Countdown to Turkey Day: Prep-Ahead for Thanksgiving

Hi!

How is your Thanksgiving planning going? We’ve covered a lot so far. Please click here if you are playing catch-up. Yesterday we covered some recipes you can make ahead to make Thanksgiving Day easier, but you can also do some of your prep ahead of time, too.

One of our long-time friends of the site, Alice, noted that if you haven’t already, it’s time to sharpen your knives. She’s absolutely right. Having your favorite knife sharp will not only make your prep much easier, it’s safer, too.

What prep work can you do ahead of time for Thanksgiving?

Vegetable prep is my favorite to do ahead.

Take a look at your recipes and note how many call for items like a diced onion, celery, carrots, or bell pepper.

When you are doing prep work like this, it goes much faster if you can do it in batches. It also can make storage easier, too. For instance, you can store all of your diced onions together until you need them, only taking out what you need for each recipe.

Be careful to ensure that the cut for each recipe is the same. Dicing is not the same as slicing. Recipes call for certain cuts to ensure that the ingredients cook at the expected speed required for the way the recipe is written.

Some things can’t be prepped too far ahead.

For your mashed potatoes, you can dice them the morning of Thanksgiving, but place them immediately in the salted water they will eventually be boiled in, or they will oxidize (change to an unattractive color). However, if you are making mashed or whipped sweet potatoes, these can be diced at the same time as your other vegetables.

If you decide to pre-slice your apples for apple crisp or pie, you must toss them with diluted lemon juice to prevent them from browning.

Finally, you can make pie crust up to three days ahead of time. Please remember to take it out of the refrigerator in time to come up to room temperature before you want to fill it.

Don’t worry; we are going to talk about pies later.