Don't plan your Thanksgiving without this ultimate guide

Those of you who have been listening to my radio show on New Jersey 101.5 for the last 28 years know that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.

It is a day when family and friends get together, football is on the TVs, and beautifully created dishes are abundant. The feast is on. It is a day when diets can legally take a backseat.

I take great pains to make sure that everyone will enjoy themselves. The energy is always so positive and loving. With that in mind, I want to share suggestions that have helped me have amazing Thanksgiving celebrations.

Be prepared

Like Boy Scouts, the most crucial point I can share is to be prepared. Start your plan by setting up your guest list, but always prepare for the last-minute add-ons to your table. You can always serve leftovers, but you will be in trouble if you run out.

Plan your menu around your guests

Put a menu together that can work and that meets the needs of your guests. My nephew is a vegetarian; I have several dishes that he can choose from to enjoy. My grand nephew has a milk allergy; there are dishes on the menu that he can enjoy.

When planning your menu, I prefer to start with the basics that are a part of Thanksgiving: a freshly roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, sweet potatoes, corn casserole, cranberry sauce, and a green vegetable. I then add lasagna, and plan on great appetizers that involve shrimp, cheeses, and special dips. Desserts are a necessity; I usually pick up a homemade apple, cherry, and pumpkin pie that round out the meal. Do not forget the ice cream and whipped cream for that à la mode style.

A good point is to discuss the entire menu with your guests, and you, as the host, decide if the “special dish” that a guest wants to bring will not conflict with another guest's dish or one that you have planned to serve. If the “special dish” that your guest is bringing requires cooking, encourage them to assemble and precook before they arrive, as oven space is at a premium.

I have had guests rip apart my kitchen putting a dish together, and it threw a curve into the organization of the day, and it set me back.

Beverage detail

When preparing the dinner menu, pair your Thanksgiving meal with great wines, and cold beer for the adults, and cold sodas and apple cider for the children. Make sure you have plenty of ice on hand. My family will have Irish coffees for dessert, so I plan for them and have cordials ready to serve for those who prefer them. In addition, I make sure I have Bloody Marys ready to go along with mimosas and screwdrivers to start the festivities.

Clean out that fridge

Because you have planned your menu ahead of time and you know who is bringing what dish, you need to plan for refrigerator and oven space.

Clean out the refrigerator. Throw away all the expired bottles of condiments that you have not used in a while. Picture where everything is going the night before and Thanksgiving Day.

I also use the time to throw away all the bottles of old spices that have lost their freshness and will not give you the flavor that you need.

Aluminum pans to serve and keep dishes warm are the way to go

If you are serving more than ten people, I strongly suggest you use ½ size throw away aluminum pans. They fit nicely in the oven and will cut down on the clean-up. I buy extras and send people home with full leftover dinners in them. Do not forget to get extra aluminum foil and large quart Ziplock bags. I also use warming racks to keep dishes warm and heat them without having to use oven space. Do not forget the Sterno.

Time to Eat

I have found that there is no perfect time to wrangle everybody at the table. I will do a last call on appetizers about 1 and a ½ hours prior to you planning dinner.

This year, I will try and serve at about 4:00 pm, which should fall in between the first two football games. The reason I do that is so that nobody will be running to check the score of the game when we sit down. Yes, that happened, and it happened only once.

Turkey Timetable

Hosting Thanksgiving is stressful. You can make that experience easier on you by putting together a detailed timetable of when dishes are to go in the oven, taken out of the oven, turkey is done, and turkey is done.

Resting. A timetable for all the details will make your Thanksgiving near perfect.

When things do not go as planned

You may experience a guest who saunters in late and has a dish that needs 2 hours to bake, you may have two or three last-minute cancellations, or you may have three or four additional to your feast.

Whatever the crisis, calmly manage it; your preparation, timetable, and attitude will solve whatever crisis may be thrown your way. It is about family and friends; it is about being thankful for all that we have and that we can share. I wish you all the absolute best Thanksgiving you can have.

I have included a few recipes from my cookbook for Thanksgiving. Enjoy

THE BIG TURKEY

A fresh turkey is my favorite, but the old Butterball works ok, too. Rinse the turkey well and make sure that you remove the gizzards and neck, dry the cavity and bird. I make butter "paste" out of 2 sticks of room temperature softened butter, mixed with a teaspoon each of rosemary, sage, salt, pepper, and thyme. Mix butter and spices with a fork and make sure that all spices are well blended. Spread the mixture with a soft spatula underneath the skin of the turkey breast; be careful not to tear the skin. Leave some of the mixture for the outside of the turkey, and smear it generously over the skin. If you are not stuffing the turkey, I salt the inside of the cavity with kosher salt and add coarsely chopped onion, two celery stalks, and a sprig of rosemary, and leave that in the bird while it cooks.

Cooking the big bird: I use a wire v-rack with about 1 cup of chicken broth in the pan to catch the drippings. The rule of thumb is 20 minutes per pound at 325 degrees. In the last hour, I crank the oven to 450 and let it get nice and crisp; make sure you baste well before this process. Once cooked, remove the turkey and let it stand for at least 1 hour, longer if the turkey is a big one. Slicing the turkey is also an art. I remove the drumsticks with a sharp knife, cut to the joint, and then remove the thighs with a cut to the joint as well. Once that is removed, I remove the breast on both sides of the bird by carving as close to the breastbone as possible and removing the breast in whole. It makes it easier to slice, also looks better on the plate, too. After you remove the breast, I turn the turkey over on the back and remove the dark meat. I try and remove all the meat from the bone, rather than storing the leftover meat in the refrigerator while it is still on the carcass. I found that storing the leftover meat in plastic wrap, then aluminum foil, then inside a freezer bag, and into the refrigerator makes for a moister turkey sandwich later that night!

Big Joe Henry

BIG JOE'S DELICIOUS GRAVY

Gravy is the absolute crowning jewel of your Thanksgiving dinner. It sometimes can be a tough, lengthy process that frustrates you, but as with most of the recipes in this book, it takes a little time and effort, and you and your guests will be rewarded. When the gravy is made, you know that the big Thanksgiving meal is done. When I was about 11 or 12, we went up to my Uncle Rich’s and Aunt Pat’s for Thanksgiving. They lived in Connecticut. Aunt Pat is working hard in the kitchen, and my uncle Rich was with us in the den as we were watching football. The adults had a cocktail or two, and everything seemed like it was going well. Suddenly, from the kitchen, my aunt screamed, “Richard, the gravy is finished, the gravy is finished!” With that, my uncle bolted out of his chair, and my mom asked him, “Rich is everything o.k.?” While hustling over

to the bar he said, “Oh yeah, the gravy’s made, Pat can now have her Rob Roy.” It was funny to watch him sprint to the bar and quickly make my aunt that cocktail. It was all good, the gravy was made, and now she could have her Rob Roy. I have since tried to incorporate that strategy into my Thanksgiving, but it never works, and I only make it to the stuffing! I hate it when that happens.

1 medium onion, coarsely chopped

2 stalks of celery, coarsely chopped

4 cans of chicken broth

1 container sliced button mushrooms

1 stick of butter

1/4 cup flour

1 teaspoon Gravy Master

Pan drippings from turkey in the oven

1 teaspoon each of sage, parsley, rosemary & thyme, salt & pepper

1 bay leaf

In a saucepan, sauté mushrooms with 1 stick of butter, cook, remove and set aside, add spices, onions, celery, rosemary, chicken broth, and the gizzards and neck from the turkey. Bring to a slow boil and then simmer for 1 hour. Add Gravy Master. Add pan drippings from the turkey pan and mix well. Strain liquid from the pan, removing all vegetable gizzards and neck. Before putting liquid back into the saucepan, make a rue from flour and 1/4 cup of strained liquid in the saucepan, and slowly add back the strained liquid, whisking constantly. Simmer for 10 minutes and serve hot.

BIG JOE'S BIG STUFFING

I have a tremendous respect for stuffing. Thanksgiving time is really the only time that most of us make homemade stuffing. I want the stuffing to taste great with lots of moisture. Dry stuffing could put a damper on your meal. While you could certainly prepare this dish the morning of Thanksgiving, if you are under time constraints, you could make it the day before, and the flavors will really meld well into the stuffing. If you make it the day before, add more chicken stock, because the refrigeration will dry it out more than usual, and wrap it very tightly before storing it the night before. This recipe is enough stuffing for a large turkey, 16 – 20 pounds, and enough for a pan for the table (about 8 - 10 people). Just a note, remember that when you stuff a turkey, your cooking time for the bird increases, and do not pack it in, the loser the stuffing in the bird, the better the juices.

I like to start with Pepperidge Farm Herb "cubed" Stuffing Mix as a base for this tasty stuffing

INGREDIENTS:

2 - 3 packages – Pepperidge Farm Herb Flavored Stuffing Mix Cubed

2 tubes – Jimmy Dean sausage (I like one tube spicy and one tube mild and mix)

4 cans – low salt chicken broth

1 package – button mushrooms cleaned sliced

2 medium onions, chopped

4 to 6 stalks celery, chopped

¾ cup – Apple Cider

1 teaspoon each of Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme, yeah just like the song!

2 cloves of garlic minced

1 ½ sticks of butter

Salt & fresh ground pepper to taste

Aluminum casserole pan

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a big pot over med-high heat start cooking the sausage breaking it up with wooden spoon. Add garlic, butter, spices and let cook until sausage is almost completely cooked add celery, onion continue to sauté, and then add mushrooms, sauté for three to four minutes. Add chicken both, increase heat under pot until mixture has a slow boil, add apple cider. Mix in Pepperidge Farm Stuffing turn off heat under pot. Mix thoroughly and let sit for 1 hour (I like to let it sit longer in covered pot because all the flavors marry well into the stuffing; you. Loosely stuff the bird right before putting it in the oven, bake the remainder of stuffing in an aluminum pan for about 30-45 minutes at 350 degrees and enjoy!

NOTE: I don't use water to mix the stuffing although the recipe on the Pepperidge Farm stuffing bags call for it. I substitute with chicken broth.

BIG JOE'S "TOO SWEET" POTATOES

These are one of my favorite things that I love to prepare for Thanksgiving. They also work great for serving as a side dish to pork, chicken, and steak. Serves 10 - 12

¼ cup – frozen orange juice concentrate, still frozen

½ cup — maple syrup

¼ cup – molasses

1 ½ sticks of butter

1 tsp – cinnamon

1 tsp – pumpkin spice

1 dash – vanilla extract

1 cup – brown sugar

10-12 sweet potatoes (yams), peeled, halved, and then cut into 8’s.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a medium saucepan, heat all ingredients except the potatoes. Bring to a slow boil, constantly stirring. Place sliced potatoes in a well-greased baking dish. Pour the mixture generously over the potatoes, covering them. Place the dish covered with foil into the heated oven at 350 degrees for 1 hour. Remove from oven and baste the potatoes again with the mixture in the bottom of the baking dish. Cover the dish with foil and cook for 1 more hour. Remove from the oven and baste the potatoes with the mixture again. Increase oven temperature to 425 and cook for another 30 minutes uncovered. Remove from the oven to cool for 10 minutes. Serve hot and enjoy!

BIG JOE'S MASHED POTATOES WITH SOUR CREAM & CHIVES

This is a great recipe for battery tasty, mashed potatoes that come out with a great flavor. The chicken broth lends a rich taste. Serves: 8

3 pounds – Yukon gold potatoes (about 16 medium) unpeeled, cut into 1-inch pieces

½ cup – chicken broth, warmed

1 cup – sour cream

4 ½ tablespoons – chopped fresh chives

½ cup – half and half or whole milk

1 stick of butter cut into quarters

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Place potatoes in a steamer basket fitted over a large pot of boiling water. Cover and steam for about 22 minutes, or until potatoes are fork-tender.

Transfer potatoes to a large bowl. Coarsely mash the potatoes and combine the broth, milk, and butter. Stir in the sour cream and chives. Season with salt and pepper to taste and serve hot and enjoy!!