I Got Everything I Needed for a Thanksgiving Feast in One Box

Making a full Thanksgiving feast for guests can be daunting, for some perhaps even terrifying. The world, and especially Hallmark movies, is full of holiday disaster stories: burnt turkeys, failed desserts, steamed hams. But I’m not bragging when I say that the first Thanksgiving dinner I prepared for my extended family—a little early, this year—was an unmitigated success.

My aunt couldn’t stop talking about the black pepper in the biscuits and the sage on the carrots. My uncle went in for the turkey and the apple-sausage stuffing. My father didn’t speak at all, unless prompted. He just ate and ate. This was a compliment.

But of course, I had cheated. I had ordered my Thanksgiving in the mail—one of the new breed of Thanksgiving meal kits.

The meal was genuinely home-cooked, of course, prepared mostly from scratch. But the entire seven-platter feast—its ingredients and recipes—had arrived two days before, in a box large enough to house a primal cut of beef. It was Thanksgiving in a box: a $200 “Chef’s Table Thanksgiving” meal kit available from sister meal delivery plans Sunbasket and Gobble.

The spread from Sunbasket was vast and generous. The table contained a nearly 3-pound roast of turkey, mounds of mashed potato, pebbled cranberry compote, roasted carrots dressed in miso-sage butter, brussels sprouts dappled with pecorino romano and pancetta, an endless platter of fennel-apple-sausage-stuffing, Gruyère black-pepper biscuits caked more than an inch tall, a tureen of deep brown turkey gravy, a ginger apple crisp waiting in the wings.

Sunbasket is among a new bounty of meal kit companies that aim to ease the stress of the holidays by doing the planning and the shopping for you—big meal boxes tailor-made for those who still want to make a home-cooked meal but for whom the prospect of planning a vast and complicated feast is prohibitive.

Here was my experience with Sunbasket—and some of the other Thanksgiving meal delivery options to get your whole Thanksgiving meal delivered to your home.

Want meal kits for more everyday occasions? See WIRED’s guides to the best meal delivery services, and the best plant-based meal delivery kits.

The Sunbasket Chef’s Table Thanksgiving

Somehow I managed to slip past the age of 40 without ever preparing a full holiday feast. In part, I have lived an adult life of Friendsgiving potlucks and Chinatown feasts. But in part, I have been lucky. Well into my midlife, my parents still have the whole extended brood over for the holidays—asking that we bring just a salad, a side, a dessert. I generally bring random experiments: a queso de bola cheesecake, say, or a Hungarian mushroom soup from a local chef’s recipe.

A Thanksgiving box from Sunbasket was a chance to pay them back, a little, by making a full Thanksgiving feast—which I cooked side by side with my mother. Heartwarming, I know.

The meal box arrives neatly arranged in an insulated box, with each dish wrapped in a paper bag and a stack of recipes and instructions on top. Order by November 19, and boxes arrive between November 23 and November 26. You’ll want two days ahead of your meal for the turkey to thaw in the fridge, or you’ll have to speed up the process with a cold water bath. And save most of a shelf in your fridge for the various dishes.

While it might save on stress and planning, the meal box was far from labor-free. Sunbasket says to expect 2.5 hours of prep. As with all meal kits and all recipe writers, they’re lying. But not by much! With a double oven, or a good accessory oven like a big Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro, two people can get clear in barely more than three hours. If you’re working solo, you’ll definitely want to prep the stuffing and the apple crisp the night before. One oven only, or one person only, and you’re probably looking at four hours of total prep.

You’ll also need a wealth of serving dishes and platters—though this is to be expected when cooking seven dishes.

Now for the good news: The Sunbasket meal, without being at all difficult or advanced in terms of prep requirements, is far more extravagant than I would have managed or attempted on my own. As with most meal kits, the difference comes down to the premixed spices and sauces and seasonings.

With spices and sauces mostly premixed, and turkey drippings conveniently bagged up, the meal still amounts to a lot of helpful shortcuts, while offering a sense of accomplishment: Three hours of cooking is enough to earn bragging rights, and to accept your aunt’s praise on those black-pepper biscuits.

The mashed potatoes required mere microwaving, but they were still potatoes—not dehydrated powder. The gravy involved mixing a stock and a bag of turkey drippings. The turkey was a brined roast of turkey breast, an easy oven-bake still in its bag.

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

Mostly, it was the sides that required involved heftier preparation. Stuffing was a more scratch-made process than even my mother would generally favor: It began with chopping baguette loaves and toasting them into croutons, before dicing fresh fennel, apple, and celery and cooking it down with sausage and drippings, then baking the whole mess together. Brussels sprouts involve crisping up pancetta and chopping a wealth of hazelnuts. For carrots, one must build a miso-sage butter.

The process was fairly seamless, and the kit comes with instructions to help you plan your order of operations for maximum efficiency—cooking some dishes side by side at the same temperature. The main process flaw was that the meal relies too heavily on the oven, with no stovetop dishes, which means you do a lot of waiting for the oven—even when you’ve got a double oven. A couple stovetop sides could have streamlined the whole process. Some dishes, in particular the carrots, took longer to cook fully than the directions indicated.

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

But the results were in fact delicious, with hardly a bum dish. Though I generally favor dark meat on a turkey, the breast was brined to seemingly eternal moistness, without being oversalted. And the portions were unusually generous. Nominally, the Sunbasket meal feeds a mere four or six people. But whoever decided this must have an impressively hungry family: football players, Olympic swimmers, or preteen boys. With five at the table, we didn’t get through much more than half. Realistically, eight could fill themselves silly.

At $200 for the Chef’s Classic Meal, this remains far from inexpensive for a meal you still must cook yourself—though seven-dish meals rarely come cheap. You can shave off dessert and those biscuits and get the meal for a small price break, just $20 less. But I wouldn’t personally do so. The pepper-Gruyère biscuits and the apple crisp were two of the more popular items.

As the meal started, all conversation ceased for a moment as everyone dug heartily in—until my mother finally broke the silence by prodding my father to comment on the food.

“It’s for an article,” she said. “You have to tell him how it is.”

“Everything’s great,” my father said, finally. “No complaints.” So there you have it.

A Charcuterie Board Delivery Service

Boarderie Charcuterie Board Delivery

As a middle-aged person for whom cheese remains one of the few consistent joys, I find myself putting together a lot of charcuterie boards. For holidays, for parties at my house, for parties at others’ houses, or even just for quick dinners. Regardless of the board size, the costs can add up fast, especially once you’ve factored in frills like pickles, dried fruit, chocolate, and chutneys. To say nothing of the time outlay for slicing and arranging. Which is why, this Thanksgiving, I’m skipping the appetizer stress and going to Boarderie, the mail-order instant charcuterie board hyped by Shark Tank shark Lori Grenier.

I recently tried one of the brand’s fall-themed boards in lieu of making my own, and for larger events, I don’t think I will ever DIY again. The tray was stunning; it was both delicious and would have taken me ages to source on my own. Boarderie boards are shipped overnight, and mine arrived fresh with still partially frozen ice packs, despite sitting on my porch for half an afternoon. The large size came with 37 components, including 15 cheeses (fig-and-rose goat cheese, wasabi horseradish cheddar), four meats (black truffle salami, chorizo), five kinds of nuts, eight fruits and pickles, and three boxes of different types of crackers. There were also marmalades and candies and a disposable set of bamboo picks, spoons, and tongs.

All of it came shrink-wrapped in its own sections, in little bamboo and/or cardboard boats set into a reusable acacia wood tray. All I had to do was unwrap the sections and arrange the crackers. There are three different board sizes (Classic serves 2-3, Medium serves 4-5, and Large serves 9-10, which I found to be accurate so long as the board is being used as an appetizer and not a meal), as well as holiday themes and customizable cheese numbers and letters. There’s also the option for add-ons like baked brie ($129) or fresh honeycomb ($19). A bargain it is not, but if you’re looking to take some of the stress out of Thanksgiving meal planning, this is sure to be a hit. —Kat Merck

More Thanksgiving Meal Delivery Sides and Boxes

We haven’t yet tried the Thanksgiving items below, but these are some options from meal kits I’ve tried and can recommend.

Courtesy of Green Chef

Organic Thanksgiving: Green Chef (Subscribers Only)

For preorder between October 31 and November 11, Green Chef subscribers can sign up to get organic sides and pasture-raised turkey delivered as à la carte meal kit items. This includes a 10-to 12-pound pasture-raised turkey for $70, or an assortment of sides: cranberry brioche stuffing, orange-cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy, maple butternut squash, and broccoli gratin.

À la Carte Thanksgiving: Blue Apron Thanksgiving (Starts November 17, No Subscription Needed)

Blue Apron, one of the OG meal kits in the US, has undergone a wholesale transformation this year. One of the biggest changes is that subscriptions are no longer required, and à la carte meal ordering is possible—indeed, it’s now my favorite no-subscription meal kit offering. What this means is that for this Thanksgiving, you’ll be able to order individual Thanksgiving dishes to prep fresh at home.

WIRED plans to try these meals in advance when available, but individual meal kit delivery dishes will include roasted turkey breast with gravy and fresh cranberry sauce, a rosemary herb stuffing, brown butter mashed potatoes with white cheddar, breadcrumb mac and cheese, and apple crumb pie. Ordering goes live November 17 and runs through December 29.

A Big Thanksgiving Smorgasbord: Marley Spoon (Subscription Required)

You’ll have to sign up for a meal kit subscription (likely at a hefty discount), but Martha Stewart–endorsed meal kit Marley Spoon offers maybe more Thanksgiving items than any meal kit I’ve seen, pickable from the menu as meal kit items. This includes an ungodly array of pies and tarts, viands from ham to duck to turkey to beef roast, an entire Thanksgiving brunch, you name it. Here’s the November 17 advance menu, with 30 Thanksgiving options. Marley Spoon is my favorite meal kit, where cooking and recipe acumen are concerned: I haven’t tried these individual dishes, but if you’re in the market for a home Thanksgiving meal kit, November might be a good time to subscribe.

Courtesy of HelloFresh

Another Big Thanksgiving Box, From HelloFresh (Subscriber Only, Starts November 16)

You’ll have to be a subscriber (at least for the week!), but meal plan HelloFresh is offering a Thanksgiving feast that’ll serve eight to 10 people for $180, available through the HelloFresh Market. This will include a whole roast turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy, brioche stuffing with cranberries, apple crisp, ginger-braised carrots with pecans. These dishes are also available à la carte, alongside other sides.

Courtesy of Factor

Prepared Meal Thanksgiving: Factor (Subscriber-Only)

Ready-to-eat meal company Factor offers a fully prepared, ready-to-heat Thanksgiving meal option for two, for couples who don’t want to make a multi-course meal just for themselves. It’ll be available November 22 at a $37 upcharge for existing Factor subscribers. The feast for two offers sliced sous-vide turkey breast, mashed potatoes, mushroom green beans, butternut smoked gouda mac and cheese, and a slice of pumpkin spice cheesecake.