Unpopular Opinion

However the 4th and Thanksgiving are the best holidays overall because they’re literally just about hanging out.

I'm with you on green bean casserole, dislike. Cranberry sauce I make from fresh cranberries then don't eat it. Not because I don't like it, I just think it would be better as a dessert. Love mashed potatoes but the Thanksgiving ones are always some make ahead and reheat version. I think that's the real issue with Thanksgiving food in general, you just can't make that much all at once so the quality suffers. Chili would be better, or gumbo, something like that that benefits from being reheated. I do love the stuffing at Thanksgiving, and the gravy.

Thanksgiving is my absolute favorite holiday in one way - we do an All Comers version and end up with so many people here, it's chaotic and loud and boisterous and we always have a cocktail hour so nobody cares as much about the food. And we have some vegans and pro chefs so get some good and interesting dishes always. It's a lot of work for me but so much fun.

But the actual food? Christmas is better, Easter is better, and yes any of those grill outside holidays also better. Even Halloween can be better, creative and interesting. Thanksgiving is quantity more than quality.

You've just been subjected to bad Thanksgiving food.

Cranberry sauce is better with jalapeño. Miles better.

I’m just sayin

Best part of thanksgiving is the leftover turkey sandiwches

Separate the breast from the dark meat and cook to different times. Reassemble on the cutting board. Enjoy perfect turkey.

Alternative: oven the breast and confit the dark meat with rosemary and garlic. You do it once a year so why not go the extra mile? Leftover confit meat can be made into ravioli filling.

Extremely normal opinion.

I agree with you. And it's not because of poor cooking. I just don't like most Thanksgiving food.

On the other hand, pulled pork BBQ and grilled meats on the 4th are some of my favorites.

I love turkey, but I've never had a turkey come out dry. Mother brines hers, I just baste it and mine is also nice.

Cranberry sauce is delicious but I home can that in advance, cranberry orange thing. Very tasty.

Overall I'd probably pick chicken being easier to cook, but the turkey is not bad and oh man cold turkey sandwiches later are just easy lazy meals for me.

One Thanksgiving my housemates and I all realized none of us were going home for Thanksgiving, and the richest of us offered to buy whatever I needed to make a proper Thanksgiving meal. I agreed on the condition that the kitchen was off limits to everyone except me the day before, and day of until 2:00 pm. They agreed.

I spent the better part of two days making the turkey, stuffing, four different potato dishes, (mashed potatoes, potato salad, au gratin potatoes and baked yams) turkey and beef gravy, green bean and ham hock casserole, mac and cheese, a pumpkin pie, a strawberry pie, a mince meat pie, and cranberry sauce. All from scratch, exept the pie crusts. That's just unnecessary outside of competitive cooking.

They actually left me alone to cook, for the first time ever, and everything came out perfectly. I loaded up my plate, and decided to take a walk when I heard the benefactor of the meal pick up his phone, call someone, and say "Hey Grandma, happy Thanksgiving. Did you know that you can cook a turkey and have the breast be moist?"

Got pissed at one of them because he didn't eat anything but the pies, and I was the only person that got any of the pies. Didn't even get a piece of the strawberry pie. I made homemade whipped cream for that thing too!

This was over a decade ago, and yes, I'm still salty about that.

you got my upvote. mac and cheese is not TG worthy to me and we don't have it. TG is my favorite food next to US breakfast fare (eggs, biscuits and gravy, french toast) and at the top. The very top for me is stuffing and particularly in the bird, but how great it is does depend on the preparer but stuffing for me is like sex. I like it even if its mediocre.

As a grudgingly picky eater, I agree with you

This isn't about the food being bad, this is about your family being bad cooks.

I think stuffing your face untill you can't walk anymore is overrated and disgusting

Upvote for unpopular, and I totally disagree. I haven't had a dry turkey since I was a kid and my parents were still young. Stuffing, mash potatoes, and green bean casserole to me are like comfort food. Our family also does candied yams, devilled eggs, ham, bacon-wrapped asparagus, homemade dinner rolls, and all sorts of deliciousness.

This post is such a skill issue it's crazy. Get some gravy on the turkey, make some cranberry sauce and stuffing from scratch, and get some pie variety if you're not a fan of pumpkin. Casserole and mash potatoes are mid, agree, and good mac and cheese is godly regardless of the time of year.

You're doing it wrong. It sounds like you're following some goofy rules about what Thanksgiving is supposed to be.

Turkey? Yeah, sure, we'll have one. Ours wears a woven blanket made of bacon to cook. Never had it come out dry.

Ham too, why not. Lasagna, of course. Crab cakes, definitely. Maybe a beef roast or ribs.

Sides? No fewer than 12. Chestnut stuffing, potato filling, green beans, roasted potatoes, caprese salad, broccoli, asparagus, etc.

Desserts. Should be four or five. Pumpkin pie (don't like it? Good. I wanted it all anyway). Cherry pie. Apple pie. Blueberry pie, chocolate cream roll, ice cream, etc.

Based on your description, whoever is cooking your food doesn't know how to do it right. It's not like Thanksgiving requires you to cook everything wrong.

Disagree. Skill issue. Was going to tell a joke but you already roasted your own mother.

Wasn’t this on Reddit yesterday?

Many years ago I realized I can serve whatever I want on a holiday. I literally hate traditions that repeat every year for eternity. Move on, choose different foods. If other people don't like it, it's their problem. Life is too short not to enjoy it.

We started doing Fondue for Thanksgiving instead of the traditional dinner. Its special and it tastes good and some years we discover new cheese combinations that work great. For Xmas we do a whole chicken leg with the little chef's hat cover on the end of the leg bone.

Agree that traditional Thanksgiving meal sucks. No matter what they do to a turkey, brine it, deep fry it, baste it, it still tastes like turkey.

One thing my wife does well though is pumpkin pie. She does this cheese soufflé style pumpkin pie that is light on sugar. Its so good. The only problem is that it is visibly indistinguishable from a supermarket bought crappy sugary pumpkin pie.

Man, this is a great post. Full on unpopular, no matter how you look at it. Kudos on that! Also, good on you for not making it a rant about other people's preferences.

Any way, that aside, I don't disagree with you, though I think your points are off as to why Thanksgiving food is overrated.

First, a lot of what you're using as a basis for that is down to the specific foods being cooked well. Any of those things that are made from good ingredients and is tbhen well executed are phenomenal. Others have covered that already, and the bit about turkeys being horribly bred, and treated even worse while alive.

So, moving on to why I tend to agree with you.

Thanksgiving food is nostalgia. It isn't about the food at all, it's about having a tradition. This means that you have people making things that they don't practice much in a time crunch, with the real effort going into making it a Thanksgiving meal, rather than a good meal they're able to execute well.

Turkey, as the perfect example. How often do you cook a whole turkey? Once, maybe twice a year for the vast majority. But it can take dozens of tries to get a dish right the first time. And it might take longer to be reliable with it, depending on the complexity of the dish.

Of course Thanksgiving turkey is overrated, people aren't happy with it because it's great, it's the tradition. So they ignore the fact that it's actually a difficult thing to execute well, and that most turkey you can buy is crappy turkey because it isn't important.

About the only thing in your list that isn't harder to get right than the average dish is mashed potatoes. Frankly, if you've only had mashed potatoes that are alright, in your words, chances are that whoever cooked the rest did a mid tier job on those too. Mashed potatoes are freaking bomb when done well, and they aren't hard to do well.

So I'm with you, Thanksgiving food is very overrated, but mainly because they're difficult foods that aren't practiced outside of the holidays. The foods themselves, done well, are amazing.

Turkey is a bit of a problem because the birds have been bred to have giant breasts and can't even reproduce on their own. You pretty much have to dry brine them to get decent flavor. To always get a moist bird, use a meat thermometer. Also, go for the dark meat. It's always better than the light meat.

Fresh cranberry sauce is awesome. Keyword being fresh. It's just cranberries, sugar, and little bit of water that you cook down for about 10-20 minutes. Make it the night before then spread that on some fresh cornbread.

Stuffing depends on the aromatics. Add some sauted onion and celery then some mushrooms or cooked italian sausage. And one more thing: cook the bread in a lot of butter.

Pumpkin pie tends to be on the dense side and pumpkin by itself doesn't have much flavor. Most of what we think of as pumpkin pie flavor comes from the spices: cinnamon, nutmeg, and a tiny bit of ground ginger. Homemade is better, but a lot of work. It requires roasting pumpkin, making the pie crust from scratch, and then essentially making a pumpkin custard for the filling. Worth doing at least once. It comes out nice and light instead of dense like the canned and premade stuff.

Casserole is always hit or miss. Aunt Caroline's recipe is either good or a nightmare.

Mash potatoes, it depends on how you dress them up. You can rice them with some cream and butter to make them nice and smooth. Or use red potatoes for something more rustic along with some cheddar cheese or bacon.

I've never heard of mac and cheese for thanksgiving. There are so many better dishes that can be made. Who's cooking your thanksgiving dinner? Do they even know how to cook? And where's the gravy? You can make a nice rich gravy from the turkey drippings.

Sounds like you need to learn how to cook.

A lot of this is based on cooking skill and recipe, but I do agree with you on cranberry sauce. I hate it with a passion! Which is why I make my own, based on this recipe - cinnamon apple cranberry sauce by Aaron McCargo Jr. I saw it on a Food Network marathon and tried making it, and now its a staple recipe for Thanksgiving and Christmas in my house. I've massaged the recipe over the years, and I think I'm at half the sugar and double the cinnamon, but this is a way to try something new with a completely different taste profile if you'd like.