The easiest holiday recipes start at Costco. Because of course

Costco is my happy place. It’s where I go to restock my paper towel supply while picking up the bestseller I’ve been meaning to read and impulse buying fuzzy snowflake pajamas. (They were on sale!)

But my favorite thing about Costco — aside from the free samples, obviously — is that I can go there after lunch and have a holiday-worthy spread on the table by 6 p.m. You start by beelining to the back of the store’s cold cases, tossing some ornaments and lights into the double-wide cart along the way. Once you’re deep in meat, choose a rosy beef roast or a fat slab of salmon. Brace for the chill of the refrigerated room and race through it, grabbing a box of salad and a bag of French beans before you head back to the temperate towers of produce. You won’t finish a case of avocados, citrus, pomegranates and persimmons with this menu, but you’ll come close.

Food

Cook a big dinner party in under 4 hours? You’ve got this.

This shopping list and meal planner make it possible and easy to cook seven from-scratch dishes in one afternoon.

Dec. 12, 2019

If you don’t have a Costco membership, you can get everything you need from any supermarket. (You’re going to have to stop by one anyway to pick up a few seasonings that Costco doesn’t carry.) But to make this whole menu even easier, a small rotation of staples is used throughout the recipes.

And if you do have a Costco membership, you can snag what you need for these recipes while getting a new set of tires, 52 toothbrushes and noise-canceling headphones. Wolf down a chicken bake and a churro on the way out and you’ll have all the energy you need to put together this menu.

To get it all ready in under four hours, start with this shopping list and meal planner.

The Menu