours.

The timing of my side dishes was very fine-tuned because I wrote out a schedule. But the one mistake I made was forgetting how long it takes to carve a turkey. This meant that all the casseroles were out of the oven and ready to eat but my husband was still carving the turkeys. Part of this was because we did two turkeys. If we do two turkeys again next year, I think I’ll recruit my son to carve one turkey at the same time.

I put the turkeys in around 8:30 am and they were done by 12:30, exactly as I planned. Then they rested from 12:30 to 1:30, giving my husband a half hour to carve them.

The problem was that when I told him it was time to cut the turkey, he then went and reviewed his yearly YouTube tutorial. Since he only does this once a year, he likes to have a refresher.

So next year needs to look like this: At 1:15 hubby and a helper review YouTube video. At 1:30, two people begin the carving.

Another tip: We washed, dried, and put away dishes as we cooked all morning so there weren’t mountains of pots and pans later.

Whenever hosting a big group, I always stuff the dishwasher as I’m cooking and then start it right before we eat whether or not it’s full. The small downside is that you’ll have to empty the dishwasher before you start the dishes from the meal, but as this only takes a couple of minutes, it’s worth it. This only works because we have an extremely quiet Bosch dishwasher (my fave brand). It’s so quiet that you’re not sure it’s on when you’re standing right next to it. Otherwise, you wouldn’t want a dishwasher roaring through a meal.

Here’s our Thanksgiving buffet:

Starting at the noon position and moving clockwise: four plates of turkey, duck on the small rectangular platter, stuffed mushrooms (daughter received many compliments on these), sourdough stuffing, sweet potato casserole with broiled marshmallows, green bean casserole from scratch in the cast iron skillet, wilted kale (was a huge hit having something green 🤣), three gravy boats including a duck gravy (there was more gravy on the stove), homemade rolls which are unfortunately covered for this photo, homemade cranberry sauce, and then mashed potatoes in the blue crockpot.

8. Use that Turkey Carcass

After the turkey is carved, throw the carcass in a pot and cover with water to make some broth. I boil for 12 hours. You can have turkey soup or just freeze broth for later. Since I had two turkey carcasses and a duck carcass, I made 4 gallons of delicious broth and filled the freezer with glass jars. Whenever someone is a little under the weather, instead of heading to the medicine cabinet, they can head to the freezer to defrost some healing turkey broth.

Thanksgiving Recipes