By Toby Leigh
Disclaimer: This list does not exist to shame others for the food they enjoy. Eat your food the way you like it, don’t let this list make you feel like you’re wrong for enjoying it.
Honorable Mention: Fried Turkey
I’ve never tried this. It’s probably good, but is it really worth the risk? If you don’t do it right, you could end up injuring yourself, causing damages, or even worse, ruining the turkey. If you screw that up, there’s a good chance that the only thing you’ll be eating for Thanksgiving Dinner is hospital food. Leave the turkey frying to the pros, and if you aren’t a pro, just don’t.
5. Stuffing
I must make an important distinction here. Turkey DRESSING is absolutely delicious. Turkey STUFFING is gross. The USDA recommends that you don’t stuff your bird, due to the risk of foodborne illness. Some people still risk it, in pursuit of more flavorful stuffing, but is it really worth it? Something about it is just gross to me.
4. A Specific Brand of Frozen Dinner Rolls
I’m not going to say what the brand is, because I think The Spectator can get in trouble for that.
These rolls aren’t really that bad, but I see so many people hyping these things up and I don’t get it. To me, they just aren’t that incredible. In a world full of bread options, why choose these? To me, bread rolls at Thanksgiving always felt kind of out of place anyway. It feels like they’re an afterthought, I don’t think I’d miss rolls if they were gone.
3. Sweet Potatoes with Marshmallows
This might be a bit of a hot take, so before you grab your pitchforks and torches, let me explain myself. Sweet potatoes are delicious, but I think the marshmallows are absolutely superfluous. Marshmallows are great too, but they have no place with sweet potatoes. The sweet potatoes are mildly sweet, and soft. The marshmallows are almost disgustingly sweet, so putting them next to sweet potatoes makes the sweet potatoes taste worse!
Sweet potatoes definitely have a place at the table, but save your marshmallows for hot cocoa.
2. Green Bean Casserole
Wow. I can feel my Midwestern card being revoked.
I’m not much of a casserole person, and I don’t like mushrooms or canned green beans. Green Bean Casserole is pretty much just canned green beans, canned mushroom soup, and French fried onions. I’m cool with the onions, but everything else isn’t my thing. It’s not a bad edition to the table, don’t get me wrong. So many people go nuts for this classic casserole, and it makes a lot of people happy. However, I will not ask for any.
Jellied Cranberry Sauce
I think I’ve had nightmares where this stuff is chasing me.
I don’t like cranberry sauce on it’s own, but it’s not that bad if you eat it with the turkey. It’s a sauce, after all. You’re supposed to eat it with other stuff. Jellied cranberry sauce feels like cranberry sauce that forgot what the point was. It isn’t a sauce, and by jellying it, you lose some of the interesting texture that comes with it. I could see jellied cranberry sauce being good in other contexts, but I don’t think it’d be good with a Thanksgiving dinner. I don’t want to apply jelly to a piece of meat, I feel like that’d be more trouble than it’s worth. It probably tastes fine, but I don’t like the texture in this context.
No matter how you spend it, or what you eat, have a happy and healthy Thanksgiving!
