The best tools to enjoy Thanksgiving (2025)

Full performance A Thanksgiving feast for guests can be difficult, because it can even scare you. The world, and especially straight movies, is full of holiday disaster stories: burnt turkeys, failed desserts, stolen hams. But I wasn’t bragging when I said the first Thanksgiving dinner I prepared for my extended family — early this year — was an unqualified success.

My aunt couldn’t stop talking about the black pepper in the biscuits and the sage in the oven. My uncle went into turkey and apple-sausage stuffing. My father did not speak at all, unless he was created. He just ate and ate. This was a recommendation.

However, I was cheating. I had ordered my Thanksgiving in the mail – one of the new breed of Thanksgiving Kits.

The food was authentically home cooked, of course, mostly prepared from scratch. But the whole of the last feast of the seven – its ingredients and its recipes – had arrived two days earlier, in a box big enough to place beside the beef. Thank you in the box: Table 200 for “Chef”

The spread from Sunbasket was medium and generous. The table contained an almost 3-pound stuffing of turkey, mounds of mashed potatoes, roasted cranberry carrots dressed in misino butter, apples-sausage, baseless biscuits, black-stufp biscuits, a Tureen of Deep Brown Turkey Gravy, a ginger apple crisp waiting in the wings.

Sunbasket is among a new crop of Kit Kit companies that aim to ease the stress of the holidays by making planning and buying boxes of home-cooked meals a breeze. In fact, two weeks later I cooked another Thanksgiving meal from a blue apron, this time for my sister’s family.

Here are my experiences with the sunbasket and the blue apron – and some other Thanksgiving delivery options to get all your Thanksgiving meals delivered to your home.

Update November 18, 2025: Added an update for the blue apron and holiday dinnerware Kit, after cooking a meal that serves 8. And prices are updated, ordering deadlines, and offers throughout.

Looking for meal kits for everyday occasions? See Wired’s Guides to Best Distried Services, and Prep-Based Food Delivery Kits Disp.

Blue apron a la carte thank you (and holiday) kit

Available until December 29. Order by November 19 to ensure delivery thanks.

Blue Apron, one of the most popular grocery stores in the US, has gone viral this year. One of the biggest changes is that subscriptions are no longer required, and a la carte ordering is possible – in fact, it’s now my favorite subscription in the kitchen. What this means is that thanks to this Thanksgiving, you can order individual Thanksgiving recipe kits to prepare fresh at home, without setting foot in a busy grocery store.

That means a grilled grape and goat cheese salad ($12), a big ol’ turkey breast with cresser ($15), almond apple crumb pie ($15), almond apple crumb pie ($15), crushed collay butter ($8), challah topped with maple ($8) and roasted Brussels sprouts bursting with pistachios, ($10). I made all of these recipes for my sister’s family and our parents, early this year – and it was a delicious treat to the surprise of at least eight people. Maybe even 10, if you include an extra order of mashed potatoes.