Holiday Entertaining

A Last-Minute, All-Star Thanksgiving Menu You Can Actually Pull Off

Have you planned your Thanksgiving menu yet? There’s no judgment on my part. My lineup currently consists of: macaroni and cheese; eggplant with bulgur and chermoula (please don’t ask); kale and caramelized onion stuffing; caramelized onion and potato gratin (I will be part onion by the end of this meal); sweet potato pie; pumpkin pie; and pumpkin pie crumble. Read More >> …

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How to Prep Everything You’ll Need For The Holidays Using This *One* Knife

With the holidays fast approaching, it’s time to think about your menu(s). Spiral ham for your aunt, extra creamy mashed potatoes for your dad, glazed carrots for that neighborhood potluck, plus an extra tray of green bean casserole for Friendsgiving. To pull all of this off, we need to start with the basics: knife skills. Luckily, our friends at Shun Cutlery have created the ultimate knife for basically every cut—Shun’s Premiere Master Utility Knife is just what you’ll need to expertly slice and dice your way through this holiday season. We’ve compiled a brief, but thorough guide to some of the most-used knife cuts you’ll see while making every Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas dinner, plus a few recipes to help you show off your newfound knife prowess. Read More >> …

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30 Make-Ahead Thanksgiving Recipes to Save Time & Stress This Season

This article was updated in August 2023 to include more of our favorite recipes. There are some dishes that have be made on Thanksgiving day. Turkey cannot be roasted—or deep fried—ahead of time, mashed potatoes will not stay fluffy, and Pot-Stuck Brussels Sprouts will not remain crisp. Read More >> …

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How to Cook a Spiral Ham (& Enjoy It for Days)

Spiral sliced ham is, in fact, an American invention. Harry Hoenselaar, the founder of the HoneyBaked Ham Company, built the world’s first spiral-slicing machine in 1924. The idea, he said, had come to him in a dream, and his prototype was assembled from “a tire jack, a pie tin, a washing machine motor, and a knife.” If you’re as enamored by the idea of this gorgeous meat helix as we are and wondering how to cook a spiral ham at home, you’ve come to the right place. Let’s cut the fat, and get right down to the bone of how to treat your ham right, so you and your guests can properly feast on this succulent American classic. From Our Shop our line! Five Two Essential Roasting Pan & Rack $149 More Options

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The Sweetest Things to Dip in Chocolate Fondue

Winter is the time when chocolate fondue shines, and we are here for it. New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day are the occasions when everyone says, “Oh yeah, I have a fondue pot! I should use it!” It’s romantic and celebratory, plus who wouldn’t want to dip anything and everything in a chocolate waterfall? It also elicits good conversation, like “You have chocolate in your teeth” and “Can you pass me another marshmallow?” Really moving stuff. Ahead, find out how to make our easy chocolate fondue recipe so you can go from thinking “A fondue pot? I will never use this” to breaking it out mid-workday for a sugary pick-me-up. From Our Shop Boska Copper & Concrete Fondue Set $139

Raaka Small-Batch Organic Chocolate Subscription $98–$364 More Options…

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Pack Your Bag for Holiday Party Season!

For the last couple of years, the holidays have looked a little different. If you’ve decided to travel to be with your loved ones this season, you’re simultaneously trying to keep track of whom you’ve bought presents for, which ones you’ve wrapped, and where, oh where, did you stash them? Inevitably, you’ll also be invited to a few “last-minute, low-key gatherings”—sometimes, more than one in a day!—where the host insists that you don’t have to bring anything, but you can’t possibly show up empty-handed. You’ll need something un-fussy that can be prepped in big batches, toted around from day to night without spilling or souring, and plenty crowd-pleasing so there’s none left over to bring back home. We’ve been there! Read More >> …

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Our Best Goat Cheese Appetizers for One Heck of a Party

We’ve partnered with California cheese maker Cypress Grove to highlight creative ways to incorporate one of our favorite ingredients—goat cheese, like their award-winning Humboldt Fog—into your holiday party spread. I am a cheese person. Put a plate of gooey macaroni and cheese, a slice of pizza with extra mozzarella, or creamy cheese dip in front of me and I’ll choose that over just about anything else. So when the holiday season rolls around, it’s only natural that I turn to my most beloved ingredient when planning a party menu. But while all cheeses are equally perfect in my eyes, during the more festive months, one in particular stands above the rest for its versatility: goat cheese. Read More >> …

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A Festive, California-Style Hanukkah, Celebrated Outdoors

Home for the Holidays is a special series featuring our favorite food and home experts and their diverse homes—and holidays—from around the world. From Los Angeles to Mumbai and Hong Kong, we get a peek at how each family approaches the most special of seasons—in a way that’s uniquely theirs. Artist Julia Sherman writes cookbooks that are unlike others. For her first book, Salad for President, Sherman visited artists in their homes, interviewing and photographing them as they make her a salad. In her latest, Arty Parties: An Entertaining Cookbook, Sherman talks to artists about their favorite gatherings and pairs them with her own recipes for food that are “easy to scale, affordable, and designed to be prepped ahead and then served in the moment.” So it should come as no surprise that the artist’s touch is visible at her own low-key yet gorgeous Hanukkah gathering. Read More >> …

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How One Couple Effortlessly Hosts Gatherings In Their 700-Square-Foot Home

When hosting in small spaces, challenges abound. How does one cook a meal for 10-12 guests in a barely-there kitchen? Who among small-space dwellers has room to store all the holiday decor and boughs of holly? And where should the welcome refreshments go when you have ambitiously planned a snack-fueled mingling and a subsequent sit-down dinner? None of those quandaries have stopped Oakland residents Joe and Celia Catalino, restaurant veterans and co-founders of the sustainable wine club and online bottle shop, What To Drink, from being regular (and consummate) hosts. Over time, they have learned to cleverly work around their 700-square-foot, tight-squeeze of a home. Here, the couple—also parents to 10-year-old daughter, Lucia—allows us a peek into their full-house holiday festivities, and share expert tips that include how to combine the snacks and drinks table for efficiency, where to hide the clutter so guests don’t see it, and their picks for low-maintenance pre-batched cocktails. Read More…

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A Hosting Trick to Make Your Guests Feel Extra (Extra) Special

Like a James Bond villain or a Mad Men character, I love a good decanter. When people come over, they often remark on the little collection I have going on the top of my bar cart, each one filled with a different liquor and marked by a vintage pewter tag that a dear friend found at a flea market and gave me as a housewarming gift (find a more modern interpretation here. There’s something particularly pleasing about serving someone a finger of Scotch or a tequila soda using a hefty glass bottle made for just such a thing. But here’s my secret: I always put my least expensive liquor in my fanciest decanter. Read More >> …

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Working in Food Made Me Worse at Entertaining

Two years ago, I had recently moved into my first apartment and wanted to host a couple of friends for an intimate Friendsgiving. We hadn’t seen each other often since graduating college and in that time, I had a stint as a line cook in a French restaurant and was now working for Martha Stewart. All of my family and friends saw me as the professional chef in their lives, and therefore believed I knew everything there was to know about cooking. (“Are these chicken thighs still good?” to “How do I clean my cutting board?” to “What should I order for dinner tonight?). For the record, I knew some things but certainly not everything. But I took a lot of pride in the knowledge that I learned first-hand in the kitchen and took even greater pride in delivering a restaurant-quality meal to my parents and partner night after night. Since I started working in a…

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We Can’t Stop Staring at Nicole Crowder’s Thanksgiving Table

Follow the Pattern is a brand new column from furniture maker and upholstery expert (and Home52’s Resident Design Wiz), Nicole Crowder. Nicole is here to show us how to breathe new life into old furniture, reuse and repurpose materials, take chances with color and pattern—and develop a signature aesthetic. Today, she shares her holiday table ideas. This time of year is when I get my creative second wind—when I am consumed by inspiration and creative energy as electric as the holiday lights and bulbs lining trees and window frames. There’s nothing quite like a season that is centered around my favorite rituals of gathering and dining together, but with a little extra festive flair—a happy excuse to dress up my home and my mother’s table with new ideas and themes. Read More >> …

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My Best Thanksgiving Prep Trick Comes From a Highly Unlikely Source

What thrills you about Thanksgiving? Is it the menu-making? The wine pairings? The guest and playlist selections? Yes, all of the above for me. But I’d like to throw in one more: The scrum board making and monitoring. Allow me to introduce you to my favorite, most efficient way to set up for a multi-course meal, which incidentally borrows some project management parlance. In its simplest form, a scrum board (also known as a sprint board) is a visual task board that many teams use to chart out and follow along the progress of one or more projects (“sprints”) from beginning to end. It can be a physical board or a digital one, but the function remains the same. At its most basic, the scrum board is divided into three categories: Read More >> …

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17 Recipes to Use Up Your Leftover Heavy Cream

Picture this: It’s the day after Thanksgiving, and your fridge is just filled to the brim. And, tucked away behind stacks of Thanksgiving leftovers, there are at least three half-empty cartons of heavy cream you threw in haphazardly amidst the dinner storm. Now, imagine that you face the remnants and their looming expiration dates, yet you have no desire to eat another dollop of whipped cream. The best news? You don’t have put that cream to waste—instead, you can make one of the 17 delicious recipes that follow. Heck, you might even start buying cream just so you can make them all, year-round!
1. Caramelized Cream Eggs from Ideas in Food
The easiest, most rewarding thing to do with cream (should we just end this list early?)? Fry eggs—or pork chops, carrots, onions, anything, really—in it. As the liquid cooks down in a skillet, it separates out into a layer of butterfat and buttermilk, steaming the eggs and…

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The Best Pumpkin Pie Doesn’t Need a Crust

Every week, baking expert Alice Medrich is going rogue on Food52—with shortcuts, hacks, and game-changing recipes.
Today: Enjoy a slice of pumpkin pie, minus the crust—because the filling’s the best part, right?! Read More >> …

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The Best Pumpkin Pie Doesn’t Need a Crust

Every week, baking expert Alice Medrich is going rogue on Food52—with shortcuts, hacks, and game-changing recipes.
Today: Enjoy a slice of pumpkin pie, minus the crust—because the filling’s the best part, right?! Read More >> …

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How Much Turkey Per Person?: The Thanksgiving Dilemma

How much turkey per person? It’s the age-old Thanksgiving dilemma. But it doesn’t have to be such an ordeal. Just account for about 1 pound per person—unless you want leftovers, in which case you should account for about 1 1/2 pounds per person. For more intel on the subject, read on below.
It’s inevitable. Every Thanksgiving you question how you’re supposed to choose the size of your bird. Was it one pound per person? Or two? And what about the mashed potatoes? There has to be a better method than just dumping bagfuls in a pot and hoping there’s enough to go around. Read More >> …

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The One Piece of Advice You Need for the Best Cheese Board

We’ve partnered with California cheese maker Cypress Grove to highlight creative ways to incorporate one of our favorite ingredients—goat cheese!—into your holiday party spread. Not to brag, but I’ve put together my fair share of ridiculously abundant cheese plates through the years. (I’d like to thank the one-two punch of formerly working at a fancy cheese counter and—shocker—really liking cheese.) Let’s just say, if you come over my house for dinner, rest assured there will be cheese. Read More >> …

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