Ask the Test Cooks: What’s the Most Important Kitchen Tool for Thanksgiving Cooking?

Much like some great-tasting but underappreciated side dishes on the Thanksgiving menu (looking at you, boiled carrots), some kitchen tools and equipment are vital to preparing the meal but never quite get their due. In this installment of Ask the Test Cooks, we posed the following question to members of America’s Test Kitchen’s TV show and books team: What piece of cooking equipment is absolutely vital for Thanksgiving cooking, but not always appreciated for the role it plays? Their answers are below.

Once you have the right equipment, put it to work with our holiday recipes. Cook your best-ever Thanksgiving meal with recipes for everything from the main dish and savory sides to homemade dinner rolls and pies (plus more reviews on our favorite kitchen tools and ingredients) in our comprehensive Thanksgiving Guide.

Besides a wine glass or pants with an elastic waistband? Then I’d say the slow cooker, which keeps quarts of gravy hot and ready for the ladle.

Do kitchen towels count? Sounds silly, but I hate cooking in a dirty kitchen. I constantly wipe down the counters, sink, and stove as I cook, and I always have a stack of the test kitchen’s winning kitchen towels at the ready. Sometimes, I put a laundry basket in the corner of the kitchen so I can toss the dirty towels right into it as I cook.

I gotta have a bounty of rimmed baking sheets. I know, not the sexiest answer. But they are just so darn useful. They are there for me when I need to roast my turkey, dry bread for stuffing, caramelize winter squash, and transfer pies to the oven. My dad (a consummate woodworker) has been quoted saying, “he who dies with the most clamps wins.” I’m confident that in my golden years I’ll be judging my legacy with baking sheets.

An instant-read thermometer. An overcooked turkey is a disaster. And a good thermometer (I have a purple Thermapen) ensures that I don’t make this mistake, even if the cocktail “hour” stretches into hour two or hour three.

I feel like having proper tools is essential to any dinner gather, especially Thanksgiving! The Smart Carving Kit, equipped with knives and a cutting board, will be helpful for all the meat offerings for your holiday meal. Also, the Cuisinart 14-cup Food Processor is a pure timesaver for all your chopping and shredding needs.

It has to be kitchen shears because I like to butterfly my turkey. It speeds up the whole roasting process.

A fine-mesh strainer. You can use it for the custard for pumpkin pie, you can use it if you don’t have a fat separator and you need to get solids out of your gravy, and you can use it to make stock from the leftover turkey carcass. You can even use it to smooth out mashed potatoes that came out lumpier than you wanted (although that would be a real workout).

It’s my pastry brush. Besides using a pastry brush to brush butter over the bird, I also use one to brush oil onto sheet pans for roasting my vegetables and for brushing a wash onto the tops of pies or other baked goods.

My vital Thanksgiving kitchen tool has to be my vegetable peeler. It's such a small tool, but it's a huge timesaver for making a big meal. I use it for everything from prepping potatoes and carrots to peeling apples for pie! I usually use a Y-shaped peeler because I like that nothing gets caught in it, but I'm sure a serrated one would be just as good!

My most-used kitchen tool on Thanksgiving is by far my pastry brush. I use it for basting the turkey, brushing butter on dinner rolls before popping them in the oven, and evenly oiling roasting pans for vegetables. (I also have to give credit where credit is due to my corkscrew who works overtime on this particular Thursday in November.)

A runner-up is my food processor, which I use for pretty much everything, but especially a raw cranberry orange relish I make. I don't like traditional cooked cranberry sauce, and this version provides a zippy balance to the heavier components of the meal.

My serrated Wüsthof paring knife is so easy to use that it's an everyday necessity in my kitchen; I use it more than any other knife in the block. Thanksgiving is a day when I wish I had two, or even three, of them. This little workhorse will be right by my side through the meal prep: slicing vegetables for crudites; chopping mushrooms, nuts, and bread for stuffing; trimming green beans for the requisite casserole; cutting apples and pears for the pie, and much more.

After working my way through pounds of vegetable prep for the big meal, I'm always thankful for my knife sharpener! It may not be flashy or wow my guests, but it makes an impact on every dish on the table (minus the canned cranberry sauce) and always makes cooking easier.

I loooove my fat separator! On Thanksgiving day, when time is tight, it makes quick work of removing excess fat from the turkey pan juices so I can whip up a delicious gravy in the time it takes my turkey to rest before carving.

I can guarantee that the number one question on the fourth Thursday in November is: "Is the turkey ready?" And that's not a question you want to get wrong, especially if you're the cook. Using a fast, digital, instant-read thermometer is the most accurate and stress-free way to know when you can pull the bird out of the oven without having to jiggle a leg, see if the meat juices run clear, or wait for that little plastic button thermometer embedded in the breast meat to pop up (which it will, but generally when your turkey has already become cardboard).

What tool do you rely on most when cooking for Thanksgiving? Let us know in the comments! And if you have any questions for our test cooks and editors, ask below. We may just choose your question for our next post.