Damon Lee Fowler

Over the more than three decades that I've been teaching and writing about cooking, the biggest challenge has been coming up with fresh ways to talk about coping with our big cook's holiday, Thanksgiving. In all that time, the focus, both in my work and most everyone else's, has been on tackling a feast for a crowd without killing ourselves.

It never occurred to me—or apparently anyone else—that, as challenging as cooking for that crowd might be, it's nothing to the challenge of The Dwindling Thanksgiving Table. That, I had to learn the hard way.

When we moved to Virginia, I happily imagined our dining room table at Thanksgiving, Read More 

Two of my favorite things about cooking Thanksgiving dinner are the broth pots that begin and end it. Not only does that wonderful aroma fill the house twice, that second batch of broth squeezes out every ounce of goodness the bird had to offer, and extends the holiday feasting into the weekend and beyond.

By Thanksgiving night, since we had a small bird and a large crowd, Read More 

It's none of my business what kind of gravy you serve today. Whether you add wine, include the giblets and add chopped boiled eggs, or thicken it with a roux or butter is up to you. But here's how to make that gravy silky-smooth and delicious. Read More 

Hands down the best turkey roasting advice of 2022 is "Just put the ******* turkey in the oven!"

The more you fuss and stress over it, the more you're opening yourself to angst and disappointment. Relax: It roasts just like a REALLY BIG chicken; it just takes longer. Allow plenty of time, use a reliable meat thermometer to gage doneness, and remember the only thing that matters is how it tastes. It doesn't have to look a magazine cover shot.

So, before we turn in for the night, here are a few thoughts on that bird and its quintessential accompaniment—the dressing. Read More 

I'd like to tell you that my grandmother's pumpkin pie recipe was an old family one that has been passed down for generations, but I can't. She got it right off a can of pumpkin puree, varying it only in the spice and liquid she used, since I was allergic to cloves and my father to nutmeg, and she but rarely had cream in the house but always had evaporated milk.

You can make the filling completely from scratch with a pumpkin you've roasted and pureed yourself if you have nothing better to do; but Read More 

Today is pie-making day in my house, and in the chill of the morning, I'm putting together the pastry so it'll have time to rest before I roll and prebake it later this afternoon.

If you've never made your own pastry, this may not be the time to try to learn. Not that it's complicated or difficult: it isn't. But it does take some finesse and experience to do it well. If the very thought paralyzes you, then a ready-made roll-out crust from the market is your safest option. Buy and use it without apology. Read More 

My late Baptist-preacher father used to love relating the story of a minister who one bright Sunday morning delivered a rousing sermon on love, and then repeated it word for word the following Sunday. And on the next one. And again on the one after that. Finally, a deacon cautiously approached and, after complimenting the stirring words of his message, gently pointed out that it was the same sermon the preacher had delivered every Sunday for at least a month.

The preacher smiled, nodded, and said, "Well, yes it is. I'm glad you finally noticed. I had to keep repeating that message until I thought you all were hearing it."

Well. Here we are four days from Thanksgiving and here comes the same sermon about homemade broth that y'all have heard from me dozens of times. Read More 

In her memoire, Amarcord, the late Italian cooking maven Marcella Hazan humorously related her first encounter with one of our country's most enduring Thanksgiving traditions, that of accompanying the turkey with a tart-sweet condiment made from cranberries.

Thinking the sauce that her host had solicitously spooned over her turkey was akin to peperonata (a savory sauce of red peppers and caramelized onions), her first bite was such a shock that it took all her self-control to keep from spitting it out.

Eventually, Signora Hazan was able to embrace the sweet tomato ketchup that was persistently slathered on her hamburgers, but never made her peace with cranberry sauce. I couldn't blame her: Read More 

If you've not already planned your Thanksgiving menu and started shopping for it, it's time you got cracking. You don't want to wait too late to plan and shop or you could be faced with rethinking your menu when the store sells out of some of the essential ingredients.

Planning that menu will be simple if you are wise and stick to your family's traditions.

Every single autumn social media is riddled with cooks asking for "something new and different" for this meal, claiming to be tired of and/or bored with cooking and eating the same old things every Thanksgiving.  Read More 

Thanksgiving may be a little over a week away, but it's not too early to start planning. In fact, if you haven't already started doing that, you're a little late—but not dangerously so.

Big holiday dinners don't have to be complicated, but we're easing out of a pandemic and even seasoned cooks are a little out of practice. As for you who are unseasoned, if the closest you've ever come to turkey in your kitchen is the deli-sliced variety in a sandwich, you really do need a plan—and help, so don't be shy about asking for it.

To that end, over the next week leading up to Thanksgiving, I'm resurrecting Mastering Thanksgiving, the series Read More 

Since we had Thanksgiving dinner away from home, to give us "leftovers" other than my contributions to the feast, I'd not only made broth but later roasted a turkey breast on a bed of diced carrot, celery, and onion and baked a small pan of sage and onion cornbread dressing.

The weather here has turned brisk, with temperatures dropping below freezing at night, so the obvious end for those leftovers was a nice, thick soup. Read More 

Y'all, I cannot seem to help myself.

For our first Virginia Thanksgiving, we're not hosting but are going to another family member's home. My part of the meal is my grandfather's macaroni pie, cranberry relish with apples and oranges, and a sweet potato souffle from a fondly remembered Savannah friend.

So I'm not cooking the turkey, gravy, or dressing. And yet: There's a big pot of turkey broth simmering away in my sunny yellow kitchen as I write this, and I'll roast a turkey breast later on for sandwiches, creamed turkey over dressing, and turkey soup.

The thing is, it's just not Thanksgiving if my house doesn't smell like roasted turkey and broth,  Read More 

This year, for the first time in at least thirty-eight years, I’m probably not going to be cooking Thanksgiving dinner. Or if I do, it will be in a strange inadequately equipped kitchen, sharing the job with someone else, and keeping mostly with their traditions. My sister-in-law is gathering the clan at a beach house in North Carolina and the meal is likely to be a communal effort.

It feels strange not to be making the final tweaks to my menu, planning and executing my shopping forays, and cleaning out the refrigerator to make room for everything. Read More 

This year, I’m not doing my usual planning and precooking for Thanksgiving dinner, which has not been easy. For the first time in years my house isn’t fragrant with turkey broth and roasting pecans and my refrigerator isn’t crammed with more food than will fit into it.

My father turns ninety on Thanksgiving Day, so Tim and I are heading up to my parents’ house to be with them. I’ll be cooking, but it will be my mother’s way and there will be a lot of things that I usually do that won’t be on the table this year.

Never mind.  Read More 

Since fall is my favorite season for cooking, it shouldn’t take a mathematical genius to figure out that Thanksgiving is my favorite cook’s holiday. Normally, the second week in November would find me up to my elbows in planning—gathering recipes, happily mapping out every detail, stocking up on the basics.

And by the week of the feast, my kitchen is fragrant with a simmering broth pot, bubbling cranberry conserve, baking cheese straws, and toasting pecans. For the space of that week, no kitchen job—not even peeling brussels sprouts—seems tedious.

This year, however, my kitchen will be a lot quieter, not to mention less fragrant.  Read More 

It isn’t my job to tell you what kind of gravy to serve with your turkey. Whether or not you add wine to it, and whether you include the giblets and add chopped boiled eggs is up to you. My job is to show you how to make gravy that’s silky-smooth and delicious. You will need a roasting pan with a heavy enough bottom to withstand direct heat, a degreasing pitcher (fat separator), and a flat whisk. Read More 

The other key ingredient in my family’s cornbread dressing is actually another kind of bread altogether: biscuits. They give the dressing body and help bind it together without having to add eggs, which can sometimes make dressing a bit heavy.

Unfortunately, few home cooks seem to make biscuits very often, which is too bad. Because once one gets the knack, they’re drop-dead easy, and serving forth a basket of delicate, piping hot biscuits never fails to impress company. They always think you’ve gone to a lot more trouble than you actually have. Read More 

Before tackling the stuffing or dressing, a quick word about tradition, with a word (and recipe) for one of the ingredients from my own tradition.

The wonderful thing about what you put into that savory bread pudding that accompanies your turkey, no matter what you put in it and whether you bake it in the bird or out of it, is that it’s one time that sticking to tradition will win for you every time. You really don’t have to think about it, analyze it, or reinvent it—you just make it and sit back and bask in the praise. Read More 

If all has gone well and you’ve done enough basic prep by tomorrow, your only really big job will be the turkey and dressing. If you haven’t tried to roast a turkey in a year (or have never done it), relax: a turkey roasts just like a chicken – it just takes longer. Allow plenty of time and remember that it doesn’t have to look like those magazine covers. Read More 

Until now, this series has been about planning ahead, doing ahead, and keeping calm. This installment, however, is for those of you who have, until now, done none of that, either because cooking the dinner was not supposed to be your worry or because you’re a world-class procrastinator.

It doesn’t matter why you’re not prepared, and the purpose of this is not to shame or judge you.  Read More 

One of the lovely things about Thanksgiving dinner is the way family traditions are perpetuated from generation to generation as we gather around that common table. Even lovelier is the way other traditions get adopted and shared as people come into our family and as we get absorbed into theirs, sometimes through legal ties but more often just because we love one another. Read More 

Now that we’ve established that I take an ecumenical approach to the traditional sweet potato and pumpkin custard pies on Thanksgiving’s dessert board, and have shared my grandmother’s recipe for the former, here’s how she made the latter.

It’s just a standard pumpkin custard without frills or “reinvention,” varying from most other American recipes only in detail.  Read More 

I am not entering into the argument over whether pumpkin pie is a Yankee thing and sweet potato is a Southern one. My grandmother always served both at Thanksgiving, and both sweet potato and pumpkin pie (they were sometimes just called “custard”) were included in one of our earliest published records of Southern Cooking, Mary Randolph’s classic The Virginia House-Wife (1824), and both were included in most every antebellum Southern cookbook that followed, from Lettice Bryan’s Kentucky Housewife (1839) through Mrs. Hill’s New Cook Book (1867). Read More 

Never mind the arguments over whether the pie should be pumpkin, sweet potato, pecan or not pie at all, but cheesecake: the easiest way to deal with whatever you’ve planned for the grand finale is to sweet talk someone else into doing it. However, if you’ve not done that (or you’re the person who got sweet-talked), and are contemplating a ready-made pastry, know that the difference between a memorable pie and a merely good one is the crust. Read More 

On Thanksgiving day, practically every table across the country on which the centerpiece is our quintessentially American bird, one can almost take for granted that the turkey will be mated with another quintessentially American thing: cranberries.

And despite the hundreds, if not thousands of cranberry sauce, compote, chutney, and relish recipes that are presently cluttering the internet, most of those berries will be served straight out of a can, which is odd. Read More 

One of the most essential elements of Thanksgiving dinner, the one on which the rest of the meal rests, is the one that is the most often neglected: the broth. Each year, of the big packaged broth companies hawks its chicken broth with a warm, fuzzy thing about how caring cooks who love the process always rely on packaged broth to boost the flavor of their best dishes. Read More 

Thanksgiving may be a week away, but that's not as much time as you think: if you don’t already have a plan in place, it’s time to stop daydreaming over those picture-perfect magazine table-settings and turkeys and get real.

As you begin to plan, be aware that your three greatest weapons are good organization, the make-ahead dish, and the fine art of delegation (also known as sweet talking someone into doing something for you), but at the risk of sounding scriptural, the greatest of these is organization. Read More 

This is how we polished off the last of the turkey and dressing in my house. Although it’s now too late for your Thanksgiving leftovers, it’s worth keeping on file, especially if you have turkey and dressing at Christmas. And if you should not have any leftover dressing, try it on waffles, biscuits, or just buttered toast. Read More 

If you’re getting down to the wire with Thanksgiving and don’t have time to make cranberry sauce, but still don’t want to open a can, here’s a quick and simple classic that requires no cooking. If you have a food processor handy, it comes together in five minutes flat—and will keep until Christmas if you keep it well-covered and refrigerated, and use only a clean silver or stainless steel spoon to dip into it. Read More 

It’s now time to talk about the Thanksgiving cook’s central job: the turkey and dressing. If you haven’t tried to roast a turkey in a year (or have never done it) the first thing to do is relax: a turkey roasts just like a chicken – it just takes longer. Allow plenty of time and remember that it doesn’t have to look like those magazine covers. Read More