I Can’t Do Thanksgiving Without a Cooler That Serves as a Second Fridge

I grew up in a land of cold Thanksgivings. I mean proper cold. See your breath in your car cold. Five-inch icicles hanging from the eaves cold. At my uncle’s condo, six packs lived out on the patio during the holiday, where the cold air kept them at a drinkable temperature, but I never registered how useful not keeping drinks in the fridge could be until I started hosting Thanksgiving myself. It’s why from here on out, I won’t do Thanksgiving without a good cooler.

If you’ve never prepared to host a Thanksgiving dinner, one thing no one tells you (or at least no one told me) is that, unless you own one of those built-in refrigerators big enough for you to take a nap in, you’re going to run out of fridge space very quickly in the days leading up to Thanksgiving. On its own, the turkey decreases fridge storage space dramatically. Layer on top of that extra vegetables, fruit for pies, and the food you need to eat for the rest of the week, and what’s left is...nothing. What’s left is you struggling to close the door to seal in the cold.

One of the first casualties of Thanksgiving’s refrigerator encroachment is the beverage selection. I like to have a few bottles of wine, different beer options, and maybe a bottle of sparkling cider now that my son is old enough to drink it (although he did recently tell me that sparkling water was too spicy and yuck in his mouth, so maybe he needs another year). The problem with all of those: They don’t stuff or cram well into my refrigerator. Enter the incredibly thick and insulated cooler. After testing a bevy of hard coolers, I can say that cooler technology is in a place now where a good cooler actually can function as a second refrigerator, at least for a couple days. This is true whether you live in Maine or California.

I’m partial to Yeti’s new Roadie cooler, which recently took top marks in our latest rounds of testing. It not only kept ice frozen for more than 24 hours on days when temperatures climbed into the upper 80s with high humidity, it’s also designed specifically to accommodate upright wine bottles. But the downside, as with many things Yeti, is that good design and quality are expensive. You can get a less pricey option that will do all that Thanksgiving chilling from brands like RTIC and camping stalwart Coleman, as well.

I love hosting Thanksgiving, but it’s stressful prep, and little issues, like where you’re going to keep everything you need to cook or that you prepared ahead of time, get scant attention. A quality cooler helps solve for some of those issues and I’m glad this year having one will stop me from fighting with my refrigerator over space.