National Holidays

Thanksgiving & Christmas: Top 200 Recipes (All Recipes Tried & True)

In TRIED & TRUE – THANKSGIVING & CHRISTMAS, all of your favorite holiday recipes are collected in one comprehensive cookbook, along with essential preparation, meal planning, and cooking tips.

Featuring:

• Homestyle Turkey —the Michigander Way,
• Hot Buttered Rum Batter,
• Rockin’ Oysters Rockefeller, and
• Santa’s Favorite Cake,

this festive TRIED & TRUE volume includes those treasured dishes that families have shared for generations.

Betty Crocker Complete Thanksgiving Cookbook is the complete hands-on guide to cooking a great Thanksgiving dinner–from Americas most trusted friend in the kitche.

Thanksgiving showcases cooking like no other holiday, as family and friends from near and far gather to share this special harvest-time meal. But while it sparks joyous feelings of celebration, this focus on food can also mean major stress for those in charge of preparing the feast and getting it on the table.

At last! Betty Crocker comes to the rescue with this complete do-it-yourself guide to making a delicious Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings–and none of the headaches. Perfect for beginners and Thanksgiving “first-timers” as well as more experienced cooks, it includes 130 of Betty Crockers most popular and time-tested Thanksgiving recipes. The book covers a range of recipes, from traditional roasting to new and interesting cooking variations like brining, grilling, and even deep-frying turkeys, plus lots of great ideas for sides, desserts, and more. Twelve count-down menus cover every aspect of the meal–such as when to set the table and how to time the gravy so its ready to serve at just the right time. The menus suit a whole range of lifestyles and situations, from dinner for two to dinner for twenty, from vegetarian and low-fat menus to a super-simple, low-stress menu for first-time cooks.

Complete with eight pages of mouthwatering photographs, detailed line drawings, and easy how-tos for turkey stuffing, roasting, carving, and more, Betty Crockers Complete Thanksgiving Cookbook is one guest everyone will want to have in the kitchen this fall and in the years to come.

From the Back Cover

The Complete Hands-On Guide to Cooking a Great Thanksgiving Meal

Whether you’re cooking Thanksgiving dinner for the first time or have hosted this celebration for years, here’s all you need to know to make your holiday special. Thanksgiving can be the most challenging meal to prepare–even for the most experienced cooks. Betty Crocker comes to the rescue with this complete do-it-yourself guide to making Thanksgiving delicious. Here are the treasured recipes with all the trimmings that you grew up with, plus plenty of great new twists on the traditional.

You’ll find:

• The most popular and time-tested recipes for the classics, from roast turkey with pan gravy and bread stuffing to pumpkin, apple and pecan pies and much more
• New and innovative ways with the bird include brining, grilling, smoking and even deep-frying, plus plenty of inventive ideas for turkey alternatives
• Easy how-to’s for tricky techniques cover carving the turkey, making lump-free gravy and rolling out pie dough, plus how to safely take food on the road
• Menu ideas to suit everyone, whether vegetarian, diabetic, on a low-fat diet, or a first-time cook, plus easy ways to cook for a crowd of 20 or more
• Countdown menus to time every step, from starting some recipes days (or weeks) ahead, to setting the table, to making gravy so it’s piping hot when dinner’s served
• Mouthwatering color photos of your favorite Thanksgiving foods for ideas and inspiration
• 130 tested and trusted recipes in all, to make this year’s Thanksgiving your most memorable–and delicious–feast ever!

Thanksgiving: Festive Recipes for the Holiday Table (Williams Sonoma Kitchen Library)

Whether your tastes run to the traditional or more adventurous, this Thanksgiving can be the tastiest one ever with the help of this Williams-Sonoma cookbook. From first course to last, cooks will find everything they need for a delicious holiday gathering.

Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving Recipes and History, from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie

Curtin and Oliver trace the history of America’s favorite day of food and football, from the earliest Puritan celebrations of thanksgiving to Lincoln’s declaration of a national holiday in 1863 to the Macy’s parade.

Alas, the book fails to shake the cold whiff of a museum brochure; the narrative section’s tone is about as energetic as an encyclopedia entry.

Happily, more than half the book is devoted to recipes, and Curtin (Plimoth Plantation’s food historian) and Oliver (publisher of Food History News) come to life as they explore the social history of food, past and present. More than 80 recipes are drawn from different eras, regions and traditions—from Indian pudding to flan, from traditional roast turkey to Cuban turkey “rellenos con moros,” with a couple of gelatin salads—”Golden Glow” and “Cranberry”—certain to evoke baby-boomer nostalgia.

Instructions are family-friendly and accessible, augmented by history and anecdote. The genuine historical engravings and illustrations are a treat, but the photographs of contemporary re-enactors of Native Americans and colonists strike a false note. Ultimately, the book works better as a souvenir of a visit to the Plimoth Plantation than it does as a stand-alone volume. (Oct. 11)

Review

“… after years of research, culinary historian Kathleen Curtin … sets the record straight about what was really eaten on the shores of Plymouth, Mass., in 1621. This engrossing new cookbook traces the history and evolution of Thanksgiving across four centuries and includes more than 80 recipes, each of which tells a story.” —Christian Science Monitor

“… a charming and informative book …” —Newsday

“Giving Thanks …is a treasure trove of holiday lore, images and recipes that will be cherished year after year when Thanksgiving rolls around … this book by Plimoth Plantation food historian Kathleen Curtin and Food History News publisher Sandra L. Oliver is not only the definitive Thanksgiving cookbook, it is a detailed and fascinating account of the origins and meaning of the quintessential American holiday.”—About.com

Visitors to Nantucket usually return home with glowing food memories. Maybe the sea air livens appetites, but more likely it’s the good Yankee cooking. Susan Simon’s The Nantucket Holiday Table offers 75 recipes interlarded with personal stories, historical lore, and interesting asides such as “What’s It Like in the Wintertime?” Rooted in old New England culinary tradition, the recipes also take a modern approach.

Readers should enjoy making:

• Almond French Toast with Caramelized Applesauce,
• Roasted Squash Risotto, and
• Grilled Turkey with Corn Bread and Oyster Stuffing, among Simon’s many savory dishes.

Arranged mainly by courses, the book also features chapters on:

• holiday breakfasts,
• cocktail parties, and
• food gifts.

From Publishers Weekly

What do native Nantucket Islanders do during the winter when the summer visitors aren’t looking? It turns out that they’re doing quite a lot of sophisticated dining. Simon (The Nantucket Table), a part-time resident of the island, offers up a celebration of hearty dishes that she suggests for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah and New Year’s, such as Cider-Soaked Baked Ham with Honey-Rum Glaze and Turkey Shepherd’s Pie, which sports a sweet-potato topping and a spicy filling. The breakfast section is particularly pleasing because Simon treats breakfast as the important opening act of a nourishing, joyful day with recipes like Salmon Hash with Poached Eggs and Coronation Scallops on a Bed of Parsley Rice. Some dishes that sound mouthwatering, like Apple-Molasses Pancakes with Honey Butter and Laura Simon’s Root-Vegetable Latkes, are bland; however, the dessert section more than makes up for these few disappointments with innovations that make excellent use of native ingredients, including Cranberry Shortcakes, Cranberry Beach-Plum Cheesecake and Indian Pudding with Hard Sauce. Photographs by Jeffrey Allen of quaint island scenes and tantalizing foods complement the reliable, straightforward recipes to create a cookbook that works in the kitchen as well as on the coffee table.