Thanksgiving meal plan for 10: the menu, the turkey math, the grocery list and a 7-day prep schedule

The short version

• Turkey: USDA FSIS advises 1 pound of whole turkey per person, so 10 guests need 10 pounds at minimum. Buy 14 to 16 pounds if you want sandwiches on Friday.
• A frozen 15-pound bird needs 3 to 4 days in the refrigerator to thaw (USDA: about 24 hours per 4 to 5 pounds). For a Thursday dinner, it leaves the freezer by Sunday, November 22.
• The American Farm Bureau Federation priced its classic dinner for 10 at $55.18 in its 2025 survey, about $5.52 a person, down 5 percent from 2024. The 16-pound turkey alone averaged $21.50.
• Four of the five sides and both pies can be made between Saturday and Wednesday. Only the turkey, the gravy, the green beans and the reheating belong to Thursday.
• Leftovers go in the fridge within 2 hours of serving and keep 3 to 4 days, which means the last turkey sandwich is Monday, November 30.

Start with the headcount, not the recipes

Every number in a Thanksgiving plan hangs on one figure: how many people are actually sitting down. Count adults and kids separately (many hosts plan two young kids as one adult portion), then ask about the things that change the menu: one vegetarian, one gluten-free cousin, a nut allergy. A pecan pie is a bad surprise for someone who carries an epinephrine pen.

Next, decide what you are cooking and what guests are bringing. The host usually keeps the turkey, the gravy and the stuffing, because those three share the oven and the drippings. Everything else can travel. The trick that saves the most texting is giving each guest a dish with a quantity attached: "green beans for 10, about 3 pounds" gets you the right amount, while "bring a side" gets you a third bag of rolls.

A Thanksgiving menu for 10 that fits one oven

The menu below is a classic American table, chosen so that only one dish needs the oven at the same time as the turkey. Swap anything you like; keep the rule that no more than two dishes need oven time after the bird comes out.

How much food per guest, and for 10

The turkey figure comes from USDA. The others are working quantities that home cooks and caterers use; they assume five sides, so each portion is moderate. If your crowd skips the salad and lives on stuffing, move the extra there.

The Thanksgiving grocery list by aisle (for 10)

Split the list into two trips. Trip one, on Friday or Saturday, covers everything that keeps: pantry, frozen, drinks and a frozen turkey if you have not bought it yet. Trip two, on Monday or Tuesday, is fresh produce, dairy, herbs and bread. The second trip is short enough to send someone else, which is where a shared list earns its keep. Assumed already in the kitchen: salt, pepper, oil, flour and sugar in normal quantities.

Make-ahead Thanksgiving sides: what moves to earlier in the week

The reason a Thanksgiving Thursday feels impossible is that most plans leave five sides for the same four hours as the turkey. Most of them do not need to be there. Cranberry sauce is better after a few days in the fridge. Mashed potatoes made Wednesday and held in a slow cooker on Thursday taste the same, and they free a burner. Pie dough freezes. Green beans can be blanched, cooled and bagged on Tuesday so that Thursday is five minutes in a hot skillet with the shallots.

Stuffing is the one to handle carefully. USDA FSIS advises preparing the wet ingredients (cooked celery and onion, butter, broth) ahead and refrigerating them, but not mixing them with the bread until just before baking. It also advises against stuffing a turkey the night before. Baking the stuffing in its own dish sidesteps the question and frees the turkey to cook faster; it is done when the center reaches 165°F.

Anything you make ahead and reheat should reach 165°F again, measured with a thermometer. That is the same number USDA gives for the turkey, so one thermometer covers the whole meal.

The Thanksgiving prep schedule, day by day

Dates are for Thanksgiving 2026 and a dinner served at 3 p.m. If you eat later, slide Thursday’s times; the rest of the week does not change.

Thursday, hour by hour: the Thanksgiving cooking schedule

USDA’s roasting chart gives 3¾ to 4¼ hours at 325°F for an unstuffed 14 to 18 pound turkey. Those times are a starting point, not a promise, which is why the schedule leaves a cushion between the bird coming out and the food going on the table.

• 9:30 a.m. Oven on at 325°F. Pat the turkey dry and season it.
• 10:00 a.m. Turkey in. Coffee, then nothing to do for a while.
• 12:00 p.m. Mashed potatoes into the slow cooker on low, with a splash of milk. Vegetable tray and cheese board out.
• 1:30 p.m. First thermometer check in three spots: deep in the breast, the inner thigh and the inner wing. USDA’s target is 165°F in all three.
• Around 2:00 p.m. Turkey out, tented with foil. USDA suggests letting it stand 20 minutes before carving; 30 is fine. Oven up to 375°F, stuffing and sweet potato casserole in.
• 2:20 p.m. Gravy base into the roasting pan with the drippings, whisked and simmered. Green beans and shallots in a skillet.
• 2:45 p.m. Rolls in the oven for 10 minutes. Someone else carves.
• 3:00 p.m. Dinner.
• Before pie. Clear the table into shallow containers and get them in the fridge. Two hours from 3 p.m. is 5 p.m., and pie conversation tends to run long.

Turkey safety in four numbers

Four figures from USDA FSIS’s Let’s Talk Turkey guide and its thawing guide cover nearly every Thanksgiving food safety question. Thaw in the fridge at about 24 hours per 4 to 5 pounds; a thawed bird keeps 1 to 2 more days there. If you run out of time, cold-water thawing takes about 30 minutes per pound, with the water changed every 30 minutes, and the turkey has to be cooked right after. Cook to 165°F. Refrigerate leftovers within 2 hours, and eat them within 3 to 4 days or freeze them, as FSIS explains in its leftovers guide. For what to cook with them from Friday to Monday, follow the 4-day leftover turkey plan.

What a Thanksgiving dinner for 10 costs

The American Farm Bureau Federation’s 2025 survey, its 40th, priced a classic dinner for 10 at $55.18, the third yearly decline in a row, with the 16-pound turkey at $21.50. Adding ham, more potatoes and frozen green beans took the bigger menu to $77.09. Prices varied by region, from $50.01 in the South to $61.75 in the West. The menu above, with two pies, real butter and a cheese board, will land above the basic figure, and the grocery list is where you see by how much before you are in the store. The Farm Bureau usually publishes its new survey in mid-November.

How to run the whole plan in Olivi

Everything above works on paper. If you would rather not copy quantities by hand, Olivi does the bookkeeping. Tell Olive, its virtual cooking coach, something like "Thanksgiving for 10 on Thursday, one vegetarian, one gluten-free, small oven", and it builds the plan around your recipes, including the stuffing your family has made for 30 years: snap the index card and scan the paper recipe, or import one from a link.

From the plan, the grocery list is generated and sorted by aisle, with the quantities adjusted for 10. Share it with whoever does trip two, even if they do not have the app, and items disappear on both phones as they land in the cart; shopping mode keeps working when the store’s back corner has no signal. On Saturday and Wednesday, a batch cooking session lines up the make-ahead jobs. On Thursday, cooking mode shows one step at a time, scales a recipe from 6 servings to 10, and starts a timer when a step says "roast 20 minutes". Olivi runs on the web, iPhone and Android.

The printable Thanksgiving planner

The Thanksgiving planner (PDF, US Letter) has three pages. Page one is blank: menu, guest count, who brings what, a grocery list by aisle and the seven-day schedule from D-7 to Thursday. Page two is the plan from this post, filled in for 10, so you can see how it reads before you write your own. Page three is a cheat sheet: quantities for 6 to 16 guests, the USDA thawing and roasting times by turkey weight, and a one-oven plan for a 3 p.m. dinner. Stick it on the fridge on November 19 and cross things off.