How to Make Thanksgiving for One (or Two)

Thanksgiving is traditionally a time for family members to come together to enjoy a bountiful meal and each other’s company. It’s a time for celebration, relaxation, and good eats. But for some people, the thought of going home for the holidays is an absolute nightmare. Maybe you’re living abroad and can’t afford the plane ticket, or you need a break from the inevitable family feud over politics. Perhaps you simply need a little “me time.”

Whatever the reason, you can certainly have a great Thanksgiving whether you’re flying solo or making it a couples thing. Here’s how.

Create a Game Plan

Just because you’re keeping it small doesn’t mean you can’t make your Thanksgiving meal special. Get some candles and flowers for the table and set it up to look inviting and cozy. Break out the good china and use serving dishes, if you have them. There’s nothing sadder than a holiday meal for one eaten right out of the cooking pot.

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Set of 4 Scalloped Embossed Bone China Plates ($36)

Scalloped and embossed details make these classic plates pretty without being too busy.

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Write up a menu and shop for your ingredients ahead of time. If you leave it till the day of, you might have to contend with long lines and empty shelves at the supermarket.

Consider preparing your ingredients and even doing your baking the night before. That way you can have more time to cook and enjoy your meal the following day.

Menu Options

If you’re horrified by the thought of not having roast turkey for Thanksgiving, you may be able to order a small turkey (10 pounds or less) through your local butcher or directly from a turkey farm. As an alternative, consider making cornish game hens, turkey breast, turkey pot pie or, if you’re vegetarian or vegan, stuffed squash.

Instead of making all the sides associated with this holiday, just pick your absolute favorites and either halve the recipe or freeze the leftovers. You might also look for a recipe that incorporates the main ingredients from several of your favorite dishes into one.

Looking for some inspiration? The following recipes can help you make the most of your solo Thanksgiving.

Cornish Game Hens with Millet Stuffing

Chowhound

This recipe calls for four 1-½-pound Cornish game hens, but you can certainly cut it in half to make two hens instead. The stuffing can be prepared a day in advance, and if you switch the currants out for cranberries, you can make it just right for the occasion. Get our Cornish Game Hens with Millet Stuffing recipe.

Herb-Roasted Turkey Breast

Chowhound

It doesn’t get more simple or straightforward than this. Seasoned with a paste made from olive oil, garlic, rosemary, fennel seed, and lemon, this recipe is easy to make but far from boring. You can even satisfy your craving to “carve the turkey” when you slice it up after roasting. Get our Herb-Roasted Turkey Breast recipe.

Chicken and Mushroom Pot Pies

Chowhound

For this recipe, you might want to make the dough and prep the veggies ahead of time so you have less work to do on Thanksgiving day. Once assembled, these pies freeze beautifully before baking. Get our Chicken and Mushroom Pot Pies recipe.

Roasted Acorn Squash with Wild Rice Stuffing

Chowhound

This dish combines two classic Thanksgiving foods, squash and stuffing, into one. You can either cut the recipe down by two-thirds or freeze the extra stuffed squash halves before baking. The recipe also calls for dried cranberries, so it’s perfect for this holiday! Get our Roasted Acorn Squash with Wild Rice Stuffing recipe.

Sweet Potato Biscuits

Chowhound

Skip the marshmallow-topped casserole and candied yams for these rich, fluffy sweet potato biscuits, which you can slather with butter or use to sop up the juices of your main dish. These sunset-hued beauties make the perfect side for any autumn meal. Get our Sweet Potato Biscuits recipe.

Green Beans with Smoked Bacon

Chowhound

Every veggie can benefit from a little added umami. In this case, crisp-tender green beans are paired with smoked bacon and dressed in a simple vinaigrette that will lighten things up and bring some verdant color to the table. Get our Green Beans with Smoked Bacon recipe.

Chocolate Soufflé

Chowhound

While it may not be traditional to make a chocolate dessert for Thanksgiving, this recipe has its benefits. You can make them individual soufflés that freeze well before baking (if there are any left over, that is). Get our Chocolate Soufflé recipe.

Pumpkin Pie Flans

Chowhound

If it just wouldn’t feel like Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie, these individual flans make a great substitute. You could halve the recipe to make four instead of eight, but really—why would you want to? Get our Pumpkin Pie Flans recipe.

Related Video: How to Make Spicy Maple Turkey Breast

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A Keto Diet Approach to Thanksgiving Dinner

Have I lost you already? No? Ok, good. Hear me out on this.

I promise we’re not here to take the fun out of Thanksgiving. Quite the opposite, in fact. For some out there, indulging in a little holiday cheer doesn’t necessarily mean nullifying all the energy, self-control and money (CrossFit, I’m looking at you) you parted with to keep in relative shape all year. A Ketogenic, or lower carbohydrate, high fat diet, is a great way to enjoy holiday food and fanfare without giving away the farm, and we’ve got the recipes to please even the fiercest carb-ivores among us.

The Ketogenic or “Keto” diet has been on a tear, as of late, and claims Kim Kardashian, Beyoncé and Melissa McCarthy as loyalists. One reason is that Keto, when done properly, can include ingredients and items often associated with indulgence and excess, like whipped cream and BACON! I’m winning you back, aren’t I?

The Keto Diet works off the premise that when carb intake is minimized (although not eliminated completely) the “semi-starved” body activates “ketogenesis” or the production of ketones into your bloodstream. These little fellas are made in the liver and serve as an alternate form of energy that would lay dormant otherwise. The good people at Keto also ask that you limit protein intake just a bit, leaving lots and lots of room for delicious fats!

I’ll concede that some of Thanksgiving’s undeniable charm hinges on those crave-worthy carbohydrates, but with a little thought and creativity, you can pull off a wildly indulgent Keto Thanksgiving, sans having to be hot air-ballooned out of the living room.  

To simplify matters, turkey is a mostly Keto friendly-food as long as you don’t do anything crazy like bread and fry the thing, so use your favorite recipe or consult one of Chowhound’s, like this one or this one.   

Let’s get to the recipes!

Mashed Potatoes

You’re on Keto so the answer is no…sort of. We’re starting here because this one hurts a little and we’d best rip it off like band-aid.

Little Broken

Fear not, cauliflower exists to save us from ourselves, and even better, Keto allows for lots of fatty dairy like whole milk Ricotta and butter to help soften the blow. If you’re already a Keto guy or gal, you’re probably familiar with the way cauliflower can magically mimic starch. In my experience, the most important thing is getting your cooked cauliflower as dry as possible before moving on to the next step. Squeezing and dabbing (not this kind) helps, but don’t under estimate the infinite power of time. Leave the cauliflower wrapped in towels for a few hours. While we’re at it, this a great candidate to make or prep the night before. Get the recipe.

Gravy

Nomagenddon

Gravy, glorious gravy, is Keto friendly by nature and we can all thank a higher power of our choosing for that! A traditional gravy recipe does call for some flour but it’s minimal and you can cut the third of a cup called for here down to a quarter cup and not notice a difference. Get the recipe.

Rolls and Stuffing

How to…this and that

As beloved as Mashed Potatoes are, that other starchy staple, Stuffing, holds just as dear a spot in our Turkey Day hearts. The good news is that there are loads of Keto-friendly premade breads and also from scratch recipes to use as a base. Get the recipe for Keto Fathead Rolls (to serve or for Keto-friendly stuffing).

Broccoli Cheese Casserole

Simply Recipes

A battle rages in the pantheon of Keto-friendly foods. Bacon or Cheese? Cheese or Bacon? The furious debates mirror some on capitol hill, but this divine recipe reaches across the aisle to incorporate both in a Keto-tastic Thanksgiving side dish celebration two of the diet plan’s biggest stars. Consider adding a fresh grind of nutmeg, a bestie of any béchamel. Get the recipe.

Bacon Jalapeño Poppers

Keto Connect

Appetizers are a great way to incorporate more bacon into the menu, as in these keto-friendly Bacon Jalapeno Poppers. Another bonus of Keto is that low-carb foods don’t fill you up as quickly as carbs, so you’re more likely to enjoy ALL the courses without feeling that trademark Thanksgiving bloat. Get the recipe.

Hazelnut Truffles

Low Carb Maven

For dessert, the Keto’s out there will have to make a concession or two. Pie crusts and flour-based cakes and cookies should be avoided but replaced by higher fat lower carb alternatives like these Keto Hazelnut Truffles. I make these, or a version of them, to almost every holiday party I attend, and they always steal the show. Their bite-size makes it easy to taste without overdoing it which people appreciate. Get the recipe.

And if you want that little extra help, you may want to get The Easy 5-Ingredient Ketogenic Diet Cookbook: Low-Carb, High-Fat Recipes for Busy People on the Keto Diet—a best seller that will make your daily cooking a breeze.

Related video: How to Make Keto Burrito Peppers

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Baked Acorn Squash with Butter and Brown Sugar

Easy baked acorn squash recipe, perfect for the fall. Squash is cut in half, insides scooped out, then baked with a little butter, brown sugar, and maple syrup.

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Pecan Pie or Pumpkin Pie: Which One Wins Thanksgiving?

“Well, I definitely want to make a pecan pie,” my sister-in-law declared.

My mom, my sister-in-law, and I were discussing which desserts to serve after Thanksgiving dinner. My mom and I had been confident in our assumption that pumpkin pie was a given, and so we were taken aback by sister-in-law’s statement.

Pecan pie? My mom and I looked at each other. “Sure, I mean, we’re a pretty small group this year; I don’t know if we’ll eat two whole pies, but, okay, we can do that…” I reasoned, more to convince myself. Why would we need pecan pie when we would have pumpkin? Why would we serve some other pie alongside the shining star of Thanksgiving pies?

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We bought the ingredients for both pies, though I was suspicious of the dark corn syrup; pumpkin pie used familiar ingredients, and now pecan pie was bringing corn syrup into the equation! Both pies were baked, and after dinner I had a small slice of each. Well, it turns out (and it’s probably not a surprise for most people) that pecan pie is incredible! It was so good! It had creamy, it had crunchy; it was sweet, it was a little savory. It was so much better than I expected!

My sister-in-law’s family is from the South, and her family tradition was to always have pecan pie at Thanksgiving. My tradition was to always have pumpkin pie. So which pie is the superior Thanksgiving pie?

Round 1: Personal Traditions – Tie!

It’s subjective! We’ll have to call this round a tie—I shouldn’t let my own personal leanings decide which pie wins Thanksgiving. There are all kinds of traditions out there, and so I shouldn’t deem my own to be best, solely because it’s familiar. For example, my friend from Mississippi thinks sweet potato pie is the Thanksgiving pie. Even though that sounds like a crazy bunch of nonsense to me, I respect her tradition, and truly, I wouldn’t turn down a slice of sweet potato pie any other day. If you are so inclined to include a third pie in your own personal Thanksgiving bake-off, try our Sweet Potato Pie recipe.

Round 2: Here First – Pumpkin Pie

Back to our two contenders: pumpkin and pecan. Even if we discount the portions of pumpkin pie history which refer to boiling pumpkin in milk, filling pie crust with pumpkin and apple, or using a hollowed out pumpkin instead of a crust, it looks like pumpkin pie in its closer-to-modern form came about in the 1700s. The history of pecan pie reveals that its existence began later, in the 1800s at earliest. Unless we’re playing by ‘first is the worst’ rules (rules by which I refuse to abide!) pumpkin pie wins this round.

Round 3: Dessert-ier – Pecan Pie

It’s good to eat healthfully, and it’s important to be aware of the nutritional value of the foods you consume. It’s just, I don’t think Thanksgiving is about all that. Maybe it should be—more power to you if you create a healthy Thanksgiving dinner menu, or if you exercise even minimal portion control. If so, you’re amazing! But for my ruling of which pie is the dessert-ier option, I’m going to have to go with big, bad pecan pie weighing in at 503 calories and 27 grams of fat per slice. Pumpkin pie comes in at a paltry 316 calories and 14 grams of fat—it’s nearly a vegetable! And if you are going to give into sweet temptation, you might as well try our Chocolate Pecan Pie recipe, which adds irresistible elements of bourbon and chocolate.

The Tie-Breaker: Charlie Brown – Pumpkin Pie

In A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, when that blockhead botched his friends’ Thanksgiving dinner (what else is new?), which pie does Peppermint Patty lament missing? That’s right, pumpkin pie! This is the quintessential Thanksgiving pie, at least according to Charlie Brown’s social circle—not a peep about pecan. And so, pumpkin pie wins this one. Try our Perfect Pumpkin Pie recipe to avoid a misstep like Charlie Brown’s.

Using these standard pie-judging categories, we have come out with pumpkin pie as the winning pie of Thanksgiving. No hard feelings, though, pecan pie—you’re a stellar, stand-up pie, and anybody would be lucky to have a slice of you at the conclusion of their Thanksgiving dinner. And (now hear me out) maybe the best way to reconcile this feud would be to marry these two stars, and bake this Pecan Streusel Pumpkin Pie for your guests. That way everybody wins! Or, let’s be real, more likely nobody wins, since we can all be pretty stubborn about our favorite traditions. So, I take it back: pumpkin pie it shall be!

Check out all the best of pumpkins on Chowhound.

Related Video: How to Make an Easy Pumpkin Pie

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Slow Cooker Shredded Chicken Chili

Slow Cooker Shredded Chicken Chili is perfect for busy weeks! Made with chicken thighs or breasts, onions, celery, black beans, frozen corn, chicken broth, tomato puree, and spices. So easy!

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