We let Costco handle Thanksgiving dinner by ordering a premade meal from the warehouse chain's site.
The $180 meal for eight included a turkey breast, rolls, six sides, and two pies.
Our delicious dinner required little work to reheat, giving us more time to spend with family.
I love the holiday season and all the delicious food it brings — so much so that I've even cooked an entire Thanksgiving from Ina Garten recipes.
But in recent years, my family and I have embraced a more simple approach to Turkey Day, turning to chains like Cracker Barrel to order our Thanksgiving meal to-go.
This year, I saw Costco was offering members a deal on a heat-and-serve Thanksgiving dinner for eight and decided to try it.
The $230 Thanksgiving dinner, provided by food distribution company Fortune Fish and Gourmet, was $50 off for Costco members when I preordered, making it just $180.
Although this was about $50 more than last year's Cracker Barrel meal, perks like it being shipped right to my front door and coming with easy-to-follow reheating instructions caught my eye, so I placed an order.
Here's what it was like to let Costco handle our early Thanksgiving dinner, which we planned for when my mother-in-law would be in town.
The Thanksgiving meal included everything my family needed, from rolls to pie.
Our Thanksgiving meal was easy to order online. At checkout, I chose a delivery date a few days before we planned to eat it.
I was emailed easy-to-follow instructions for reheating the meal in advance and it later arrived on my doorstep in a cooler box.
The box contained a 5-pound turkey breast, 24 ounces of turkey gravy, 2 pounds of mashed potatoes, green-bean casserole, mac and cheese, sweet corn, stuffing, 12 dinner rolls, a 20-ounce container of cranberry sauce, and two 2-pound pies (one apple and one pumpkin).
The turkey breast turned out moist and delicious.
Per the instructions, we could cook the turkey from frozen or thawed, and instructions were included for each method.
We thawed our turkey in advance, followed the cooking instructions on the package, and were rewarded with 5 pounds of tender, juicy breast meat.
While the turkey cooked, all that was left to do was reheat each side dish in the oven-safe container it came in, thaw and serve the cranberry sauce, heat the gravy on the stovetop in a pan, and warm our rolls.
We spent no more than 30 minutes in the kitchen preparing the meal, as everything but the turkey came precooked. My oven truly did all the work.
One of our favorite sides was the green-bean casserole.
Green-bean casserole is one of my favorite holiday side dishes, so I'm always nervous about ordering premade versions of it.
Fortunately, the green-bean casserole in this meal kit was perfectly creamy and savory, with well-cooked green beans and a hint of red bell pepper. It was so delicious that I didn't miss my home-cooked version, nor did the rest of my family.
Other sides, like cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes, were just as good as my homemade versions, too.
There were plenty of essential Thanksgiving carbs, like rolls and mac and cheese.
We thoroughly enjoyed the 12 dinner rolls that came with this meal, especially when paired with butter. Easy to heat through and serve, they were crispy on the outside and soft and pillowy on the inside.
We also loved the cornbread stuffing, even though we normally make homemade stuffing from cubed white bread on Turkey Day.
Since there were only six of us eating a meal intended for eight, we had plenty of leftovers — and carby options like mac and cheese and dinner rolls were delicious in the days after our feast.
All the Thanksgiving essentials were included, and each was delicious.
The meal we ordered from Costco truly included everything we normally cook for Thanksgiving dinner, from the turkey gravy to the cranberry sauce.
The only popular Thanksgiving dish I noticed was missing were yams or sweet potatoes, but my family isn't big on them anyway — we didn't miss them.
The meal even included two desserts.
Once we cleared the table and went for an after-dinner walk, it was time for dessert.
The pumpkin pie was really good and tasted like something I'd bake at home myself. The apple pie felt more like an apple-crumble-style dish, but it was delicious as well.
I made only two extra purchases for the dessert course: canned whipped cream for the pumpkin pie and vanilla ice cream for the apple pie.
It was fun to focus on setting my table instead of cooking the food.
I love setting a holiday table as much as I love cooking a meal, so it was fun to focus on creating a beautiful tablescape this year instead of spending most of the day (and the day before) in the kitchen.
I was able to pull out my great-grandmother's china and set a gorgeous table, then top it off with silly crafts I had my family do as we ate.
Having a bit of extra time to set the table allowed me to facilitate some great Thanksgiving memories for my family, like laughing until we cried about how difficult the "kids craft" turkeys I bought were for four adults and two teenagers to assemble.
I would absolutely order this Thanksgiving dinner from Costco again next year.
Based on our experience ordering this shipped Thanksgiving meal from Costco, I'd absolutely order the same meal package again.
It was delicious, and the dishes tasted so close to many of my homemade recipes that I didn't miss a thing.
I loved not spending several days in the kitchen making things from scratch, and the clean-up was incredibly easy since so many of the dishes came in oven-safe containers for reheating.
At the time of writing, I can no longer find the option to preorder the Fortune Fish and Gourmet Thanksgiving meal on Costco's website. It may be sold out, but since the companies had a similar offer last year, I could see it being available again in 2025.
You'll definitely find me logging onto the Costo website next year to try to order — and my fingers are crossed that the warehouse chain will sell something similar for Christmas dinner, too.
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