Thanksgiving and Christmas food prep FAQs

Food image from PopSugar

Trying to plan a Thanksgiving or Christmas meal?

Here are some tips, calculators, and checklists.

Image from theKitchn

Turkey

• What size turkey should I buy? How much turkey per person?
• What's the easiest way to roast turkey?
• How to carve a turkey?
• Save yourself last-minute panic with this make-ahead turkey gravy recipe. I've used it; it works!

For any meat, here is the essential gadget to make sure your meat comes out perfectly every time: Meat thermometer with remote and two probes.* Getting a model with two probes means you can stick one probe in the white mean, one in the dark meat, and measure both without opening the oven or grill!

Image from farmflavor.com

Ham

• How much ham should I buy?
• What temperature should ham be cooked to?
• How far ahead should I buy the ham?

Image from campbellskitchen.com

Vegetables

• Make-ahead crockpot green bean casserole. Save your oven for other things, and save some day-of panic: Here's the classic green bean casserole that everyone wants for Thanksgiving, tweaked to work in a crock pot / slow-cooker, and with optional make-ahead instructions. Classic green bean casserole for crockpot.

• Roasted vegetables timetable. The number one must-do side dish at our house -- besides the turkey, of course. Oh, and pumpkin pie! Okay, the third-most popular dish: roasted vegetables. A slow roast works oven magic, turning onions, carrots and bell peppers into sugar-free candy-sweet goodness! Here's a timetable for roasted vegetables: what goes into in the oven when, to make everything come out perfect.

This is my favorite pan for roasted vegetables, and anything else that can be made on a rimmed cookie sheet: USA Pans Jellyroll.* LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS PAN!!! Bakes evenly, rinses off like brand-new teflon every time. Everyone in my house has been threatened to not even think of co-opting this for some craft or garage project!

All foods: How much per person?

• Here's a thorough chart from Good Housekeeping, showing per-person serving recommendations for 8, 10, 12, 16, 20 and 24 people, for 10 popular holiday foods. It includes turkey, stuffing, potatoes, green beans, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, pie, and more. View the pdf.

• Here's a Thanksgiving portion planner from Food Network.

Holiday meal planning checklists and calculators

• A one-month to day-of  Thanksgiving meal planning list from Food Network.

• An Excel spreadsheet that you can plug your number of guests into (including how many are vegetarians!), and it tells you how much food to buy. The page where you download it is a little confusing; just scroll down until you see this:

Would you rather have pictures?

Here's a well-done info graphic from The Savory, showing turkey thawing time, brining time, brining recipe, roasting time, and more. This image is only one small part of it:

Image from The Savory

* Note: Product links in this post are to my Amazon store where I get a smidgen of the sales, but I truly use and fanatically love every product I link to.

10 things to do with a bacon-weave

My husband once wove some bacon together and draped it over a pork loin (yes, redundant, I know), but I had no idea that the bacon weave was a "thing." 

But it is. A little googling prooves that it most certainly is!

First, the most obvious {forehead smack} use: ensuring that every single bite of your BLT is bacony!

Food blogger SavoryNotes makes a mean bacon weave and takes a mighty-fine pic, above. (But a BLT on white bread -- untoasted?! That ain't right!) Her method involves whiskey and brown sugar. Hmm.

Lifehacker commenter JaySinn divulges his secret for a simple, single-serving bacon weave:

I find 2 slices and a microwave do the job nicely - cut the slices in half, then do a similar weave, but just three parallel and one perpendicular slice woven in the middle. Paper towel underneath and on top, into the microwave for 3-4 minutes and you get a nice crispy square of bacon, that is all stuck together in one easy to apply slice. The microwave method is much faster and you don't have to drain the fat off while cooking as the paper towel absorbs the excess.

The Republic of Bacon claims the best BLT ever, featuring a bacon weave and chipotle mayo. They certainly have a brilliant idea on how to efficiently cut your bacon in half:

Here are just a few of the other, dare I say, stunning things people have done with their carefully woven bacon...

A grilled bacon-weave turkey from BarbequeMaster:

Here is it topping an Easter ham, studded with cloves and glazed with a pineapple-juice/brown-sugar/7UP concoction, from the appropriately named LifeCandy:

The "baco" - a bacon taco - via This is Why You're Fat (also appropriately named):

Bacon weave as a stand-in for pizza crust, via FoodBeast:

In the same vein, bacon-weave as a stand-in for bread, via the DailyBacon:

Have you heard of a fatty? AKA, "bacon explosion." It involves bacon wrapped around sausage and, depending on the recipe, possibly other things. (Ah, America!) Most of the ones I've seen are really too grotesque for me to share here, gentle reader, but if you are made of strong enough stuff, you can find detailed instructions at Grilling24x7:

Things get curioser and curioser...

Bacon-weave-topped apple pie - via Is This Thing On?:

A bacon-weave salad bowl, also via FoodBeast:

And last but not least: Turtle burgers:

No, those aren't actually turtles: the center is hamburger and the legs, heads and tail are hot dogs.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to take some Maalox and lie down...

Asian lettuce wraps

This is another one of those dishes that you can prep early in the day, and throw together in minutes come dinner time. Also low carb and low fat!

Recipe: Asian lettuce wraps

Makes 4 servings

about 1.3 lbs. ground turkey
1/2 large onion, sliced thin
1 teaspoon sesame oil
3 T. lower sodium soy sauce
1 pkt. Splenda or equivalent sweetener
1/4 to 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper (less for mild; more for hot)
1 T. fresh ginger, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
2 teaspoons ground coriander
2 cups coleslaw mix with carrots, (or more)
butter lettuce or romaine lettuce leaves, for wraps
fresh cilantro and chopped cashews, for garnish, optional

This is the slaw mix I use:

Brown the turkey and onions in a large skillet; when the turkey is mostly browned but still showing some pink, drain the fat. Meanwhile, combine the sesame oil through the crushed pepper in a small bowl and set aside.

Add the ginger, garlic and coriander to the pan; stir-fry for a couple minutes.

If you're prepping ahead of time, you can stop here and refrigerate the meat and sauce. When ready to serve, just reheat and proceed. Also, since I was just cooking for two of us, I pulled out half the meat and put it in the fridge for lunch the next day. Be sure to only add half the sauce and cole slaw to the pan if you do this.

Add the cole slaw and the soy sauce mixture. Cook and stir constantly for one or two minutes.

(I'm warming up leftovers the next day in the photo above; that's why the skillet's smaller.)

Serve the meat mixture with lettuce leaves to fill, and roll up to eat. Offer cilantro and cashews for topping, if desired.