Tomorrow, when chef Steven Shipley of Johnson & Wales University prepares a Thanksgiving repast for 28 at a private home in Westchester, N.Y., he will rely on a household appliance not often associated with gourmet cooking: the microwave.

Shipley is no slouch in the kitchen. He's been private chef to one of New York's top law firms and is now assistant culinary director in one of America's premier cooking schools. He even cooks on the Rhode Island-based school's network television show, for Pete's sake.

His choice in appliances isn't a sign of compromise. Rather, it reflects something that professionals know - and, unfortunately, too many amateurs do not: Cooking a great Thanksgiving dinner is about what you accomplish in advance. It's not about slaving away the holiday tied to your stove.

"The microwave is great for reheating, and that's the point," says Shipley, who will mark his 15th straight year cooking the holiday dinner at a restaurant or hotel or as a caterer. "Thanksgiving should be about having different flavors and colors and textures on your table; it doesn't mean you have to cook everything at the last minute."

Yet for the home cook, Thanksgiving can be a dreaded event, the single biggest challenge he or she will face in the kitchen each year. It implies a mad scramble in the final hours. There won't be enough space in the oven, or on the cooktop, to accommodate all the dishes.

Does this sound familiar? The turkey is out of the oven, and it's time to make gravy. But wait, the potatoes have to be mashed. The bird has been hogging the oven for the last four hours, so you have three different dishes to be baked. And just where and when are you going to brown the rolls?

"There's a syndrome where you spend all day cooking and dinner's over in 15 minutes," says Mark Henry, chef of Oregon Grille in Hunt Valley. "People feel they have to knock themselves out, while everyone else just shows up."

Henry and his fellow food professionals know better. The secret to a great Thanksgiving dinner is the same as the secret behind any great restaurant or a great catered event. It can be summed up in three little words:

Mise en place.

It's a French term (pronounced MEEZ ahn plahs) for having all the parts of a dish ready ahead of time. In the professional kitchen, this is followed like a religion. Chefs don't think hours in advance, they think days in advance. They have to - a restaurant kitchen would descend into chaos if not for this kind of prep work.

That means cooking as far as a week ahead or maybe partially cooking, then refrigerating or freezing. Or, it might mean pre-measuring or pre-chopping ingredients so that all you have to do is combine them at the last minute.

"You can do almost all of it in advance except for roasting that great big bird," says Sascha Wolhandler, owner of Sascha's Catering and Sascha's 527 on Charles Street. "You can do all of your side dishes in advance and really clear your head so you can enjoy a nice big glass of hot buttered rum."

Afraid that dishes cooked in advance won't be as good? Fact is, some could suffer if not done right. But with proper care, most won't. The key is to know what works (sauces and gravy are a must) and what doesn't (the turkey and seafood dishes are usually a no-no) and to reheat properly.

But real prep work starts well before the knife hits the cutting board. Good chefs plan and plan and then plan some more. Why not have more cold dishes on Thanksgiving?

Cranberry sauce and most relishes or chutneys often taste better when made a day or two in advance, and then there's no reheating at all to worry about later. Cut up raw carrots, celery and radishes and soak them overnight in cold water and they'll actually be crisper for the relish tray.

"There's nothing wrong with cold food," says Gregory Wentz, chef instructor at the Baltimore International College's School of Culinary Arts. "And there's nothing wrong with having a variety of cold salads out there on the table, too."

Wentz and his fellow chefs have a message for all those cooks sitting down right now, reading this newspaper and fretting about tomorrow: Get up and get to work. Right now. It may be 24 hours or so before the big day, but there's still time to make your life a lot more pleasant.

Here's where the pros we surveyed suggest you start:

Soup

What? You don't have a soup course planned? Maybe it's time to rethink that tradition.

Beautiful fall soups made with squash, pumpkins or other vegetables can make a perfect beginning. Plus, they can be made entirely in advance and reheated - perhaps even in a crockpot in some corner of your kitchen. Nothing could be easier.

"Butternut squash," says Cindy Wolf, chef-owner of Charleston in the Inner Habor East, when asked to name her favorite holiday soup. "It's even better when reheated, and you can even get the meal started before the turkey comes out of the oven."

Gravy

It's potentially the biggest headache you can remove from the Thanksgiving agenda. Almost every pro prefers to make stock in advance and maybe just enrich it with pan drippings.

That's not because a stock made from some oven-roasted (at 350 degrees) turkey parts - wings and the neck are good - and maybe some vegetables (diced onion, carrots and celery) tastes better, but because making pan gravy at the last minute is so darn time-consuming.

"Your life is just so much easier if you have the stock made," says Henry, who expects to prepare about 150 turkey dinners tomorrow at Oregon Grille. "I want to have as much gravy ready as possible."

Potatoes

This is a controversial subject. But on this point there is no disagreement: You can't make mashed potatoes in advance and reheat them. To misquote Martha Stewart, it's a bad thing. They just don't taste the same, nor do they have the same texture.

But most chefs say they do prepare sweet potatoes in advance, and at least clean the other potatoes to cut down on tomorrow's workload.

Nancy Longo, chef-owner of Pierpoint in Fells Point, goes one step further. She'll boil her potatoes into a mush, deliberately making them looser (that is, more watery) than usual and then refrigerates for a day. She warms the potato mush with cream and butter (about 4 tablespoons butter and 3/4 cup cream or half-and-half for eight potatoes worth of mush) and mixes them and adds seasoning.

"You won't taste the difference," she says.

Vegetables

This is where things can get tricky. The pros tend to hold off on cooking most vegetables until the same day they're to be served (it's a chef thing), but that doesn't mean you can't start first thing tomorrow morning.

The classic approach is to blanche green vegetables like brussels sprouts or green beans - that is, throw them in boiling water for a minute or two until they turn more intensely green and then remove and dunk in ice water. They are partially cooked but still crisp - and excellent for sauteing, roasting or steaming later.

Other vegetables can take a more aggressive approach. A number of chefs say they like to roast until tender a variety of root vegetables - turnips, carrots, beets - seasoned with salt, pepper and perhaps thyme and garlic, and then reheat them at the last minute - or even serve them cold as a fall salad.

"Most everything that is served as a casserole item can be made ahead," says Vito Piazza, executive chef and co-owner of Chef's Expressions, a Timonium catering firm.

The turkey

Roasting in advance may be wrong (people have a term for reheated turkey: leftovers), but that doesn't mean you can't do some preparation in advance. Clean, truss and season the turkey ahead of time, and all you'll have to do is pop it in the oven at the proper moment.

Wentz goes one step further. He advises his fellow chefs to purchase as small a turkey as possible and then break it down to white meat and dark meat - like cutting up a chicken. It reduces cooking time and produces better results (dark meat can get more roasting time than the quicker-cooking light meat).

With less oven time devoted to the turkey, there's more opportunity for reheating all the other dishes you've cooked in advance.

Others suggest brining (soaking the bird overnight in water with dissolved kosher salt and sugar) or perhaps injecting seasoning directly into the turkey. Both methods take care of the seasoning step (although a brined bird will make a poor gravy - too much salt stays in the pan).

"Get a 6-pound turkey breast, and it only takes 90 minutes to cook," says Longo. "It means you don't have wait forever and ever for the main course to be done."

Dressing

To stuff or not to stuff? The pros say it isn't even a close call. They don't stuff. They cook it separately as dressing.

Not only are there safety issues with stuffing, but you can make dressing today and it will reheat wonderfully tomorrow. Just be sure the oven isn't too hot. Or, if you use a microwave, do it in small batches or for small increments of time and stir frequently to avoid overcooking.

"You can't do that with oyster dressing, but it works fine otherwise," says Wolf.

Dessert

This is obvious, but here goes: You should never have to bake a pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. Make it right now. It won't suffer.

Same way with every other dessert. Even those you like warm - apple pie, for instance - are perfectly fine reheated.

Finally, the chefs say the home cook should give thought to a few acceptable shortcuts. Prepackaged stuffing bread cubes may not be as good as homemade, but they're acceptable to most pros. Canned pumpkin gets good marks, too. So does canned chicken stock, an ideal gravy extender.

But the best shortcut of them all is to use the telephone and ask guests to bring one dish. That's how the Pilgrims did it, after all. Minus the phone, of course.

"A family can bring more than their attendant neuroses to the holiday," Wolhandler says with a laugh. "You can even get those wretched urchins to set the table the day before and get some baby pumpkins, some leaves and votive candles and create a centerpiece."

"In the end the only dilemma you should face is just how to get the hot food hot."

Hot lines

Toll-free telephone services and Web sites offer a variety of specialists to answer cooking and food-safety questions during holiday preparation times. Here are some of them:

U.S. Department of Agriculture Meat and Poultry Hotline: 800-535-4555. 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. today; 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. tomorrow. Recorded information is available 24 hours a day at the same number. On the Net: www.fsis.usda.gov.

Butterball Turkey Talk-Line: 800-288-8372, or 800-BUTTERBALL. 9:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. today; 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. tomorrow. Automated assistance is provided after hours. On the Net: www.butterball .com.

Perdue consumer Helpline: 800-473-7383. 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. today; 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. tomorrow. On the Net: www.perdue.com.

Foster Farms Turkey Helpline: 800-255-7227. Operators available 24 hours a day, today through Sunday. On the Net: www.foster farms.com.

Empire Kosher poultry customer hot line: 800-367-4734. 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. today and tomorrow. On the Net: www.empire kosher.com.

Reynolds Turkey Tips Hotline: 800-745-4000. A year-round 24-hour automated hot line, focusing on turkey topics through Dec. 31. On the Net: www .reynoldskitchens.com.

Shady Brook Farms Turkey Line: 888-723-4468. A 24-hour, seven days-a-week, automated advice-and-recipe service. On the Net: www.shadybrook farms.com.

-- The Associated Press