A Pro Chef's Tips for Planning a Perfect, Stress-Free Holiday Meal

“I usually start with who’s coming, how many, and what allergies or dietary limitations there are,” she says, “Because that’s going to dictate everything else you need to do. Once I know who’s coming, I can start figuring out what time I want to do the event."

As for those dietary preferences, Brubaker assumes she’ll have at least one vegan or vegetarian guest at the table. Which means she’ll devise a couple of easy ways to make that person feel like they’re not just nibbling on side dishes.

The first step is to make a flavorful vegetarian stock with carrots, celery, onions, herbs (or what chefs call mirepoix), and maybe even some mushrooms for a little shot of umami. This can be cooked for as little as 45 minutes and frozen in advance. The meat-free stock allows for soups, sauces, and stuffing to be vegetarian-friendly but still tasty.

She’ll also plan a festive vegetarian entrée. A particular favorite is a tiny delicata or honeynut squash that’s cut in half, roasted, and stuffed with, say, wild rice and pecans. “I get a little pomegranate molasses and just drizzle it over the top to give it a little zing and a rich depth of flavor,” she says. The tiny squash can occupy a place of honor on a vegan guest’s plate instead of roast beef or turkey, while also letting the carnivores enjoy a smaller portion of squash as a side veg. “They’re really cute and absolutely delicious.”

This is the time to get your kitchen under control. “I start with spring-cleaning my pantry, my oven, my refrigerator, and my freezer,” Brubaker says. “I like to make sure I’m organized and ready to go.”

Once you’ve spruced up your workspace, find the necessities you haven’t used since the last holiday: a roasting pan stashed in the garage, a meat thermometer, and even your gravy boat. Brubaker will also pull out Post-its and label every single bowl or serving vessel with what goes inside: “This platter is for the prime rib,” and “This chafing dish is for the strata side dish.”

Brubaker likes to calibrate her meat thermometer in advance by dunking it in ice water to see whether it reads an accurate 32º F or whether she needs to adjust her temperature readings. If you need a new meat thermometer, the $15 ThermoPro below is inexpensive, widely available, and sits near the top of our ratings.

During the week before the holiday, she’ll roast a chicken so she can understand if her oven is running a little hot or a bit cold, and by how much. She’s not a fan of convection ovens for cooking meat like prime rib; she thinks that the fan tends to dry things out.

If you’re ordering a prime rib, or a rack of lamb or a turkey, start your shopping early so can you get a high-quality main course in a size that’s appropriate.

"I like to get a prime rib that I know is good quality, and I don’t want to pick up whatever I can just get," she explains. And while a butcher is your best option, it’s not your only alternative. "Even Costco will take orders for a roast in advance."

Some Italian families do the Feast of the Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve. Brubaker suggests that this is a time to plan a menu well in advance and reach out to the best fishmonger in your area with your order, especially for hard-to-get items. "If you want to do uni (sea urchin "roe") you’d better order it as soon as possible," says Brubaker.

This is also the time to think about ordering bread and desserts. Is there a special sourdough that you like? Cookies? Pies? If you’re a savory-only chef, call your favorite bakery now and put in an order. Or have one of your guests do it—and you’ll have that task covered.

With the main course and desserts on order, Brubaker now plans to make a big trip to the supermarket, while it’s still well stocked and not crowded.

“The worst thing to do is shop during those three days before the holiday, because everything’s gone and you’re just stuck with what you find,” she says. “So I try to do my big shopping in advance, knowing what will last for a week. The potatoes are fine. Salad mixes usually will be fine for a week.”

This is also the time to consider applying an exotic spin to one of your mainstays, shopping for seasonings and ingredients you might not have in the pantry. “Instead of doing mashed potatoes, try a curried sweet potato. Or a tagine of couscous and lentils with apricots and almonds and cumin,” Brubaker says. “When you do a different type of side dish, it brings a whole new flavor experience to the family.”

One of Brubaker’s favorite Christmas sides is strata, which is a savory bread pudding: Think stuffing with custard. "I love doing it with mushrooms and leeks and all those winter alliums," she explains. "That gives it a really solid flavor."

Brubaker recalls that when she was a child, her mother would have a giant Hanukkah party, sometimes with more than 100 guests. "She would do like 50 pounds of potatoes and 25 pounds of onions and have a latke frying party," she recalls. The latke party guests would fry them, and her mother would layer them between foil and freeze them. "She’d reheat them and be able to pull them out all night long during the real party."

This is also a good time to acquire some good-quality containers for your leftovers, like the ones from Ikea that were top-rated by our testers.

If you purchased a frozen turkey, roast, or leg of lamb, thawing it takes more time than you think. If you want to defrost it slowly in a cooler or your refrigerator it will take a few days, depending on the size. For most frozen meats, plan on 24 hours for every 4 to 5 pounds, our food experts say. According to the Department of Agriculture, you can speed up the process of thawing a turkey by leaving it in its wrapping and submerging it completely in cool water in a sink or large container. Change the water every 30 minutes and be prepared to cook the turkey immediately after it has thawed.

This stretch of time is also a good opportunity to actually start cooking. For example, you can make acidic and sugary sauces, like chutneys, as much as a week ahead.

It’s also time to think about baking Christmas cookies. "I plan to do 10 different varieties of cookies," Brubaker explains. "I’m making four dozen of each cookie, and I’ll make five different doughs. I ball them, and I freeze them, so when I’m ready to do the cookie trays I can pull them out and be able to bake them instead of cutting, slicing, and balling the dough." And while she bakes traditional Christmas cookies, she’ll also add rugelach, mandelbrot, and coconut macaroons, so she can gift an interdenominational cookie tray to her friends and family.

If you’re cooking a roast beef or lamb roast, it’s a good time to make sure you’ve got the ingredients for a dry brine, like kosher salt, black pepper, and various dry spices such as thyme, rosemary, celery salt, and paprika. The actual dry brining takes 12 to 24 hours in your refrigerator.

If you’re making a brisket for Hanukkah, braise it two days early, slice it the next day, and reheat it on the day of. "I don’t order it ’cleaned,’" Chef Brubaker explains. "A lot of people want it without the fat—that’s the way my family did it. But the barbecue movement told us that you’re just making your brisket tough by doing that."

If you’re cooking a turkey and it’s fully thawed, it’s time to brine it with ice water, salt, sugar, and toasted spices. To be safe, do this in your fridge. Don’t skimp on the time; your bird will be better if it’s brined for a full 24 hours. While some recipes suggest moving the turkey straight from the brine to the oven, Brubaker contends that this skips a crucial step. She dries the bird thoroughly inside and out with paper towels and then puts it in the fridge lightly covered for as long as 24 hours. “The more you let the bird dry in your refrigerator, the more it dehydrates and loses its liquid,” she says. The result? A crispy, flavorful skin that rivals Peking duck.

If your knife skills are a little rusty and you need a primer on how to dice an onion safely, see the video below with a demo from Carolyn Moribito, an instructor at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., and a professional caterer.

This is the time to do your heavy lifting, cooking-wise. “Anything you can just reheat, do it a couple of days ahead,” she says. "Make your mac and cheese and then just heat it up, so it gets that nice caramelized top.”

While many people view passing plates around as a holiday tradition, Brubaker serves her meal buffet-style and suggests you consider doing the same. “I like to do a buffet rather than passing the food around the table because we always host so many people,” she says. “It’s less stress on the host, and there’s more of that fun reveal, rather than everyone just watching someone carve the meat.”

While most of us set the table almost as an afterthought, just before it’s time to eat, Brubaker suggests that doing it a couple of days in advance brings with it a host of advantages. “I like the word ‘tablescape.’ Being able to bring the table to life with something other than the food is really fun,” she says. “And bringing everything out in advance brings that magical anticipation. It almost makes your stomach growl to see the table pretty and ready for the food.”

While setting the table a couple of days in advance gives you time to be artistic, it also gives you the opportunity to discover that, say, your best wineglasses need a lap through the dishwasher. “You know you’ve got the right silverware washed and every little bowl and dish is found, so there’s no scrambling,” she says.

She adds that a pretty table doesn’t have to be expensive: “It doesn’t necessarily need to be a giant flower arrangement. It could be pine boughs. It could be pine cones. It could be, you know, painted, anything.”

“The magic of cell phones and smartwatches is setting timers,” says Brubaker. This step may seem a little like your day job, but she says it’s crucial in minimizing the guesswork on the day of the event.

“I draft a timeline and then sit there with my phone the night before and program in all of those timers. If I’m eating dinner at 6, I know I need to pull out my strata at 3 o’clock to let it temper for an hour before I want to throw it in the oven,” she says. “Yes, I’ll have 50 timers, but each one will be labeled with exactly what I need to do. Timer 1: Turn on the oven to this temperature. Timer 5: Put meat in the oven.”

And even if you’ve been diligent with planning and cooking in advance, think of the day before the holiday as an opportunity to play catch-up. Set aside some time to review your menu, and prep and cook anything that’s not already done, besides, of course, the main course. Obviously, if your family celebrates on Christmas Eve, you’ll probably want to start your prep cycle a day early.

Since the December holidays are a little bit less about a formal sit-down meal than Thanksgiving, Brubaker likes to prep some dishes that can be heated and served for unexpected guests. She loves a baked brie with some leftover cranberry sauce for acid, dried apricots for sweetness, and maybe some pistachios for crunch.

She also tries to stay seasonal. She’ll serve a tray of bruschetta, but instead of mid-winter tomatoes that have all the texture and flavor of packing material, she uses pears and walnuts on top of the crostini. And for sides, Brubaker will make sweet roasted carrots and onions, marble-size potatoes with garlic and rosemary, and Swiss chard or roasted Brussels sprouts to add a bitter note.

“I start my day with a mimosa or Bloody Mary,” Brubaker says. “I’ll build the cold salad, put it back in the refrigerator. And visit with my guests and open presents.” Aside from a few dishes, best done on the day of, like, say, charred Brussels sprouts, all of your cooking should be done.

In the hours leading up to the meal, it’s a matter of listening for your timers and taking the food out of the fridge so that it comes up to room temperature (chefs call this tempering), and then popping it into the oven to heat up.

"I like to make the noodle kugel on the day of," says Chef Brubaker. She notes that the flavor improves on Day 2, but the cornflakes on top are at their crispiest right out of the oven, so she nods toward texture instead of taste.

For actually cooking her turkey, prime rib, or lamb roast, Brubaker, who lives in California, likes to use a charcoal grill. “I have a Big Green Egg, so we’ll just slow-roast it and get a little bit of charcoal smoke,” she says. The advantage of cooking low and slow outdoors is two-fold. It frees up your oven space. And it alleviates the pressure in terms of precise timing.

Don’t forget to check the temperature with a meat thermometer midway through your cooking. (A turkey is done when a thermometer reads 165º F. Our food-safety experts have said that the pop-up timers on many turkeys aren’t always accurate. A rare roast beef is done at 125º F, although the USDA recommends a temperature of 145º F. ) If your meat is cooking faster than anticipated, pull it away from the heat and tent it with some foil. If it seems like you’re behind, move the meat closer to the heat. And either way, remember to leave ample time—at least 20 minutes—for the meat to rest before serving.

And once your meat is done and all of those amazing sides are heated up and on the table, it’s time to stop and enjoy a moment of togetherness with your guests. “My favorite moment of a holiday is the silence after everybody’s gotten their plate and everybody’s eating, and it’s quiet around the table,” she says. “You know the food is good when you just hear forks and knives and the noise of the meal. That’s the part that makes my heart sing.”