Halloween Dinner Ideas Before Trick or Treating

Halloween dinner has exactly one job, and it is not to be impressive. It has to be on the table by 5:15, it has to be eaten in under fifteen minutes by children who are vibrating, and it cannot involve red sauce anywhere near a white costume. Ask me how I know about the red sauce.

I also want something waiting when we get back at 8pm, cold and windblown, because Kansas City in late October cannot decide if it is 65 degrees or 34 degrees and it usually picks the second one right as we walk out the door. So most of what I make on Halloween goes in a crockpot in the morning and gets eaten twice.

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Mummy Dogs, the Grown Up Version

Regular hot dogs or good bratwurst, wrapped in strips of refrigerated crescent or pizza dough cut about half an inch wide. Wrap loosely with a gap near the top for the face. Bake at 375 for 15 to 18 minutes on a parchment lined sheet. Mustard eyes go on after baking. One tube of dough wraps 6 to 8 dogs.

The mistake I made the first year was wrapping them too tight and too thick. The dough puffs, and a tightly wrapped mummy comes out looking like a bread log. Loose spirals with visible gaps is what reads as bandages.

Sheet Pan Sausage, Peppers, and Potatoes

My favorite because it is one pan and it holds. Toss 1 and a half pounds of baby potatoes halved, 3 bell peppers cut in strips, and 1 sliced onion with 3 tablespoons olive oil, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning. Roast at 425 for 20 minutes on a heavy half sheet pan. Then add 1 pound of sliced smoked sausage, toss, and roast 15 more minutes.

Give the potatoes the head start. If everything goes on at once the sausage overcooks and the potatoes stay hard in the middle, which is a specific kind of disappointing when you are on a clock.

Crockpot Pulled Pork Sliders

A 4 pound pork shoulder, rubbed with 2 tablespoons brown sugar, 1 tablespoon paprika, 1 tablespoon salt, and 1 teaspoon garlic powder, into the slow cooker on low for 8 hours with a cup of chicken broth or root beer poured around the base, not over the top. Shred it in the pot, add barbecue sauce after shredding, not before, so the sauce does not get watery.

Start it at 8am and it is ready at 4. Turn it to warm before you leave, and it is still perfect when you walk back in freezing at 8. A programmable slow cooker that flips to warm on its own is genuinely the appliance that makes this night work.

Baked Ziti You Assembled on Sunday

Cook 1 pound of ziti two minutes short of the box time, because it keeps cooking in the oven. Mix with 4 cups of marinara, 15 ounces of ricotta, 2 cups of mozzarella, and 1 egg. Layer in a 9 by 13, top with another cup of cheese. Assemble it up to 2 days ahead and refrigerate covered.

Baking from cold takes 45 to 50 minutes at 375, covered with foil for the first 30. If you forget and bake it uncovered from cold you get a dry crust on top and a cool middle. Also, and I say this with love, feed this to your kids before they put on anything white.

Jack o Lantern Stuffed Peppers

Cut faces into orange bell peppers with a small paring knife, hollow them out, and stuff with a mixture of 1 pound cooked ground beef, 2 cups cooked rice, 1 cup salsa, and a cup of cheese. Bake at 375 for 25 minutes with a splash of water in the bottom of the dish and foil over the top for the first 15.

Cut the faces before you stuff them, obviously, but also cut them shallow. Deep cuts make the pepper collapse when it softens and your jack o lantern melts into a puddle with a very sad expression.

Breakfast for Dinner, Which Always Wins

Nobody has ever been upset about pancakes at 5pm. Sheet pan pancakes are the trick here. Pour a double batch of batter onto a greased half sheet, add chocolate chips, bake at 425 for 12 to 15 minutes, and cut into squares. One pan feeds six people at the same time instead of you standing at the griddle flipping in shifts while everyone else eats.

Add sausage links on a second pan for 20 minutes at the same temperature and you have a full dinner with zero stovetop time.

The Costume Rules I Now Live By

• No red sauce before the costume goes on. Ziti is a 4:45 dinner or an after we get back dinner
• Anything on a stick or in a bun beats anything requiring a fork
• Have the kids eat in their regular clothes and change after, every time
• Napkins on the table before you sit down, not fetched mid meal
• Protein and fat, not just carbs, because the candy is coming and it is coming fast

My Halloween Night Timeline

• 8:00am, pork in the slow cooker on low, or ziti moved from fridge to counter
• 3:30pm, potatoes and peppers chopped, sheet pan prepped and waiting
• 4:30pm, oven on, everything in
• 5:10pm, food on the table, kids still in normal clothes
• 5:35pm, costumes on, one photo, do not chase the perfect photo
• 5:50pm, out the door, slow cooker on warm, porch light on, bowl of candy out
• 8:00pm, back inside, sliders assembled from the still warm pork in about four minutes

The Thermos Thing

Fill an insulated thermos with hot cider or cocoa and take it with you. This is the single best upgrade I have made to trick or treating. Around the fourth block someone always melts down, and a warm cup handed over in a driveway fixes it about eighty percent of the time. The other twenty percent, you drink it yourself and keep walking.

What I Would Skip

Anything fried. Anything that needs to rest for twenty minutes before slicing. Soup for the pre-trick-or-treat meal, because it is hot and slow and kids will not sit for it, though soup afterward is perfect. And skip trying a brand new recipe on Halloween. This is not the night. Make the thing you have made twelve times.

Feed Them and Get Out the Door

Honestly, the goal is a warm dinner, a dry costume, and everyone out before the light goes. If that means frozen pizza cut into triangles with olive spiders on it, that counts. It has counted at my house more than once.

What is your Halloween night dinner? Drop it in the comments, I am always trying to shave five minutes off the schedule.

So glad you are here. Pam