MANASQUAN, N.J. (AP) — A growing number of consumers have something new to be thankful on Thanksgiving: Someone else cooked the turkey.
Not just someone else, actually — they are turning to professional cooks from a turkey farm or grocery store who do almost everything but set the Thanksgiving table and kiss Aunt Sally.
The biggest eating day of the year still means hours in the kitchen for cooks who delight in preparing their own turkeys, hams, sweet potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce and pies. But in a fast-food era, the majority of Thanksgiving dinners now involve something — whether it’s a pie or a whole meal — prepared at a supermarket or restaurant.
“With a turkey being so large, most people were afraid to cook it or slice,” said Margie Longo, whose family has run Hincks Turkey Farm in Manasquan since 1938.
Hincks is among many food businesses that sell not only cooked and sliced turkeys, but also stuffings, gravy, pies and other mainstays of the Thanksgiving feast. A complete dinner for 10 sells for $97.
Some people buy prepared turkeys because they fear they won’t cook it right and worry about salmonella. But the main selling point these days is convenience.
“By the time you spend weeks preparing and by the time you sit down for dinner that lasts for about 10 or 15 minutes — and you’ve got two hours of dishes to do,” said Steven Anderson, president of the National Restaurant Association.
The organization says more than half the Thanksgiving feasts in recent years have involved at least one dish prepared by a restaurant, caterer or another food professional. About 10 percent are consumed in restaurants. Both numbers are on the rise.
Still, the rise of takeout food and pre-cooked meals does not mean that kitchens across the country will not have the smell of roasting turkeys today.
At Hincks a few days before Thanksgiving, plenty of people were buying fresh, uncooked birds, with a few prepared items.
Nora Leibman was buying two tubs of gravy, as she has for the past few years to help her otherwise from-scratch feast.
When the labor-intensive gravy is store bought, it means a little more time for the other final preparations for her Thanksgiving feast. The people who eat at her house — she expects 17 this year — will not complain about her shortcut, she said.
“My husband would like it if we had them make the potatoes,” said Mrs. Leibman, 59, of Sea Girt.
The businesses exploiting the demand for easier Thanksgiving meals range from turkey farms such as Hincks, to Boston Market, the 600-store food chain owned by McDonald’s Corp.
The Cherry Hill outlet of Wegman’s, a grocery chain in the Northeast known for its prepared foods and cooking lessons, pre-sold about 400 complete Thanksgiving meals, which include cooked turkeys and start at $70.
One of them went to Susan Genzer, a busy teacher who lives in Cherry Hill and no longer feels a need to show off her cooking skills to her family. “The food is as good here as I can make,” she said.
This year, Ronnie Borsich’s celebration is at a relative’s house, but she was put in charge of pies and stuffing.
She took care of her obligation with one trip to Wegman’s, instead of a day in the kitchen.
She said her family would not mind that she was taking the easy way out. “As long as the stuff is good, they don’t care,” said Mrs. Borsich, a retiree who lives in the Philadelphia suburb of Collingswood.
Across the nation, more cooks seem to be realizing the more time in the kitchen, the less time with family and friends.
Hy-Vee, a West Des Moines, Iowa, supermarket chain, began offering ready-to-eat Thanksgiving dinners in the past decade or so, said spokeswoman Chris Friesleben. More are sold every year, driven by would-be cooks who would rather be with their families.
“What woman wants to spend that one day she has with her family in the kitchen when they’re all in the living room watching the parade?” she said.
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