Ina Garten's Thanksgiving Prep Starts 4 Days In Advance For An Easy Breezy Holiday

Any holiday centered around food comes with a boatload of labor, but that doesn't mean you have to do it all in one day. Ina Garten shared her week-of Thanksgiving preparation schedule on her Substack, where her best tips for a stress-free holiday all center around doing what you can in advance, leaving you time to enjoy the day of.

The Monday before is all about preparing the turkey — think brining, making the gravy, and even spatchcocking to cut cooking time in half. Tuesday is a good day to focus on refrigerated items, like cold desserts and pasta salads. Two days is enough time for their flavors to meld together without ruining their textures. On Wednesday, you'll want to focus on your casserole-esque dishes like stuffing, mac and cheese, and anything else you'll need to bake. By assembling them ahead of time, you'll only need to juggle your oven schedule to ensure everything comes out perfect.

Since the turkey is the star of the show, all that preparation leaves you with little to do on Thursday other than focus on your bird. By keeping your day-of work limited solely to baking and warming things on the stove, you'll have much more time to enjoy the holiday and far less time spent in the kitchen. Plus, you have the chance to salvage recipes when you make a mistake and experiment with others to produce the best spread possible.

From brining birds to homemade stuffing, some recipes need more time than attention. Scheduling your work a couple weeks in advance lets you identify the perfect times to start your food and even unlocks some potential to make others from scratch.

The easiest way to elevate your Thanksgiving stuffing game is to prepare your starch of choice in advance. Whether you like cornbread or wheat bread, there's just something about a homemade loaf that produces something far better than store-bought. However, the biggest hurdle for this is time, because your bread chunks need at least a couple of days to dry out properly and a few hours to absorb any turkey stock you might add. While you can always dry them out in the oven, letting their moisture wick away at room temperature only creates less work for you.

When it comes to hot casserole dishes, you typically want to assemble them up to the point where you might add soup or stock. You can prep green beans and mushrooms well ahead of time for green bean casserole, but they may grow soggy if you prematurely add the cream of mushroom soup. There are some exceptions to this, like mac and cheese. The roux cheese sauce becomes gelatinous when refrigerated, so there's little chance of it soaking into the pasta. Provided the liquid ingredients don't have more than an hour or so to sit with the dry, they should maintain their texture once cooked.