Thanksgiving for Two—A Guide

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays of the year, as it’s all about giving thanks for the ones you love. That being said, the idea of cooking up a giant Thanksgiving feast for our tiny family (read: two grown humans and a tiny miniature dachshund) used to stress me out. That is of course before I realized that the only person who was pressuring me to create an elaborate feast was me. Over the years, I’ve learned how to keep it simple, keep it small, while still keeping it festive. On the party of two menu for 2019, we’ve got a roast chicken, garlicky-lemony brussels sprouts, and a many potato au gratin, inspired by a root veggie gratin I saw Spoon Fork Bacon post about the other week. We are skipping the cranberry sauce, mostly because I’m the only one who likes it, but this small feast covers all the cozy holiday feels while keeping it simple.

This year, I’ve partnered with OXO to make things even easier—as having all the right tools is key when you’re making anything in the kitchen and especially if you’re making multiple dishes at the same time. What I love about our little menu this year is that you can have everything come out at the same time if you plan it out correctly. In our house, we’ve got the tiniest Miele oven, I call it my baby oven, so to balance it out we also have a countertop oven. This actually works to our benefit with multi-dish meals, as it allows me to cook dishes at different temps at the same time. If you’re still reading and thinking you too want to make a small feast vs a large feast, I thought it might be fun to give you a play by play of how we time things out to get everything out hot at the same time!

The whole process starts the day before and all you have to do is pat the chicken down with paper towels, inside and out and then generously salt it, again inside and out, with kosher salt. Place it in your OXO glass baking dish and loosely cover it with parchment paper and refrigerate. The next day, 3 hours before you’re ready to cook, remove your chicken and let it come to temperature for about an hour or so. While your chicken is coming to temperature, prep your two sides. I do double wash on my brussels sprouts because I feel like they’re pretty dirty and I use my OXO Salad Spinner to soak them in a water-vinegar solution before spin-drying. From there, I trim the ends and cut them in half and find that doing that gets rid of all the ugly gross leaves you don’t want to eat. From there, I pop ‘em back in the spinner for another little soak (you can skip the vinegar and just do a quick rinse if you like) and spin again! Clean and ready to go. And then for the potatoes—I use a mix of garnet sweet potatoes, purple sweet potatoes, and golden taters since it adds diversity of flavor without introducing another dish to the roster. I loosely followed that Spoon Fork Bacon recipe I mentioned, but cut it in half and used some sour cream in addition to the cream they listed. As far the sprouts go, it’s not a recipe per se but I basically dressed them in a mix of lemon zest and juice, olive oil, grated garlic (used my handy OXO Etched Zester), some grated parm, salt, pepper, and a bit of Dijon mustard. Easy peasy.

Ready to roast. Preheat one of your ovens (I used my countertop for this) to 450°F. Preheat the other to 400°F. Pat down your chicken, inside and out again with paper towels and season with some fresh cracked pepper and some minced thyme. Stuff a few thyme sprigs and some lemon peels (if you want) in the cavity and truss your chicken! From there, place an OXO Roasting Rack in your pan (making sure it’s clean and dry) and roast for about an hour, or until your OXO Thermocouple Thermometer reads 165°F when inserted into the middle of the thigh. Per the au gratin recipe, I linked early, cover your baking dish with foil and bake for 30 mins. After 30 mins, uncover it and bake for 30 more and make some room because you’ll be adding your brussels sprouts at the same time. Give the Brussels a toss midway through (15 min mark). And presto. Everything is out of the oven and ready to go all at the same time. Easy peasy Thanksgiving for two!

This post was sponsored by OXO—I’ve been a fan for years and am so pumped to partner with them on a post that’s near and dear to my heart. #oxobetter, #ad, @oxo