Fresh green beans, elbow macaroni, and goat cheese were on the ingredient list, which felt fresh, simple, and easy to acquire.

Still, since I was following recipes from a pro, I thought I'd probably have to go to five different stores to gather up all of the ingredients.

To my surprise, I found all the groceries I needed at Walmart in only one trip. 

Garten's deep-dish apple pie was to be our dessert, so I made it a day in advance to save time on the big day.

The recipe called for a lot of citrus zest, but it was simple to get the amount I needed from oranges and lemons using my microplane grater.

I am pretty die-hard about following recipes, but I cheated a little on this one by using a store-bought pie crust rather than making my own. I was glad I did, as the meal was still plenty of work.

I prepped Garten's make-ahead cranberry sauce the day before, too.

I've made cranberry sauce from scratch before, but I prefer the canned variety, so I was curious how Garten's would stack up.

The recipe called for tart Granny Smith apples and lots of citrus zest, which required a lot of grating and chopping.

Garten's sausage-and-herb stuffing was next on my to-do list. I prepped this a day ahead of time as well.

It was easy to brown sausage, cook down ingredients such as apples and onions, and mix everything in a pan with toasted bread pieces. Using the straightforward, simple recipe, the stuffing came together easily and was a breeze to make.

Day one of cooking also involved making Garten's goat-cheese mashed potatoes.

Since the mashed-potato recipe was full of creamy butter and milk, adding goat cheese seemed odd to me, but who am I to argue with Ina?

I prepped the entire recipe in advance, whipping my potatoes with a hand mixer. Then, I loaded the cheesy mixture into a baking pan and topped it with butter and Parmesan cheese.

My kids would riot if mac and cheese was not part of our Thanksgiving meal, so I chose a recipe that involved a fresh tomato topping to mix up our normal side.

In addition to topping the Gruyere-and-cheddar-based mac and cheese with fresh tomatoes, the recipe also called for a fresh breadcrumb topping.

I'd never made fresh breadcrumbs before, but I quickly learned it's easy. I just put slices of bread into a food processor and pulsed. 

One of my favorite ways to keep things organized while cooking a big dinner such as Thanksgiving is to cover each pre-assembled dish with aluminum foil and write the cooking time and temperature on top with a permanent marker.

That way, when it's time to cook, I can easily see what needs to go into the oven at which time and I won't be searching for the recipes again to find the information.

Garten's green-beans gremolata recipe is a big jump from my normal casserole, but I was excited to try a fresher, less creamy approach to the vegetable side. 

Like a lot of Garten's Thanksgiving recipes, the gremolata required lots of citrus zest, along with pine nuts, fresh herbs, and Parmesan.

After blanching the green beans and tossing them into an ice bath, I set them aside for when they'd be sautéed and tossed with the gremolata before serving.

In recent years, my husband and I have spatchcocked our turkey, a technique where you open the bird up, remove the backbone, and lay it flat for cooking.

We were a bit hesitant to try Garten's oven-roast turkey, as it was a way more traditional approach. After prepping the bird and stuffing it with garlic, herbs, onion, and lemon, we popped it into our oven and hoped for the best.

Although Garten's Thanksgiving dinner didn't look like my normal one, it was stunning when everything came out of the oven and was laid out on my kitchen island.

Everything looked delicious and elegant. I immediately thought it was one of the most beautiful meals I'd made in my life.

I spent about 10 hours in the kitchen in total prepping our Thanksgiving menu, and when I saw everything put together, I knew the time was well worth it.

Garten's oven-roast turkey was beautiful and looked like something out of a Thanksgiving movie.

Still, I find the spatchcocking method allows for better planning when it comes to cooking time. With the bird laid flat, I think it's easier to predict how long it'll take to reach the correct internal temperature.

I'm a canned cranberry sauce girl through and through.

Garten's recipe was the most involved cranberry sauce I've ever made from scratch with its citrus zest and chopped apples. It took a lot of work and I don't feel it was worth it. 

It was a bit tart, and in the future, I'd stick with canned cranberry sauce.

I'm a big fan of traditional green-bean casserole made with cream-of-mushroom soup and crispy onions.

Garten's green-beans gremolata was a different dish entirely — fresh and citrusy instead of creamy and full of umami. Still, it was delicious. 

I'd definitely make the side again, just not on Thanksgiving.

I wasn't sure about topping mac and cheese with fresh tomatoes, but it worked.

The homemade breadcrumbs and elbow macaroni provided enough carbs that, when combined with cheese and tomato, it gave everyone at my dinner table grilled-cheese-and-tomato-soup vibes. 

 I loved Garten's mashed potatoes, but adding an ingredient as creamy and tangy as goat cheese definitely changed the flavor profile.

These were not your classic mashed potatoes. Instead, they were a more creamy mash with pungent notes from the goat cheese.

Although they didn't scream "Thanksgiving" to me, I would make them again as a side dish for a different meal.

I've never been into stuffing, as it's always seemed to lack flavor and take up valuable real estate in my stomach — which I'd rather fill with the aforementioned green-bean casserole.

Garten's stuffing recipe, however, made me a convert.

The savoriness of the sausage and herbs combined with the tartness of the apples was perfection and I loved the freshly-made toasted cubes of bread we'd prepped the day before.

Everyone thoroughly enjoyed Garten's deep-dish apple pie, so much so that it was the only menu item we didn't have leftovers of.

Made with tart Granny Smith apples, the pie was the perfect balance of sweet and tangy, combined with a crispy crust. We served each slice with a scoop of vanilla-bean ice cream, the perfect accompaniment.

Going on a 10-hour adventure through some of Garten's most iconic recipes was a lot of fun. Looking back, I'm still proud of my hard work and the beautiful menu I served my guests as a result.

I spent $132.77 on ingredients, which felt like a solid deal considering I was able to feed a dozen people, with leftovers. My usual Thanksgiving meals typically cost me more to prepare.

It was a lot of work,  but there are some great recipes I plan to make again throughout the year or for our next holiday feast. 

This story was originally published on November 9, 2023, and most recently updated on November 25, 2024.

The recipe calls for all the typical ingredients, including onions, celery, sage, and two loaves of stale white bread. However, Martha Stewart also recommends adding optional ingredients like toasted pecans and dried cherries to elevate the stuffing.

For her recipe, Ina Garten recommends toasting your bread first before moving on to sautéing the onions, celery, apples, parsley, salt, and pepper. After sautéing the sausage in the same pan, mix all the ingredients together with chicken stock and the dried cranberries before baking it in the oven.

The chef's Thanksgiving favorite recipe uses mild fresh Italian sausage, diced onion, diced celery, garlic, apples, chestnuts, fresh goat cheese, and a beaten egg before it's baked or stuffed inside the turkey.

The recipe is pretty traditional, except for the inclusion of McIntosh or Empire apples. The stuffing is baked in the oven and calls for seasoned cubed stuffing rather than homemade bread cubes, which many celebrity chefs recommend.

The recipe calls for sliced pepperoni, yellow onions, red bell pepper, pepperoncini peppers, and sun-dried tomatoes. To amp up this Italian-inspired recipe, Fieri also opts to use dried-out focaccia bread rather than white bread.

When Business Insider's Chelsea Davis made the stuffing for her Thanksgiving dinner, she said it "tasted like a loaded pizza."

The recipe doesn't include meat, although it does use chicken broth and poultry seasoning to give it more flavor. Gaines also adds interesting ingredients like heavy cream and mushrooms to her stuffing.

Drummond's dressing recipe — yes, it's technically called dressing if it's not in the bird — uses cornbread, an Italian bread like a ciabatta loaf, and French bread. The recipe doesn't use sausage, although it does include other classic ingredients like celery, parsley, and onions.

The recipe also uses unsalted butter, red onion, celery, carrots, garlic, and fresh sage to add a lot of flavor. Despite Flay mostly being known for his burgers, the recipe has received mostly positive reviews on the Food Network's website, with one user calling it "a staple every year" at their Thanksgiving dinner.

To make Deen's Southern cornbread stuffing recipe, you'll need a stick of butter, chopped celery, chopped onion, chicken stock, plus the ingredients needed to make the cornbread. The recipe also calls for saltine crackers, which Business Insider's Paige Bennett thought was a miss. 

"When I took a bite, I noted the interior was far too soggy — there was definitely too much broth, and the crackers turned mushy after absorbing the liquid," she wrote.

Rosie Mayes, author of the blog I Heart Recipes, told Business Insider that bacon is an easy and delicious addition to any stuffing recipe.

"You can use many different kinds of meat in stuffing, from chicken to turkey and sausage," she said. "However, you can also use crumbled bacon because bacon adds flavor to everything!"

"If you add sausage or any other ingredients that you are cooking up separately, it's great to add the cooking fat or drippings to your stuffing for that extra moisture and flavor," Chungah Rhee, author of "Damn Delicious: 100 Super Easy, Super Fast Recipes" and the blog Damn Delicious, told BI.

In New England, it's traditional to add seafood to stuffing.

"You can add oysters, shrimp, or some people even add scallops to their stuffing," Mayes said.

Instead of throwing away the turkey giblets as you normally might, try repurposing them into the stuffing instead of the traditional sausage.

Mayes said you could also add browned liver to your stuffing for extra flavor. 

Although many stuffing recipes call for sweet Italian sausage, you can also switch up the kind of sausage you use.

For example, if you're looking to give your Thanksgiving stuffing recipe an added kick, you could experiment with spicy Italian sausage like this recipe from chef Emeril Lagasse.

If you don't want to add meat to your stuffing, consider incorporating apples. 

Everyone from famous chefs like Ina Garten to bloggers like Rhee of Damn Delicious have shared their own recipes for apple stuffing.

Cranberries are already a holiday favorite, but they don't need to be limited to just sauce. If you have some extra berries, why not throw them into your stuffing?

The tartness of the cranberries can add flavor, and their bright color makes for a perfect Thanksgiving plate photo opp.

"A mixture of breads such as sourdough, multigrain, whole wheat, or pumpernickel makes for a great stuffing," Rhee told BI.

However, no matter what bread you choose, make sure it's slightly dried so the ingredients are properly absorbed.

"Bread should be dried out," Rhee said. "If you use fresh bread, it will end up soggy or even soupy — we don't want that!"

Although sourdough or plain white bread is traditionally used in stuffing, many people use cornbread instead. Cornbread makes for a super flavorful, Southern-inspired stuffing base and perfectly soaks up the broth and other ingredients.

"I usually use cornbread in my stuffing and I always make it the day before," Mayes told BI. "If I forget to make it the day before, I just overcook it for about 10 to 15 minutes to help dry it out."

"I usually use regular day-old white bread in my stuffing, but I love to add saltine crackers to give it a little more texture as well," Mayes said.

Instead of using chicken or turkey broth, you can add a ton of flavor to your stuffing by opting for a cream-based soup. 

"If you use cream of chicken, cream of mushroom, or cream of celery soup, that's going to add a little moisture and creaminess to your stuffing," Mayes said. 

If you like a little wine on Thanksgiving, why not add it to your stuffing?

"You can absolutely use a dry white wine in place of stock or even incorporate half stock and half wine for some extra flavor," Rhee told BI.

"I generally stick to the essentials — thyme, rosemary, parsley, and garlic," Rhee said. "But you could even add some nutmeg or cardamom for a little kick."

Mayes said that bell peppers are usually a go-to addition to her stuffing. She also likes to use classic vegetables like onions and celery, as well as kale or collard greens.

Pumpkin and butternut squash are two beloved fall fruits that work exceptionally well in stuffing.

To make the perfect pumpkin- or butternut squash-filled stuffing, soften and roast your fruit beforehand to ensure it gets tender before you add it to your stuffing. Otherwise, it might not cook quickly enough. 

Although carrots, celery, onions, and leeks "cover the basics," you can also add Brussels sprouts to just about any traditional stuffing recipe, said Rhee.

Although many choose to stuff their dressing inside the turkey or bake it in a pan inside the oven, you can also make stuffing in a slow cooker or Crock-Pot.

"Oven stuffing is always great but if you are trying to keep your oven and stovetop reserved for other dishes, a slow-cooker version is another easy and delicious way to make your Thanksgiving stuffing without adding any more stress," Rhee said.

This story was originally published on November 20, 2020, and most recently updated on November 20, 2024.