- Ina Garten’s Thanksgiving menu includes turkey, flan and two make-ahead sides.
- She preps most dishes early in the week to keep Thursday stress-free.
- Her timing plan helps home cooks serve a hot, elegant meal with ease.
Thanksgiving is upon us! If you haven’t yet finalized your menu—or if you need to decide on a recipe for the potluck—now is the time. Fortunately, Ina Garten shared part one of her Thanksgiving menu via Substack, which includes some of her Thanksgiving picks, giving us a little taste of her Hamptons Thanksgiving. Additionally, Garten revealed her timing plan, which is key for getting everything on the table in time for dinner.
The whole game plan takes a couple days of planning and cooking, but it all seems pretty manageable once the tasks are spread out. Garten starts prepping on the Monday before Thanksgiving, and starts with the main event: she brines her turkey and makes refrigerator-friendly gravy.
On Tuesday, she preps dessert—and her choice is no surprise to those who know that Garten isn’t a big fan of pumpkin pie. Instead of a pie, Garten is making pumpkin flan for dessert, and the recipe is featured in her classic cookbook, Cooking for Jeffrey. The sweet flan is topped with maple carmel, which coats the entire top and makes a moat around the bottom, so no one misses out on the deliciousness. She rates the recipe “beginner-friendly” and says on her post that it’s able to be stored in the fridge for three days. Another perk of flan is that it is served cold, so you don’t have to take up precious oven space reheating on the day.
The day before Thanksgiving, Garten tackles sides. She puts together her Leek & Artichoke Bread Pudding and Make-Ahead Goat Cheese Mashed Potatoes. Both of these sides are from her Make It Ahead cookbook and, while they are more complex than some Thanksgiving sides, they put a nice twist on the classic fall flavors. The leek and artichoke aren’t go-to Thanksgiving veggies, but the cozy bread pudding serves as a stuffing stand-in with a cheesy twist.
The mashed potatoes are a bit more interesting than your usual fare, and the goat cheese is sure to make them ultra-creamy. Once assembled, both sides can go back in the fridge covered. Just pull them out and cook them on Thursday so they’re fresh and hot. For her final Wednesday task, Ina also unwraps her turkey and lets it chill in the fridge uncovered.
Thursday is the main event, and Garten likes to start early so she has time to carve and arrange the meat long before guests arrive. She roasts the turkey for around two hours in the morning, then lets it rest. Once she’s carved it up, it goes into an oven-safe serving dish over a puddle of gravy. Then she can set it aside until guests are near and the turkey can be reheated gently in the oven.
The Barefoot Contessa also makes sauteed, shredded Brussels sprouts on the stove top, leaving the oven ready for her two casseroles. This simple side has only a few ingredients. She shreds Brussels sprouts and sautes them on the stove with butter, olive oil, salt and pepper. She tops it with a syrupy balsamic vinegar and serves the dish hot. It’s the perfect last-minute side that you can pull together just as other dishes get pulled out of the oven.
Garten recommends serving her Thanksgiving meal with a light red wine like pinot noir, though she also brings out a good champagne or prosecco for dessert. Whatever we end up sipping at Thanksgiving, we’re definitely following in Garten’s footsteps and knocking out most of our dinner prep in advance—assuming we don’t get an invitation to Ina’s.
