Thanksgiving Activities for Teams: The Cooking Menu, Dish by Dish

Thanksgiving 2026 is Thursday 26 November, and the team version of it does not happen that day. It happens in the fortnight before — the last stretch when everybody is still at their desk — which is why the useful question is not “what do we do on Thanksgiving” but “what do we cook the week before, and can it survive forty people on a video call”.

Below is Rockoly’s Thanksgiving menu, dish by dish, with what actually makes each one work and who it suits. Every workshop is live with a chef, with the ingredients delivered to every door, and every one can be made vegetarian, vegan or gluten-free when you ask in advance.

The dishes

1. Turkey Roulade with Mashed Potatoes and Gravy — 90 minutes · vegetarian, gluten-free and vegan options

The centerpiece, the longest workshop on the menu, and the one that teaches the most. A turkey breast is filled with breadcrumbs, garlic and herbs, rolled and roasted, so it slices into spirals — the whole-bird result without a whole bird, and without the four hours. The technique that matters is the butterfly: cut horizontally to within a finger of the far edge and open it like a book, then pound it even, or the roll cooks unevenly and the thin end dries out before the thick end is done.

2. Turkey Meatballs in Cranberry Sauce — 60 minutes · vegetarian, gluten-free and vegan options

Seasoned turkey meatballs in a sweet and savory cranberry sauce, over mashed potatoes. It is the Thanksgiving plate in an hour rather than an afternoon, and meatballs forgive a distracted cook: a group call always costs someone ten minutes somewhere, and a meatball that sits a little longer in the sauce is none the worse for it.

3. Cran Chicken with Stuffing — 60 minutes · vegetarian, gluten-free and vegan options

Pan-seared chicken braised in a cranberry sauce and served over homemade sourdough stuffing — the weeknight version of the holiday, with the flavor of a day’s cooking. Sear it properly before it goes into the sauce; the browning is where most of the flavor comes from, and a pale chicken never catches up.

4. Butternut Bisque — 60 minutes · vegetarian · gluten-free and vegan options

The quietest dish here and the most reliable: roasted butternut squash blended smooth, swirled with cream and topped with maple croutons. Roast the squash rather than boiling it — the caramelized edges are most of the flavor — and blend it while it is hot, because a cold squash purée never goes properly smooth. This is the workshop for a team that does not cook: one pan, one blender, and it looks like a restaurant made it.

5. Roasted Cran Goat Cheese — 60 minutes · vegetarian · gluten-free and vegan options

Goat cheese roasted under cranberries, toasted almonds and honey until the fruit bursts, served with olive oil crostini for scooping. It is a starter that takes twenty minutes of actual work, which leaves the rest of the hour for the part of a team event that is not cooking.

6. Candied Sweet Potato Bites — 60 minutes · vegetarian · gluten-free and vegan options

Sweet potato rounds candied at the edges and topped with whipped goat cheese and a toasted pecan. Two-bite food, and the most-reviewed workshop on the menu. It is also the only dish here that works standing up, which makes it the right call if some of the team are in a room together.

7. Cream Cheese Pumpkin Bars — 60 minutes · vegetarian · gluten-free and vegan options

The dessert, and the one people photograph. Spiced pumpkin bars are a sheet cake, which is the point: no layers to level, no turning out of a tin, and the cream cheese frosting hides everything. Use canned pumpkin purée rather than fresh — fresh is watery and unpredictable, and this is one of the few cases where the can is genuinely better.

8. Pumpkin Pie Bites — 60 minutes · vegetarian · gluten-free and vegan options

The classic dessert made bite-sized: mini pumpkin pies, finished with whipped cream made from scratch. Small pies bake faster and more evenly than a full one, so nobody is left waiting on a wobbling center while the rest of the call moves on.

Choosing by who is actually on the call

If half the team does not cook, the bisque and the goat cheese are the ones — both are more assembly and patience than technique, and both look far harder than they are.

If the team is vegetarian-heavy, this is an unusually easy menu: five of the eight are vegetarian as they stand, and every one has a vegan option. The three meat dishes — the roulade, the meatballs and the cranberry chicken — all carry vegetarian versions, so a mixed team orders one workshop.

If children are joining from home, the two pumpkin desserts and the sweet potato bites have the most for small hands to do and the least hot oil. The roulade involves a sharp knife and a hot oven at the same moment, which is an adult’s job with a small audience.

If you want the thing that reads as Thanksgiving on the screen, it is the roulade — and it is the one to book if the team can give it the full 90 minutes. Everything else is a very good autumn dish; the roulade is the one that looks like the day.

The timing that actually constrains it

The event is not the hard part — the shipping is. A kit has to reach every doorstep before the date, so the runway is the delivery, not the chef.

• Plan on about three weeks from booking to event for a cooking workshop.
• Addresses, a final headcount and any dietary needs are due 14 days before the date; kits then ship and arrive one to three days ahead.
• Thanksgiving week itself is 23–27 November. Nobody wants a team event on the Wednesday, and Monday and Tuesday are thin. The realistic window is the two weeks before — 9 to 20 November — which means booking by the end of October.

If the whole team is scattered across time zones, the fortnight before is also when the fewest people have already left for family.

What else is on the table

The cooking is one half of a Thanksgiving team event. The virtual Thanksgiving post covers the other half — a scavenger hunt, games with a ready-made trivia round, and icebreakers to fill the rest of the hour — and once the day itself is done, what to do with the leftovers is sorted by what is actually in the fridge, which is the way anybody reads it on the Friday.

Booking it

The whole menu sits on Rockoly’s Thanksgiving cooking workshops page, live with a chef and a host, ingredients delivered, and priced per person with a five-seat minimum — the page carries the current rates rather than this post, because they change and a post does not. For the rest of the season, the holiday specials pick up where Thanksgiving leaves off, and the cultural and seasonal events page lists every date with a program behind it.