November Menu Planning: Get Ahead in October

TL;DR: November menu planning done in October gives you a clear head and better ingredients. Build around root vegetables and game, and treat November as its own season rather than a continuation of autumn.

November menu planning was something I used to treat as an afterthought, and I paid for it every single year. By the second week of the month, I’d be scrambling around a kitchen that wasn’t ready, with a brigade that wasn’t briefed, trying to bridge the gap between autumn and whatever Christmas nonsense the dining room expected to see on the menu. Never again.

October is the moment to think clearly. The root vegetables are at their best, the game is in full swing, and the pressure of December hasn’t yet arrived to make everyone slightly deranged. Use this window properly, and November becomes one of the most satisfying months to cook in the whole year.

November Menu Planning: Where to Start

The mistake most kitchens make, domestic or professional, is trying to plan November as though it’s a continuation of October. It isn’t. By the first week of November, the last of the outdoor tomatoes are a distant memory, peppers are looking tired and expensive, and anyone still reaching for courgettes wants their head examining. November needs its own logic.

Start by writing down what you actually want to eat, not what you think you should serve. That sounds obvious, but very few people do it. The question isn’t ‘What’s seasonal?’ in some abstract sense. The question is: if you sat down with cold fingers and a glass of something decent, what would make you genuinely pleased to see it arrive at the table? Answer that honestly, and you’ll have the skeleton of a menu worth building.

From there, you work backwards. What needs to be sourced, and from whom? What can be made in stages over several days? What absolutely cannot be rushed? These aren’t complicated questions, but most people skip them entirely and then wonder why the whole thing feels chaotic by the time anyone sits down.

Building a Root Vegetable Menu That Actually Has Character

A root vegetable menu in November should feel like something, not just a list of vegetables that happen to grow underground. Celeriac, parsnips, swede, turnips, beetroot, and Jerusalem artichokes: every one of these has a distinct character, and most people underuse them by treating them as sides that exist solely to sit next to something else.

Celeriac, for instance, is one of the genuinely underrated vegetables in British cooking. Roasted hard until the edges go almost black, it develops a nuttiness that can carry a dish on its own. Blitzed with a little cream and good butter, it makes a purée that puts mashed potato to shame (I realise that’s a provocative thing to say, but I stand by it). It also works raw, shaved thin, and dressed with a sharp mustard vinaigrette, which is the sort of thing that wakes a menu up on a grey Tuesday in November.

Jerusalem artichokes are the other one I’d urge you to take seriously. Yes, the digestive reputation is earned. Yes, you’ll need to warn people. But the flavour, earthy and slightly sweet, is unlike anything else at this time of year, and a soup made from them with a few drops of truffle oil (proper truffle oil, not the synthetic nonsense that smells like a chemistry lab) is the kind of thing people remember.

When you’re planning a root vegetable menu, think about contrast as much as anything. If one element is soft and yielding, another should have bite. If something is deeply savoury and caramelised, you want something sharp or bright alongside it. The vegetables will take you there if you let them, rather than burying everything in cream and calling it done.

What Else Belongs on a November Menu

The game is at its absolute peak, and I have no patience for the squeamishness that surrounds it in some quarters. Pheasant, partridge, venison, hare: these are the flavours that define this exact moment in the British food calendar. Pheasant needs careful handling because it dries out at the slightest provocation, but a brace braised slowly with cider, apples, and a handful of juniper berries is the sort of food that justifies the whole month.

Venison is more forgiving, and the haunch in particular suits long, slow cooking that you can start the day before and reheat without any loss of quality. This is the kind of thing that makes November menu planning worthwhile: dishes that actually benefit from being made ahead, that need time rather than fuss.

For anyone not cooking meat, mushrooms are still good in early November if you’re sourcing from a decent supplier. Chestnuts are coming in and deserve more than being roasted on a street corner. They work well with Brussels sprouts (properly done, not boiled grey), in a risotto with a little aged Parmesan, or simply fried in butter with sage and served alongside a good piece of fish.

Pre-Christmas Kitchen Preparation: Start Now, Not in December

This is the part nobody wants to hear until it’s too late. Pre-Christmas kitchen preparation does not begin on the 1st of December. If you’re running any kind of food business, or if you’re hosting a serious gathering at Christmas, November is when the groundwork gets laid.

The things that can be made ahead and frozen or stored: stock, pastry, mince pies, Christmas pudding (obviously, though ideally that was made in September), flavoured butters, any kind of slow-cooked base. The things that can be ordered now rather than in a panic: your goose or turkey from the farm or butcher you actually trust, and any specialist ingredients that your usual suppliers might run short of.

I once left ordering the goose until the 20th of December. The look on my butcher’s face told me everything I needed to know about my future relationship with his shop. We got a chicken. A very good chicken, as it happens, but still. Don’t be me in December 2003.

In a home kitchen, this is also the time to check your equipment. Is your roasting tin big enough? Does the probe thermometer work? Is the basting brush somewhere in the drawer, or has it vanished entirely? These are the questions that seem tedious in October and become genuinely distressing at 2pm on Christmas Day.

A Few Practical Notes for the Month

• Buy your parsnips early in the month while they’re sweet. They get woodier as the weeks go on and you’re into December.
• If you’re planning to make a slow-braised dish for a dinner party, do a trial run first. November is the right time to test things, not Christmas Eve.
• Citrus is coming back into season. Blood oranges aren’t far off, but navel oranges are good now, and Seville oranges will be here by January. Worth knowing if you’re planning desserts.
• Get your cheese order in with a proper cheesemonger if you want anything aged or unusual for Christmas. Good Montgomery’s Cheddar, aged Comté, or a serious blue needs to be spoken for now.

The Mood of November Cooking

There’s a kind of cooking that belongs specifically to November, and it’s not the anxious, performative cooking that December brings. It’s slower and more confident. It smells of roasting bones, warm spices, damp leaves, and the first real cold outside the kitchen door. It’s the month where you earn the right to cook by actually paying attention to what’s in front of you rather than what Instagram thinks a winter table should look like.

If your November menu planning is done properly by the end of October, you’ll walk into the month with something most kitchens don’t have: a clear idea of what you’re doing and why. That’s worth more than any amount of expensive ingredients.

What would you rather be doing in the third week of November? actually cooking, or standing in a supermarket aisle trying to remember what you needed?