Thanksgiving for a small household: a menu for 2 to 4

A small Thanksgiving menu for 2 to 4

Keep every dish people would miss, and cut everything else. For most tables that's turkey, gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, one green vegetable, cranberry sauce and a pie. Seven things, and only three of them need the oven.

The portion figures come from how much turkey per person, which has the amounts for gravy and stuffing too. For a fourth side, pick something that's good cold the next day, like a roasted squash salad, because it'll be lunch on Friday.

Which turkey to buy for two (or four)

For two people, buy a half turkey breast or a pair of thighs. For three or four, a whole bone-in breast. A whole bird starts making sense around six people, and the smallest ones still take close to 3 hours in the oven.

Roasting times are from the USDA table as printed by University of Illinois Extension, which also gives the 20 to 30 minute rest. The "Feeds" column uses ¾ pound of bone-in breast per person.

Thighs are the cut people overlook. Dark meat stays moist through the reheat, so they're the better choice if leftovers matter more to you than slices of white meat on the day. Roast two thighs alongside a half breast and four people get both.

Thaw a frozen breast in the fridge. FSIS allows about 24 hours for every 4 to 5 pounds, so a 6-pound breast needs a day and a half: into the fridge on Tuesday morning at the latest. The free turkey calculator does the same sum for a breast or a whole bird of any size.

How to halve Thanksgiving recipes

Halve every ingredient, then change the pan. A 9 × 13 dish holds nearly twice what an 8-inch square one does, so halved stuffing or a halved casserole goes in the 8-inch dish at the same depth, and bakes in roughly the recipe's time. In the bigger dish it would be half as deep and dry out before the time was up.

• For half an egg, beat one and use half of it. Weighing makes that exact.
• Halve the salt and spices, then taste at the end.
• Measure butter by the tablespoon marks on the wrapper.
• Don't halve the pie. Bake a whole one, or buy one. Pumpkin and pecan pies keep 3 to 4 days in the fridge.
• Make gravy and cranberry sauce in full. Both freeze, so the extra is next month's dinner, not waste.

The free recipe scaler halves a pasted ingredient list with real fractions. ¾ cup becomes ⅜ cup, which is 6 tablespoons if your measuring cups don't go that small. For pan sizes, bake times and the other fractions of an egg, see how to double or halve a recipe.

A short timeline for a small Thanksgiving

With a breast instead of a whole bird, Thanksgiving fits in an afternoon. There's no 6 AM start and no week of thawing.

The cranberry timing is from NC State Extension, which allows homemade sauce up to 7 days in the fridge. For a full household plan with a whole bird, the Thanksgiving cooking timeline has the longer version.

Plan the leftovers before you shop

Before the weekend shop, decide what Friday to Sunday will eat, and buy for those meals in the same trip. Cooked turkey, stuffing and gravy keep 3 to 4 days in the fridge, which for a Thursday dinner means Monday at the latest. Whatever isn't planned by then goes in the freezer.

Turkey soup from the bone works best if you make the stock on Friday, while the bone is fresh, and keep it in the fridge for Saturday. Gravy without drippings covers stock from turkey wings if your cut came boneless.

In the Hedgehog Chef meal planner, “Plan leftovers…” on Thursday's dinner puts its leftovers on a later meal, say Friday's lunch, and makes Thursday's recipe cook that many more servings, so the shopping list and cook mode scale up to match. Turkey you move to the freezer can go into the pantry with a use-by date, and “Use it up” shows it before it's forgotten.

The Thanksgiving meal planner page puts the menu, the timeline and the list together.

How to freeze small-batch leftovers

Freeze in portions you'll eat in one sitting, and cover sliced turkey with gravy or broth, which keeps it from drying out. Refrigerate everything within 2 hours of dinner, in shallow containers, and freeze it once you know you won't get to it within the 3 to 4 days.

The turkey, stuffing and gravy times are FSIS figures for quality: frozen food stays safe indefinitely. It only gets drier and blander. The cranberry sauce time is UMass Amherst's. Reheat leftovers to 165°F, and bring gravy to a rolling boil. Can you freeze mashed potatoes covers the potatoes.

If two of you cook, the Hedgehog Chef Family plan gives each person their own login to the same kitchen, so both see the plan and the list. See pricing.