make complete The Thanksgiving feast can be challenging for guests, perhaps even intimidating for some. The world, and especially Hallmark movies, is full of holiday disaster stories: burnt turkeys, failed desserts, boiled hams. But I’m not bragging when I say that the first Thanksgiving dinner I prepared for my extended family — a little earlier this year — was a runaway success.
My aunt couldn’t stop talking about the black pepper in the biscuits and the sage on the carrots. My uncle went for the turkey and apple-sausage stuffing. My father did not say anything unless prompted. He just ate and ate. This was a compliment.
But of course, I cheated. I ordered mine in the Thanksgiving mail – one of the new breed of Thanksgiving meal kits.
The food was truly home cooked, of course, mostly prepared from scratch. But the entire seven-plate feast – its ingredients and dishes – had arrived two days earlier, in a box large enough to hold the first cut of beef. It was Thanksgiving in a box: A $200 “Chef’s Table Thanksgiving” meal kit was available from sister meal delivery plan Sunbasket and Goblet.
The spread from Sunbasket was huge and generous. On the table was a nearly 3-pound roast of turkey, piles of mashed potatoes, cranberry compote, roasted carrots dressed in miso-sage butter, Brussels sprouts dressed with Pecorino Romano and pancetta, an endless platter of fennel-apple-sausage-stuffing, Gruyère pepper biscuits more than an inch long, a tureen of dark brown… Turkey gravy, a ginger apple crisp is waiting in the wings.
Sunbasket is one of a new line of meal kit companies that aim to ease the stress of the holidays by doing the planning and shopping for you – larger meal boxes designed for those who still want to prepare homemade meals but for whom the prospect of planning a huge and complicated feast is prohibitive. In fact, two weeks later I cooked another Thanksgiving meal from Blue Apron, this time for my sister’s family.
Here was my experience with Sunbasket and Blue Apron — and some other Thanksgiving meal delivery options to get your perfect Thanksgiving meal delivered to your door.
Do you want meal kits for more everyday occasions? Check out WIRED’s guides to the best meal delivery services and the best plant-based meal delivery kits,
Blue Apron A La Carte Thanksgiving (and Holiday) Meal Kit
Available till 29th December. Order by November 19th to ensure delivery by Thanksgiving.
Photograph: Matthew Korfage
Photograph: Matthew Korfage
Photograph: Matthew Korfage
Photograph: Matthew Korfage
blue apron
Thanksgiving and Holiday Meal Delivery
Blue Apron, one of the OG meal kits in America, has undergone a wholesale makeover this year. One of the biggest changes is that a membership is no longer required, and it’s possible to order meals à la carte — in fact, it’s now my favorite no-subscription meal kit offering. This means that this Thanksgiving, you can order individual Thanksgiving recipe kits for fresh preparation at home without ever setting foot in a crowded grocery store.
That means roasted grape and goat cheese salad ($12), a large turkey breast with gravy and cranberry sauce ($50), rosemary herb stuffing ($15), truffle-oiled Southern mac and cheese ($20), almond apple crumb pie ($15), brown butter mashed potatoes ($8), challah rolls with maple ($8) and roasted Brussels sprouts with pistachios, ($10). I made all of these dishes for my sister’s family and our parents earlier this year — and it was a surprisingly delicious feast for at least eight people. Maybe even ten if you add an extra order of mashed potatoes.