I'm a self-proclaimed aspiring Martha Stewart, so I've always prided myself in cooking elaborate Thanksgiving dinners for my family from scratch.

I'd spend days doing food prep and writing out a detailed plan of when to make certain dishes, how to store them, and which time each needed to go in the oven.

Last year, after cooking a full Thanksgiving meal from Ina Garten recipes for an assignment ahead of Thanksgiving, I was ready for a break. That's when we first tried ordering a heat-and-serve Thanksgiving meal instead.

Because my family had eaten at Cracker Barrel for the first time last year and enjoyed it, we decided to order its heat-and-serve Thanksgiving dinner last year.

The $130 meal included everything from turkey to dinner rolls and actually cost way less than what I'd normally spend on Thanksgiving groceries.

Even better? The dishes tasted just as good as my homemade menu items and saved us hours in the kitchen.

Our Cracker Barrel meal last year included turkey, gravy, and essential sides like mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, and green beans — plus a few extras.

This year, we ordered a full Thanksgiving meal from Costco for an early Thanksgiving celebration with my visiting mother-in-law. We were treated to a full spread for eight guests for $180.

The dinner included staples like green-bean casserole, cornbread stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, corn, mac and cheese, and pumpkin pie. There was nothing we missed having on our dinner table.

Although I could make mac and cheese from scratch the day before the holiday and pull out Crock-Pots from storage to keep mashed potatoes and gravy warm on Thanksgiving, it's nice not to have to.

In fact, I wish I could've told myself about this amazing holiday hack 10 years ago, as it would have saved me so much time in the kitchen.

Instead of cooking elaborate Thanksgiving meals, my family all pitches in with heating up our premade dinner, which takes a matter of minutes compared to the days of cooking in years past.

With that out of the way, we can spend time doing things as a family, like running Turkey Trots, playing board games, or even going to the movies.

My kids are teenagers now, and with their busy schedules, we rarely get a day all together in the house. I'm thankful that I don't have to spend the day cooking and can actually hang out with my teens instead.

Although I may return to cooking family recipes on Thanksgiving in the future, there's something lovely about letting an outside party handle the meal so I can focus on my family instead.

While my kids are teenagers with jobs, school schedules, and social lives, I'd prefer to spend the holiday being present with them instead of frantically managing the kitchen.

For this reason, I'll continue to order Thanksgiving dinner from chains for the foreseeable future. After all, homemade pies and mashed potatoes can wait — but making memories with my kids can't.

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.