Thanksgiving Doesn't Have to Be This Hard
From a gravy hack to avoiding the elephant (/donkey) in the room, three ways to make the holiday the low-key day you crave
Hi readers! After a (very) taxing election season, it’s now time to get ready for America’s annual cooking Super Bowl. Perfect timing! As you firm up plans for your Thanksgiving meal, we offer a few super-practical suggestions for making the day a success.
Make-ahead, No-Fail Gravy
As if Thanksgiving isn’t stressful enough, there’s also The Gravy. At the exact moment when every burner is in use and guests are sauntering into the kitchen to belatedly ask if they can “help,” you are somehow expected to make a perfect pan sauce.
Happily, this is an injustice that can be rectified with a make-ahead gravy. I discovered this recipe 20 years ago, and have wondered ever since why more cookbooks, magazines, and influencers don’t embrace this ultimate Thanksgiving hack.
Here’s how it works. As much as two days before your meal, you super-reduce store-bought chicken stock and apple cider. Next, thicken it with a bit of butter and flour and stir in some herbs and cream.
Then, on the day, reheat the base and add whatever pan juices there are from the turkey. Even if your turkey doesn’t provide much — always a fear for the gravy maker! — the result is luxuriously rich with a hint of herby sweetness. Check out the original Bon App recipe (paywall) or see my even more streamlined version below. —Jane
Make-ahead Cider Gravy
Ingredients
1/2 cup mixed, minced herbs (parsley, thyme, sage, marjoram. Don’t stress; use a mix of whatever you have)
1/2 teaspoon minced rosemary
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
4 cups low-salt chicken stock
2 cups apple cider
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whipping cream
2 tablespoons Calvados or other brandy (optional)
Method
Mix the herbs, rosemary, and nutmeg in small bowl.
Combine stock and apple cider in large, heavy saucepan. Boil until reduced to 3 cups, about 20 minutes. Pour stock reduction into bowl.
Melt the butter in same saucepan over medium-high heat. Add flour; stir 1 minute. Whisk in stock reduction, then cream, Calvados (if using), and the herbs. Bring to boil; drop heat to medium-low and simmer until gravy base is thickened and reduced to 2-3/4 cups, stirring regularly. It should take about 20 minutes.
Cool the gravy base and refrigerate until ready to use. The base can be made two days ahead.
On the big day, roast your turkey. When it’s done, pour pan juices into large glass measuring cup and spoon any fat off the surface. (You can also use one of those handy gravy separators.)
Return the gravy base to a saucepan. Pour the de-greased pan juices into the base and bring to boil over medium-high heat, whisking occasionally. Boil until the gravy is thick enough to coat a spoon, about 15 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off
If you liked that gravy hack and are suddenly feeling convenience-curious, allow me to suggest something a little more radical: Have you considered not cooking at all this year? Ordering a turkey dinner from a local restaurant or grocery store or catering company and calling it a day? Divvying up the menu among your guests and taking only the pie-buying part, or the cocktail-making part?
The sheer volume of pro-cooking propaganda that floods the internet throughout the month of November might have you convinced that it’s not Thanksgiving without scratch-cooked food; or that not cooking for people is, effectively, proof that you don’t really love them; or that nobody but a monster would rather spend the Tuesday night before Thanksgiving, say, watching Rivals instead of making pie crusts.
Listen: it’s true that cooking is one wonderful way for people to express love and caring. It’s also true that for a lot of people, cooking is not their love language. They find it unpleasant, and they have their own, different ways of showing up for the people who matter to them. If this describes you and you’re in the unfortunate position of being this year’s designated holiday host, then follow me over to the dark side. Just order the food. Free yourself to sleep in on Thanksgiving. Engage in conversations uninterrupted by the constant need to baste something.
If you do opt out from cooking this year, the best move is usually to order from a local business. You probably have an independent restaurant or grocer nearby offering Thanksgiving catering, and if you act fast, you may still be able to get your order in under the wire. If you don’t have an independent local option, I can say from experience that Whole Foods has a consistently excellent Thanksgiving spread, and it’s a one-stop shop for everything for the turkey to sides to pies. Double check with your nearest store, but in most cases you have until Tuesday, 11/26 to place your order. — Liz
Some Things to Bring Up at the Dinner Table Instead of Politics
If you are gathering with extended family next week, you might be in need of some fodder for redirecting the conversation if it begins to veer toward topics that will end with the whole room eating pumpkin pie in stony silence. We dug through a mountain of recent journalism about electoral politics, wars, and impending environmental collapse and found a small selection of safe, non-depressing conversation starters:
“How Scientists Started to Decode Birdsong,” The New Yorker. Did you know that Siberian jays have different shrieks to refer to a sitting hawk, a flying hawk, and a hawk actively attacking? Once written off as mere “calls” and “songs,” researchers are beginning to discover that there’s a whole lot more to how birds communicate. (Keep the bird theme going with this article about crows’ remarkable ability to hold grudges.)
“America Must Free Itself from the Tyranny of the Penny,” The New York Times [unlocked]. Nothing I could say to tease this piece would do it so well as the story’s opening words: “I was disappointed to learn, recently, that the United States has created for itself a logistical problem so stupendously stupid, one cannot help wondering if it is wise to continue to allow this nation to supervise the design of its own holiday postage stamps, let alone preside over the administration of an extensive Interstate highway system or nuclear arsenal. It’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. I have come to think of it as the Perpetual Penny Paradox.”
“Inside the Dangerous, Secretive World of Extreme Fishing,” The Atlantic. Tyler Austin Harper on the hobby of “wetsuiting,” which involves ditching the comforts of a fishing boat and swimming out to offshore rocks, at night, sometimes in storms, to balance on top of them and try to catch striped bass.