You can spend weeks planning your Thanksgiving menu and days prepping, but when the day arrives, you’ll still spend hours over steaming pots and pans and a full oven. When you’re the one making the feast, you may spend six hours in the kitchen before sitting down to the meal with your guests and as soon as you finish eating, you’re focused on washing the dishes. But it doesn’t have to be like that, especially since there are people there who can help, if you let them.
This how to be a present host and not just an absentee cook this Thanksgiving so you can actually enjoy the holiday:
- Ask for help - There’s no reason to be alone in the kitchen on a holiday that’s all about togetherness, you just have to speak up and put people to work. Even for those without pro culinary skills, there’s still plenty to be done, like chopping, melting butter and making sure other guests have a full glass.
- Spread it out - Since you won’t be using your dining room table for a few hours, cover it with newspaper and get all those extra hands busy prepping with you. You’ll finish snapping green beans and peeling potatoes faster and you’ll get to catch up with guests while they help you work. And when you’re finished with the table, enlist someone to clean it up and set it for dinner.
- Make lists and delegate - Print out recipes and give helpers an idea of your timeline so they know what to do when it’s crunch time. You can even move crock pots and Instant Pots to their own corners to make more room so everyone doesn’t have to squeeze into the kitchen.
- Break out the sous-vide circulator - Timing is everything when you’re making seven dishes that all need to be hot and ready when they hit the table at the same time, so you may need help keeping stuff warm. Enter the sous vide immersion circulator.
- Set up a buffet - You’ll spend more time waiting for the gravy boat to make its way around the overcrowded table than you will actually eating, so skip all that and serve buffet-style instead. That way people can get as much or as little of everything they really want and you save the steps of plating or passing dishes around.
Source: Lifehacker
Photo: Getty Images