When you’re dining solo or keeping things small and intimate, tackling a traditional Thanksgiving spread can feel disproportionately expensive and exhausting. But that doesn’t limit your options to a TV turkey dinner—our favorite recipes for a scaled back affair minimize effort without sacrificing flavor (or the holiday spirit).
Featuring:
Turkey Porchetta
Best Mashed Sweet Potatoes
Roasted Pumpkin Soup with Brown Butter and Thyme
Sage and Sausage Stuffin's
Turkey Porchetta
What do you get when you butterfly, season, and roll a turkey breast? A stunning boneless roast that's easily sliced into crisp-skinned portions of juicy, savory meat. No big deal, it's only perfect.
Mashed Sweet Potatoes
So long, cloyingly sugary sweet potatoes. This take is so rich and packed with sweet potato flavor, it needs only the simplest of embellishments to shine.
Roasted Pumpkin Soup With Brown Butter and Thyme
Pumpkin soup shouldn't taste like pie. We ditch the spices and roast our pumpkin until it's caramelized for a creamy, savory-sweet take on the holiday classic.
Sage and Sausage Stuffin's
Baking standard stuffing in individual buttered muffin tins makes for single serving–sized "stuffin's" that are moist in the center with crisp edges all around.
Sautéed Green Beans With Mushrooms and Cipollini Onions
We take most of the flavors of a traditional green bean casserole (green beans, onions, and mushrooms) and subtract the cream for a less stodgy, altogether tastier side.
Warm Brussels Sprout Salad With Bacon and Hazelnut Vinaigrette
The trick to this salad's smoky richness is rendered bacon fat, which flavors the vinaigrette and serves as a cooking medium for the lightly charred Brussels sprout leaves.
Easy Apple Crisp
Pie may be easy, but crisps? Even easier. A splash of whiskey adds complexity to the apples, which bake under a buttery lemon-nutmeg pecan topping.
