Thanksgiving dinner recipes that are easy to make

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Sophia Pappas for NPR

Food writer Eric Kim is kind of a Thanksgiving expert — he's been making the holiday dinner for his family since he was 13 years old.

"My parents didn't know how to cook American food when they immigrated here," he says. Kim and his cousins really wanted to partake in this very-American holiday, so they took over the kitchen and fashioned a menu straight from the imagination of a 13-year-old: "Those early Thanksgivings had like five different pies and a banana pudding."

He says the holiday evolved over the years, though the banana pudding remains a staple.

Eric Kim eats Thanksgiving dinner with his family in Augusta, Ga., in the 1990s. Eric Kim hide caption

"The kids got better at cooking it, and then the adults looked forward to it. And then it became this beautiful kind of moment once a year where the adults could, like, sit back and relax."

Kim says those early years of making Thanksgiving dinner helped him become the cook — and the New York Times food writer — that he is today. This year, though, he's on a mission to help everyone spend less time in the kitchen and more time enjoying their food and their company.

(See two of Kim's original Thanksgiving recipes — and , at the end of the story.)

"I think people cook too much on Thanksgiving Day, and that's really unrealistic," Kim says. "What I want to do on Thanksgiving Day is be with my friends ... or my family."

Kim has devised a menu that will allow you to actually enjoy the day – by simplifying the meal in five key ways:

1. Make ahead

Spend the day before Thanksgiving doing the bulk of your work so that the day-of you only have to roast the turkey and reheat your side dishes.

2. Simplify your ingredients

Kim's simplified menu relies on a pared-down list of ingredients used throughout the dishes: salt, pepper, butter, dried oregano, onion and lemon.

The food at Thanksgiving is already delicious, Kim says, so it doesn't need a lot of extra flavor. "You're taking these ingredients like sweet potatoes or green beans, radicchio ... and just adding two or three things to them to make them shine and to make them more of themselves," he says. "A lot of butter goes a long way."

3. Simplify your tools

Kim says you can make the full meal with just a sheet pan and a large skillet. The bone-in turkey breast is roasted on the sheet pan while all of the sides and gravy can be cooked stovetop in the skillet.

4. No oven acrobatics

Look for recipes that allow you to cook everything at one temperature. That way, you don't have to figure out the logistics of when to put in one casserole for an hour at 375 degrees and another for 45 minutes at 350 degrees. Kim designed his menu (peep his here) so everything can be cooked at 350 degrees — which is also low enough so that you won't be sweating in your kitchen all day.

5. Take the terror out of turkey

A lot of first-timers can get overwhelmed by cooking the turkey. Kim says it's fine to just do a bone-in turkey breast. And, he says, simplify your turkey prep. "All I do is I slather some butter all over it, sprinkle it with salt and pepper, and I roast it." ()

And for turkey haters, Kim says part of the problem is that people usually overcook it. "As long as you don't overcook it, a whole world will open up to you. It's delicious." To avoid overcooking, try using an electric instant-read meat thermometer to know exactly when it's done.