Thanksgiving
2220 recipes found
Egg Lemon Soup With Turkey
Modeled after a classic Greek egg lemon soup, this is one of many light, comforting soups that make a nice home for leftover turkey. If you haven’t made stock with the turkey carcass, a quick garlic or vegetable stock will do. Make sure that the soup is not at a boil when you add the tempered egg-lemon mixture, or the egg yolks will curdle. The soup should be creamy.
Crown Roast of Pork with Fennel and Lemon
Smoked-Trout Spread
The guests are trickling in, and soon the table will be overflowing. But not just yet. What to do? Several days in advance, you may want to whip up your own smoked trout spread to pack in a bowl and offer with bagel chips or squares of pumpernickel. Those impatient stomachs will thank you.
Cranberry Linzer Torte
This version of Linzer torte, a classic Viennese pastry, has a dough with a high proportion of ground hazelnuts and almonds. It is usually filled with a raspberry or apricot jam, but cranberries make it a perfect Thanksgiving dessert. The secret to rolling a dough made with nuts is to keep chilling it if it becomes difficult to handle. Linzer torte keeps up to a week if well-wrapped, and also freezes well, before or after baking.
Wild Rice Stuffing With Apples, Pecans and Cranberries
Like many Thanksgiving dishes, this pilaf combines sweet and savory foods. Apples and cranberries are high in phenolic acids, which are believed to have antioxidant properties.
Spinach and Turkey Salad
Turkey or chicken transforms this classic spinach salad (minus the bacon) into a light main dish, welcome after Thanksgiving and before the rest of the holiday season feasting begins.
Stir-Fried Turkey and Brussels Sprouts
A stir-fry is always a great way to use a little bit of leftover meat with a lot of vegetables. This one is quickly accomplished because the turkey is already cooked and it’s thrown into the colorful, gingery mix at the last minute. Once you add the turkey it’s important to stir-fry only long enough to heat the turkey through or it will be dry and stringy. If you are making this just after Thanksgiving and you happen to have leftover Brussels sprouts too, then you can reduce the cooking time even more, adding them along with the turkey after you’ve stir-fried the red peppers, and just stir-frying to heat through.
Cranberry-Pomegranate Sauce
Pomegranate, honey and Meyer lemon zest boosts the flavor of the traditional cranberry sauce in this version from Amy Lawrence, and her husband, Justin Fox Burks, the authors of the Chubby Vegetarian blog.
Glazed Bacon
Betty Groff, the home cook turned proprietor of Groff’s Farm Restaurant, once said that there were only two authentic American cuisines: Pennsylvania Dutch and Creole. Her brown-sugar-glazed bacon represents the former, and she occasionally served it as an hors d’oeuvre at her restaurant, which she started in her family’s 1756 Pennsylvania Dutch farmhouse in Mount Joy in the late 1950s. The restaurant became a place of pilgrimage for food lovers, among them Craig Claiborne, who wrote an article about it in The New York Times in 1965. This recipe, which Ms. Groff said “will amaze every guest,” serves six, but she noted that you can easily scale it up to serve 30, or possibly more.
Post-Thanksgiving Cobb Salad
The classic California Cobb salad is a composed salad made with chicken breast, lettuce, avocado, tomatoes, chopped hard-boiled eggs, bacon, and blue cheese. It should never be a jumble: the elements are arranged on a platter or in a wide bowl side by side, then dressed, and it’s up to the diner to mix them together. This version dispenses with the bacon and reduces the amount of Roquefort or blue cheese called for in the traditional Cobb. Tomatoes are not in season so I have eliminated them, too, and replaced them with grated carrots. Chopped toasted almonds, which can be salted if you can handle it, can stand in for the bacon.
Cultured Butter Cookies
These cookies are crumblier, crisper and more buttery in flavor than the typical cookie made with high-fat sweet cream butter. Which is exactly why you should make them.
Caramelized Bananas With Pecan-Coconut Crunch
This cozy dessert comes together quickly and fills the kitchen with a sweet, buttery aroma. The textures play well together: The spiced caramel is silky but robust, the bananas tender, and the pecan-and-coconut topping crunchy and crisp. Pick ripe but firm bananas so they’ll maintain their shape after cooking. (The bananas should be yellow with no black spots; green bananas won’t work.) Broil them until sizzling, then allow the bubbling caramel to cool and thicken a bit before serving. Devoured directly out of the skillet, or spooned into individual servings, these caramelized bananas are a lovely way to end a meal. Top with a scoop of ice cream for a cool contrast to the warm dessert.
Standing Rib Roast
Like many Nebraskans, the poet Erin Belieu’s family members use any large gathering as a pretext for serving prime rib. Thanksgiving is no exception. When Ms. Belieu, a fourth-generation Nebraskan, was growing up in Omaha, her family served prime rib alongside the turkey — until they realized no one really liked the bird and dispensed with it altogether. Her grandfather was a cowboy, and the whole family was steeped in the state’s ranching culture, even when they eventually moved to the city. In her house, the beef was minimally seasoned and roasted in a hot oven until the exterior was crackling and browned, the inside juicy and red. A little horseradish sauce might be served on the side, but her father always disapproved. Good beef doesn’t need it. “He thought sauce was for drugstore cowboys,” she said.
Shaker Lemon Pie
Thanksgiving often coincides with the arrival of all kinds of great citrus, which is why the chef Elisabeth Prueitt, of Tartine in San Francisco, offered this take on a classic Shaker lemon pie. Traditionally made from whole lemons, this version also incorporates blood oranges and cardamom, and it’s a bright, welcome addition to the pecan and pumpkin desserts this time of year. Start it the day before by slicing the fruit and leaving it to sit in sugar overnight, then mix it with beaten eggs the next day. At home, Ms. Prueitt uses her tangy all-purpose cream cheese dough, which also happens to be gluten-free, but you could use regular pie dough if you prefer. Baking the pan directly on the oven floor (or on a baking stone placed on the oven floor) helps ensure that it browns evenly.
Chocolate Coconut Pecan Tart
This dessert adds coconut and pecans to a buttery chocolate shortbread crust, which is baked it until the whole thing is glossy and crisp on top. It tastes a little like pecan pie and a little like a candy bar — which is to say perfect.
Pawpaw Pudding
When it comes to pawpaw, accept no substitutes. Trust us; we tried. We went to a bunch of experts — scholars who specialize in fruit, plus chefs and cookbook authors who know all about the proud culinary history of Appalachia — and we asked them, “If a home cook doesn’t happen to have any pawpaw, what combination of other fruits and vegetables might work well as a replacement?” We picked up passing nods to sweet potatoes, bananas, papayas, avocados, really ripe mangoes. But in the end everyone came back with variations on “Forget it, there’s nothing like a pawpaw.” The goopy-textured, tropical-ish fruit whose name sounds like a punch line on “Hee Haw” can be found scattered all over the country, but recipes (for cakes, pies, puddings) abound largely in West Virginia and nearby states like Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana. If you happen to secure some pawpaw, best to get out of its way, as is the case with this pudding. Pawpaw is a holiday guest who responds well to minimal interference.
Cranberry Pecan Pie
Thanksgiving Sandwich
Like many restaurant workers toiling in Las Vegas, Eric Klein, the executive chef at Spago, spends Thanksgiving Day on the line, dishing out turkey and trimmings to vacationing high rollers. Time with family and friends comes after the holiday. While the rest of the city combs shopping arcades for Black Friday deals, he’s making magic with the leftovers. One of his favorites is this play on a French dip sandwich. Shredded turkey stands in for the usual beef, while gravy, thinned out to make it brothlike, replaces the jus for dipping. To this he adds the requisite leftover stuffing, and he folds the cranberry sauce into a fragrant and creamy aioli. He likes to crumble mild blue cheese over the top of his sandwich for extra pizazz, but feel free to leave it out if you’re feeling more traditional.
Turkey and Noodles
This comforting family recipe belongs to Whitney Reynolds, a New Yorker with roots in Tennessee. The Reynolds family traditionally serves the dish of thickened turkey broth and noodle-shaped dumplings as a side at Thanksgiving dinner, next to the roasted bird and mashed potatoes. The yolk-rich noodles, rolled and cut with a knife, are dried out for some hours at room temperature. That way, they become strong enough to withstand a long boil during which they soak up the flavors of the roasted turkey stock, going tender and sticky-edged. The stock reduces, until it's somewhere between soup and a thick, shining gravy. Noodle purists would never put turkey meat in the dish, but the day after Thanksgiving, when there's often a little left over, it's hard to imagine a better place for it to end up. Consider it optional.
Pecan Tassies
Pecan tassies are bite-size pecan pies disguised as cookies. With a simple crust that’s both tangy and rich, thanks to cream cheese and butter, and a not-too-sweet maple-infused pecan filling, they go down easy and by the handful.
Kale Salad With Butternut Squash, Cranberries and Pepitas
This satisfying autumnal salad from Kathryn Anible, a personal chef in New York, is dressed with a sweet-tart apple cider vinaigrette.
Cranberry Tart
This is a tart not just in shape but also in flavor, because the berries remain whole, bound in a lightly candied filling. It would provide a brightly refreshing finale to a holiday meal.
Spiced Apple-Sausage Stuffing With Cranberries and Brandy
Flaming Baba au Rhum
While you can flambé pretty much any confection that’s soaked in a high-proof spirit, a baba au rhum is one of the booziest options. It’s based on an airy but rich yeast dough, which can absorb more liquor than your average cake without falling apart. And, unlike crepes, it’s easy to serve to a crowd. This is an afternoon project with delicious, sophisticated results.