Thanksgiving meal planner
Plan Thanksgiving dinner, from menu to table.
Put the menu on the meal plan, scale every recipe to the people coming, shop from one combined list, and let the day's cooking be scheduled back from the time you sit down.
14 days free, no card needed. Then Family is $9.99 a month or $83.99 a year for two people, or Individual $5.99 a month or $49.99 a year for one.
How it works
The menu, the list and the timeline, in one place.
Plan the menu
Every dish on its day.
Save the recipes first: from any website, or a photo of the family card. Then put Thursday's turkey, stuffing, sides and pies on the meal plan, and the make-ahead jobs, like Monday's cranberry sauce and Wednesday's pies, on their own days.
- Set each meal's servings to your guest count
- Keep the recipes together in a Holidays binder
- Save the week as a menu, ready for next year
Scale the recipes
A stuffing for 6, made for 14.
Scale any recipe to the number of people coming. Amounts stay readable, in real fractions: ⅓ cup doubled is ⅔ cup, not 0.666 cups. Switch the whole recipe between US and metric units too.
- Try it without an account: the free recipe scaler uses the same rules
Shop once
One combined shopping list.
“Shop for this week” puts every planned recipe's ingredients on one list, scaled to your servings and sorted by aisle. Butter from the stuffing, the mashed potatoes and the pie becomes one line.
- What's already in the pantry is left off
- With two people in a Family kitchen, both see the list change live
- One list per store, if the turkey comes from somewhere else
A timeline for the day
One oven. Six dishes. One serve time.
Cook a meal takes the turkey, the stuffing, the sides and when you want to eat, and schedules every step backwards from that time. A coach shows what to do now, what's next, and what you're waiting on.
- Set how many ovens and burners you have, and whether one or two people are cooking
- An oven holds one temperature (within 10°F) and two dishes at a time, so a dish that needs a different temperature is moved earlier
- You're warned when that leaves a hot dish waiting
- Rosemary focaccia
- Lemon-garlic chicken
- Summer panzanella
Before you start
What you still plan yourself.
- Cook a meal plans one cooking session, so the days before Thursday are ones you fill in on the meal plan.
- Cooking times come from your recipes' steps. A step that says “roast until done” gets an estimate, so write your turkey's roasting time into the recipe.
- The “Thaw it tonight” reminder comes the evening before, which is days late for a big turkey. Set a reminder of your own for its thaw day.
- There's no App Store or Google Play version yet. Hedgehog Chef runs in the browser on a phone or computer and installs from there to your home screen.
- There's no free plan. After the 14-day trial, someone in the kitchen subscribes, or the kitchen pauses with everything in it kept.
Free help, no account
Thanksgiving answers from our blog.
- Thanksgiving cooking timeline: what to make when
- A Thanksgiving grocery list sorted by aisle
- How much turkey per person (and sides)
- How long a thawed turkey keeps in the fridge
- Can you make stuffing ahead?
- How to make gravy without drippings
For the bird itself, the free turkey calculator works out the size for your guest count, the day to move it to the fridge and how long it roasts.
Thawing times are from USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service.
FAQ
Questions people ask first.
More on the FAQ page and in the help center.
When should I start planning Thanksgiving dinner?
About two weeks out: settle the menu and the guest count, then work out the turkey's thaw day. USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service allows about 24 hours in the fridge for every 4 to 5 pounds of turkey, so a 16-pound bird goes in the fridge on the Sunday before.
Can it make a cooking schedule for the day?
Yes. Cook a meal takes the recipes and the time you want to eat, and schedules every step backwards from it for your ovens, burners and one or two cooks. It plans one cooking session, so make-ahead days go on the meal plan.
Can guests see the shopping list?
The two people in a Family kitchen share the live list. Anyone else gets a copy: Share list sends what's still to buy as plain text, and it doesn't update when the list changes.
Can I reuse this year's plan next year?
Yes. Save the week as a menu, and next year apply it to a new week. The recipes stay in your library, so a Holidays binder keeps them together.
Is it free?
New kitchens get 14 days free with no card. Then Individual is $5.99 a month or $49.99 a year for one person, and Family is $9.99 a month or $83.99 a year for two. There's no free plan.
Thanksgiving, planned.
Save your recipes, plan the menu and shop from one list. 14 days free, no card needed.