How to Use AI to Plan Your Thanksgiving

Dreaming of the perfect turkey and sides? With just six weeks to go until Thanksgiving, it may be time to start planning out your menu if you're the lucky host this year. Thanksgiving might be the most magical day of the year -- but it's definitely also one of the most stressful.

If you have the means, it can be a glorious time to revel in the bounty of the season's most succulent offerings. But it's also when relatives dip too deep in the sauce and start arguments about pronouns at the dinner table. 

Thanksgiving memes are hilarious, but there ain't nothing funny about slaving away in a hot kitchen from sunup to sundown only to have your aunt you see twice a year question the quality of your mac and cheese. "Who made this?" suddenly becomes a very loaded sentence on Thanksgiving.

Since I'd like the benefit of choosing certain recipes from around the web, I'm using Microsoft's in-browser, text-prompt artificial intelligence tool, Copilot. Copilot uses LLM (large language model) processing as well as cited sources from the internet to respond to conversational search requests, and it can analyze web pages as you browse.

Here's how to use AI to take the guesswork out of planning an undeniably delicious Thanksgiving meal, no matter what the holidays throw at you.

Get real about your skills

If you can barely boil water, don't ask an AI tool to design a multicourse French-Chinese fusion banquet with sous vide steaks and flat noodles made from scratch. 

I let Copilot know I was an amateur in the kitchen, and it gave me some easy-to-prepare recipes with simple to source ingredients and minimal steps and prep. One of the options even sounded fancy — green bean almondine — which is literally just green beans with sliced almonds on top.

Give AI a head count

Let the robot chef know how many hungry people will be in attendance for your Thanksgiving meal. I used Microsoft's Copilot to convert this New York Times recipe for gravy to accommodate 20 people, and it seamlessly converted the measurements into a larger batch:

Screenshot by Rachel Kane/CNET

Alter recipes to your needs

Not everyone wants raisins in their potato salad, and it's best to avoid foods that might upset people's stomachs or inflame allergies when you'll all be trapped at a dinner table in close proximity. 

For instance, Copilot was able to give me some critical ingredient substitutions on the fly for removing onions from the green bean casserole.

Screenshot by Rachel Kane/CNET

Take your budget into account

Let the AI tool know how much you've got to spend on Thanksgiving dinner. Copilot was able to provide me with a list of dishes that were low on cost and high in flavor, including waiting for sales or discounts on turkey, getting a smaller turkey, and using plain potatoes, boxed stuffing mix, gravy mix packets, premade pie crust and canned versions of beans, cream of mushroom soup, pumpkin and cranberry sauce.

Copilot estimated my entire Thanksgiving meal to cost between $50 and $75, and included an itemized price breakdown of every ingredient I'd need.

Be sure to double-check your local prices, though. I'm not convinced you can still find genuine whipped cream for $2 a container, as a quick search reveals the price to be closer to $4.50. Something called "whipped topping," however, was on sale at Kroger for $1.79.

Let AI know what you're working with

Sometimes bad things happen to good people, and one of those bad things might include losing the use of your oven during the Thanksgiving holiday. Copilot was able to swoop in with some solid suggestions for cooking a whole turkey without the aid of an oven. Just please don't deep-fry a frozen turkey.

Screenshot by Rachel Kane/CNET

Screenshot by Rachel Kane/CNET

I pressed Copilot further, letting the tool know I had only a large pot to cook with, and it gave me a detailed recipe for how to poach a whole turkey. 

Whatever you're working with on Thanksgiving, AI appears to be a decent kitchen companion. 

Just don't let your judgmental relatives know a robot helped you season the turkey.