Thanksgiving is all about comfort: from all your favorite dishes on a single table to the chance to reconnect with loved ones, it’s no wonder we spend so much time and energy planning it. One thing that’s easy to overlook, however, is the quality of tools used to prepare our favorite fall feast. Having well-made, durable cookware, bakeware, and other pieces that won’t warp, burn your food, or leave you with a sticky mess can dramatically streamline the cooking and cleaning process.
Here, we’ve laid out all of our essential pieces for Thanksgiving prep—many of which we happen to love for year-round cooking as well.
Prep Essentials
Great food starts with organized, efficient prep, good ingredients, and—of course—high-quality tools.
Mise en Place
Mise en place—literally, “everything in its place” —is a French culinary practice that involves prepping, measuring, and organizing all of your ingredients before you start the actual cooking process. Our Mise en Place Bowls set includes four different sizes, so you can prep everything from the tiniest amount of fresh garlic or herbs to a pound of cubed stew meat. The nested bowls are also chip-resistant, dishwasher-safe, and easy to store, making them a seriously convenient—and space-saving—addition to your arsenal.
Knives
This one likely needs little explanation, but a knife—particularly a Chef Knife—is fundamental to any kind of kitchen prep work. For Thanksgiving prep, you’ll need a good-quality, sharp knife for chopping up vegetables and herbs for your mise en place, carving up your turkey, ham, or roast, and slicing pies and desserts.
In addition to a Chef Knife, we also recommend having a Bread Knife (aka a serrated knife) for cubing up bread for stuffing, slicing cornbread and other baked goods, and carving up fruit for your dessert spread; and a Paring Knife for peeling, coring, and trimming vegetables, mincing garlic and shallots, and a host of other prep tasks.
Butcher Block
A Butcher Block is essentially a thick, sturdy wooden cutting board, ideally made from a soft, high-quality wood that will absorb the blows of your Chef’s Knife without sustaining permanent scratches or dulling your blade. Like a Chef Knife, a good butcher block is a year-round kitchen essential that you’ll get a ton of use out of, even after the holidays are over.
Our Butcher Block is made from soft but durable edge-grain maple, and features a two-sided design for optimal versatility: use the flat side for prepping your vegetables, then flip it over to the grooved side when you’re ready to carve your turkey so you can keep all those precious juices off your countertop.
Cooking Essentials
Now that we’ve covered prep tools, it’s time to talk about the main event: cooking the actual meal (including the turkey). Here’s everything you’ll need to deliver the perfect holiday meal, from sides to gravy to everything in between.
Roasting Pan
Choosing the right roasting pan is pivotal: using a cheap, flimsy roasting pan (or, heaven forbid, a disposable aluminum one) can easily turn your expensive, painstakingly brined and seasoned, heritage bird into a burnt or undercooked disaster. Our advice: don’t do it. Instead, go for something made from a durable, highly conductive—not to mention, lightweight—metal like stainless steel.
Our Stainless Clad Roasting Pan (with removable stainless insert) features a super conductive aluminum core, which ensures even browning and perfectly juicy—not dry—breast and leg meat. The 3-Ply construction makes for a durable, warp-resistant piece that is also light enough to carry from oven to table, even with a 24lb turkey in tow.
Stainless Clad Frying Pan
A staple product in home and commercial kitchens alike, our Italian-made Stainless Frying Pan is a must-have for any holiday (or any night of the week, honestly). Able to handle up to 800F, it can be used for anything from a syrup for pre-dinner cocktails to reheating leftovers the next day.
Stainless Clad Saucier
With curved walls and a large surface area, the Saucier is the perfect one-pot tool for holiday dishes like gravy, mac and cheese, or stuffing. The lack of corners ensures thorough stirring and prevents any ingredients from hiding in the corners and getting burnt—a must-have when you’re working fast and multitasking a few different sides at once. Break yours out and prepare to not only feel more professional, but field constant inquiries of “where did you get THAT?” from family and friends (speaking from experience!).
Dutch Oven
Another absolute essential we wouldn’t do without for a food-centric holiday is the humble Dutch Oven. It’s perfect for any recipe that requires low-and-slow cooking, and our proprietary tight-fitting Cloud Cover Lid ensures moisture is retained and nothing dries out. Made and hand-enameled in France, it will become as much of an heirloom as the recipes on your table.
Baking Slab
The Baking Slab, designed to the exacting standards of Chef Nancy Silverton, is a holiday meal hero for its versatility—at roughly the size of a half sheet pan and oven-safe up to 650F, it can be used to roast vegetables or sides as well as large-format pies. And, with the same French porcelain construction as the rest of our Bakeware Collection, it makes for a gorgeous serving vessel on your holiday tablescape.
Pie Dish
In our minds, pie is virtually as important as the turkey—which means that choosing the right pie dish is essential. Our Pie Dish is made from the best-quality enameled French porcelain, lending it an elegant finish as well as a durable, thermal shock-resistant build with a deep interior. This construction helps create flaky, evenly browned pie crusts as well as perfectly cooked fillings, and is versatile enough to use for both fruit- and custard-based pies. We even recommend using it for cakes and quiches, as well.
Serving Essentials
Once the dinner is cooked, it's time to plate and enjoy the fruits of your labor. No matter if you serve buffet- or family-style, here's all the serving essentials you need for the big event.
Turkey Platter
Now that it’s time to serve up that gorgeous bird you’ve been working on all day, you want to make sure you’ve got a serving platter that’s worthy of your hard work. We recommend something made from low-porosity, thermal shock-resistant ceramic, like our durable vitrified ceramic Turkey Serving Platter. With a flat center and gently sloping sides, our Platter holds everything from an entire carved turkey (along with all those tasty juices) to a party’s worth of hors d’oeuvres or apps.
Carving Knife + Fork
A quality carving knife is designed to make quick work of poultry, roasts, and other large-format proteins without tearing the flesh. While your Chef Knife can work in a pinch, our French-made Carving Knife and Fork are a natural choice for breaking down large birds. Featuring a longer, thinner blade than a Chef Knife, with an extra-pointy tip, the Carving Knife helps cleanly separates meat from bone, skin and tendon. The two-pronged Carving Fork then hold the meat in place while you cut, mirroring the look of the Carving Knife with its brushed stainless finish and black POM handle. The result of this duo is a clean, evenly carved, perfectly Rockwellian turkey.
Wine Glasses
If your Thanksgiving table is anything like ours, the wine is flowing (and flowing early). Save precious table space and give your guests a better experience from the moment they walk in with our universal Wine Glasses that equally suit red or white (or bubbly, if that’s your turkey day vibe). Made in Germany from lead-free, dishwasher-safe crystal, our proprietary shaped Wine Glasses are a must-have for any holiday gathering.
Pie Server
A flimsy, poorly-shaped pie server can turn your perfect lattice-topped apple pie into a crumbly mess—a Dantean fate, if you ask us. Thankfully, our Pie Server is strategically angled to match the deeper slope of our Pie Dish, sliding smoothly underneath each slice of pie without any breakage. With a pointed tip, it’s also sharp enough to puncture top crusts and icing layers for a cleaner slice.
Ready to Cook?
With all the prep work, planning, and finagling of oven and fridge space you’ll be doing on Thanksgiving Day, the last thing you want to worry about is faulty cookware. And while we can’t guarantee that everything will go off without a hitch, we know that our Thanksgiving Essentials will get you at least part of the way there.
