A Restaurant Dropout Thanksgiving Guide

How I'm making Thanksgiving dinner...like a prep cook in a restaurant

For the past few weeks, I’ve debated the “best,” most authentic way to share a Thanksgiving menu for Restaurant Dropout.

In doing so, here’s everything that went through my brain…

• Creating a menu with 12-15 recipes is fun and all, but developing each recipe with varying elements would likely take me over a month (to write, edit, & film)

• I’m still catching up on content following my wedding (which was less than a month ago), so it’ll be difficult to have said menu with 12-15 recipes written, developed, filmed, and edited

• Each family’s Thanksgiving dinner is vastly different from one another, whether it’s the style of dishes, the dishes themselves, the inclusion of ‘family heirloom’ recipes, etc.

• Most people are traveling from now until next Wednesday, and they’re likely not cooking the entire Thanksgiving feast; instead, they probably have a recipe “assignment”

• There’s an overwhelming amount of Thanksgiving content going around right now, so what makes Restaurant Dropout’s different???

That said, given our short timeline (since my wedding), your already-planned Thanksgiving menu, and the primary reason you’re subscribed to Restaurant Dropout (i.e., to make cooking easier), rather than sharing my overwhelming number of recipes to follow this year, I’m going to walk you through how I’m preparing my family’s entire Thanksgiving feast: my prep list/plan of attack, my planned menu, and everything else.

Absorb as much or as little as you need.

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THE MENU

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NOTES:

1. BooPa is my grandpa. His Pea Salad is one of our family heirloom recipes, and it is a must-include side dish every year. I’ve included his recipe in the recipe vault.

2. Most of these dishes are adaptations of things I’ve made in the past, so I won’t be using a recipe, with the exception of Boopa’s Pea Salad and the Pumpkin Mascarpone Cheesecake (which is linked in the recipe vault).

3. Ian is my brother. When I told my family that I’d take care of Thanksgiving dinner this year, this was his response:

   

   So I take it back: I’m preparing my family’s entire Thanksgiving dinner, except for the Cranberry Sauce.

How I’m Prepping (My Prep List)