Friendsgiving potluck list: who brings what

Friendsgiving potluck sign-up list by group size

Count the households that will cook. Couples and housemates usually bring one dish between them. Then fill the categories in this order and stop when you run out of guests.

Move the numbers around to suit your crowd: a table that skips salad can trade it for another vegetable. Don't leave a category open-ended, because people pick what they like making, and most people like making dessert.

Rolls, drinks and ice are the slots for the friend who doesn't cook or is coming straight from work. Give those away last, so the people who want to cook get the sides. For the main, our post on how much turkey per person has the bird size for each guest count.

Which dishes should the host make?

The turkey, the gravy, and anything that has to come out of the oven in the last half hour. The turkey holds the oven for most of the day, and the time it spends resting before carving is when the host's own dishes go in to reheat. A guest who turns up with an unbaked casserole that needs 45 minutes at 375°F is asking for a slot that doesn't exist.

Gravy belongs to the host because the drippings are in the host's roasting pan. If you'd rather have it done before anyone arrives, make gravy without drippings a day or two ahead and reheat it on the stove.

When you assign a side, say how it should arrive: hot, in a slow cooker to plug in, or cold in a cooler. If a dish needs reheating, tell the cook which burner or shelf will be free.

How much food should each guest bring?

One dish that serves about two-thirds of the people at the table, going by the recipe's own servings. For a table of 10, that's a recipe that says “serves 6 to 8”. With six or seven sides on the table nobody eats a full serving of each, but the most popular two or three run out first, and a little extra covers them.

Most side recipes are written for 4 to 6, so most guests will need to scale up by half or double. The free recipe scaler does the arithmetic on a pasted ingredient list, with real fractions, so ⅔ cup times 1½ comes out as 1 cup instead of a decimal.

Desserts are the exception. Three pies cut in eighths give 24 slices, enough for 16 people who all want a sliver of two kinds. Don't ask the dessert people to scale up.

Dishes that travel well (and ones that don't)

Casseroles, roasted vegetables, grain salads, slow-cooker dishes, rolls, bars and pies all survive a car ride and an hour on the table. Fried food and a pre-dressed green salad don't.

The USDA's potluck recommendations say to carry cold dishes in a cooler with ice or gel packs at 40°F or below, wrap hot dishes in insulated bags or towels to keep them at 140°F or above, and ride the cooler in the air-conditioned passenger compartment of the car. If a dish has to be reheated on arrival, bring it to 165°F, the USDA reheating temperature for leftovers.

How to handle allergies at a potluck

Ask on the invitation, and put the answers on the list next to each dish. At a potluck the only person who knows the green beans have almonds on top is the cook.

Ask each cook to put a folded card in front of their dish with its name and any of the nine major allergens the FDA lists: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans and sesame. Stuffing (wheat, often eggs and milk) and pecan pie (tree nuts, eggs, wheat) catch people out most, because the allergen is an ingredient nobody thinks to mention. If someone eats gluten-free or vegan, make sure at least one side is made that way.

Keeping one shared list everyone can see

Put the list somewhere every guest can open, with one row per dish: the cook's first name, the dish, the category, how many it serves, what it needs on arrival (oven, outlet, fridge), and its allergens. Fill in the host's dishes first, so people can see what's taken.

• A group chat buries the menu within days. Copy each offer onto the real list and post its link.
• A shared spreadsheet or doc is free and does the job. Make the category rows first and leave the name column blank, so guests claim a slot instead of inventing one.
• A sign-up site can cap each category, so the third pie can't be claimed once dessert is full. Some guests won't bother to open it.

Keep the host's own grocery list separate from the potluck list. If two of you are hosting, our guide to sharing a grocery list with your household covers splitting the shopping. For the host's full shop, the Thanksgiving grocery list is sorted by aisle.

Planning a Friendsgiving potluck in Hedgehog Chef

Hedgehog Chef is a recipe box, meal planner, shopping list and pantry in one web app. For a potluck it covers the host's half.

• Collect the menu. When a guest sends the link to the recipe they're bringing, import it and put every dish in a Friendsgiving binder.
• Put it on the plan. Add the dinner to that day in the meal planner, with your own dishes and a note for each guest's.
• Shop for your part. On each of your recipes, Add to list with the servings set for the party, and amounts merge across recipes into one shopping list sorted by aisle, skipping what's already in your pantry. Group the list by recipe to see what each dish still needs.
• Send someone to the store. Share list sends what's left to buy as plain text through your phone's share sheet, and Print gives a paper copy.
• Time the oven. Cook a meal takes the turkey, the gravy and anything else you're making, works back from the time you want to eat, and fits the hands-on steps into the roasting time.

Some things it doesn't do. There's no sign-up sheet where guests claim a dish. Your kitchen holds 1 person on the Individual plan and 2 on Family, so guests can't open or edit your lists. A shared list is a snapshot that doesn't update when you change it, so for the who-brings-what list itself, use a spreadsheet or sign-up site and keep your own shopping in Hedgehog Chef. There's no free plan: after a 14-day trial it's $5.99 a month for one person or $9.99 for two (see pricing).