A Pan and A Plan

how to survive the holiday cooking season

Once again we’re caught here in the rip tide of the holiday season. It’s dark as fuck by 4 pm, Mariah Carey is blasting in every grocery store,, and soon you’ll have to share a dinner table with people who have some wild opinions.  We know this time of year is stressful. You can see it on everyone’s face, their shoulders raised up to their ears, brows locked in a perpetual furrow. But as Robert Frost put it in his poem A Servant to Servants,

It’s rest I want—there, I have said it out—

From cooking meals for hungry hired men        

And washing dishes after them—from doing

Things over and over that just won’t stay done.

But rest is awhile off. Like always. People are showing up to eat at your house and you’ve gotta be ready. Whether it’s Thanksgiving, Christmas, or some other wintery celebration- they’re coming. 

SOoOo… we’ve compiled some tips on how to stay an ever-gracious host without giving yourself an ulcer or murdering an in-law. To paraphrase, a couple lines down in the poem Frost notes the best way out is through. And we’re gonna get through this shit with minimal stress.

1. Finalize Your Menu Now

The sooner you figure out what you’re cooking the quicker you can work out all the kinks. Need some inspiration? Aside from our latest book, every year we put together all our best holiday adjacent dishes together in one place to make planning your dinner as easy as possible. Check out our Beastless Feast page for ideas on what to put on the table this year. We’ve got sweets, soups, salads, and mains for even the pickiest of palates. Our Sourdough Herb Stuffing has been a fan favorite every year since we posted it 9 years ago.

2. Plan Out Your Cooking Strategy

Once you set your menu, you hafta start thinking about how you’ll cook all of it. How much prep like chopping, roasting, or full dishes can you make ahead of time? What equipment does each dish require? What absolutely has to be made the day of? It’s always best to alternate stovetop and oven dishes on your menu so that shit is actually ready on time. Look at what you’re making. If every single dish needs time in the oven, you guys won’t be eating dinner before 9pm. The crowd will get rowdy. You’ll get stabby. It’s not ideal. Retool your menu or delegate out dishes to other people so you aren’t trying to bake your pies and stuffing at the same time. It'll never turn out right.

3. Write Down Your Plan of Attack

We told y’all this last year and so many of you wrote us to say this shit saved your holiday dinners so we’re gonna repeat ourselves. Every time we have to cook big meals or cater events, we write down everything we have to cook and prep in the sequential order we need to do it. Think of it like a kitchen itinerary. Write down times you aim to complete dishes or times you need to get things into the oven by to keep you on track. Tape this to a cabinet or on your fridge so you can keep glancing at it and cross stuff off as you go. This will keep you grounded and let you turn off your brain for a bit as you just work down the list. We swear by it. You will too.

4. Ask For Help

Just because you’re hosting and are one of the better cooks in your family or friend group doesn’t mean you should go at this shit alone. Ask the competent members of your circle for a little help. Put someone in charge of beverages, someone else in charge of appetizers, someone else in charge of dessert. This allows you to focus on the heart of the menu and will help you preserve some precious energy. To keep the meal cohesive, tell them what you’re cooking  and what kinds of desserts etc you think would go well. Ask them what they think. The more included these people feel, the more likely they’ll bring some good shit. Just giving them errands usually results in those people phoning it in or worse, completely forgetting. Include them in the process, make suggestions, ask for their input, and they’ll feel important enough to not let the whole party down. It’s a win for them, a win for you, and a win for everyone else at the table.

5. Do NOT Go To The Grocery Store on Thanksgiving or Any Holiday

IF YOU DON’T HAVE IT BY NOW THEN YOU DON’T NEED IT. Yes we say this every year but Michelle’s 10+ years of working at grocery stores have scarred her to the point of repeating this to anyone wise enough to listen. This is not a tip. It’s a rule. Every year people rush to the store the night before Thanksgiving or the morning of and frantically look for everything they need. Well guess what? They’re sold out. Of everything. No celery, no bread, no pies, not a single sprig of rosemary. Don’t blame the supply chain or yell at the workers like they can make your food magically appear. Your dumbass did this. Not them. Own it. ~OR~ Shop early. Forgot something? Tough. Live without it. Every time you go to a store on a holiday, you’re encouraging corporate to make them stay open every future holiday. Those workers deserve to be home celebrating too. Don’t shop on holidays. You just stress yourself and everyone else out. Plan ahead or do without.

6. Share Some Leftover

The one perk of hosting these big holiday meals is that you get all the leftovers. But people live for those leftovers so be generous. Pack your guests little to-go boxes- one for each household- with whatever you’re willing to part with. Everyone will be grateful. We didn’t say the boxes have to be big, ok? Make ’em as small as you want. It’s your house. But plan to share because you shouldn’t be sniffing leftovers in January to see if they’re still edible or not. Pack them after you’ve stashed away all the good stuff that you want but being generous here will get a lot of good will and even more help next year. We usually keep at least 60% of everything we cook and plan on giving away no more than 30-40% of the leftovers depending on the crowd size. Find a percentage you can be okay with and just do it. Unless no one helped you with shit, including the dishes. Then not only do they not get leftovers, they also don’t get invited next year. Boundaries are real and should be enforced.

We hope that these tips, along with our recipes, help make your holiday season a little less stressful and a bit more fun for all of you. If you’re part of our subscribers only recipe club we have some great holiday recipes coming your way, like our new Cranberry and Corn Spoonbread which drops TOMORROW. 

Also, we’re launching a new chat feature so we can all help each other out with our holiday cooking and hosting questions in one spot. Please don’t jump in there and ask us for help burying your father-in-law, we warned you about him already and neither of our trunks would fit a body. We can’t help. But cooking? We got you. 

Enjoy your weekend and start fucking planning!

Michelle and Matt