Work Backwards When Cooking a Feast

I didn’t learn to cook until I was on my own and I really was not motivated until I had Thanksgiving at a restaurant.

The feeling of paying so much money and not having three days of leftovers is not my definition of Thanksgiving.

Start with Dessert

Making any feast is a challenge. The most important thing to remember when making a feast is to work backwards.

In a normal feast, that usually means making dessert first and by making dessert first, you will have to ask: “Who is coming?”

This starts a process of asking important questions, getting answers, and deciding ahead of time. This helps with strategy and planning for the feast.

Thanksgiving Turkey

When making a Thanksgiving feast, it also involves preparing the turkey almost a week in advance. A dry turkey is usually a sign of a poorly prepared turkey. As a turkey is so massive, time is essential.

Cooking the Feast

Once you decide the feast plan, the next step is executing the plan you decided on, which is cooking the feast.

With refrigeration, you can cook parts of the feast days in advance. Doing one part a day each day before the feast can reduce the number of items to cook on the day of the feast, which will reduce your stress that day.

Feasting

The best part of any feast is the end - when delivering everything you cooked and enjoying the feast with your friends & family.

There is still a lot to do on this day but you shift your execution from cooking to hosting, hopefully with a smooth transition from one to the other.

Remember, execute on plan, diverge whenever there’s new information.