Cooking a Thanksgiving Day meal for friends and family can be downright intimidating. With thousands of Turkey Day recipes available on Pinterest, food blogs and recipe websites it can be hard to discern which ones really taste the best and are truly worth the effort. That’s why we enlisted local Boston area chefs to share with us their recommendations for unique and delicious Thanksgiving Day recipes. Just trust us – these aren’t your grandma’s crockpot dishes.

So whether you’re looking for an awesome turkey recipe, a fabulous side dish or a unique dessert recipe to top off the meal, here are nine recipes that you absolutely must try. So roll up those sleeves and start cookin’.