Thanksgiving is a side dish bonanza. List your top-five sides in order and prepare to be wrong about what you like to eat.
- Gravy
- Brussel sprouts cooked in butter and bacon
- Potato casserole
- Gelled (this is important) cranberry sauce
- Stuffing of any type or variety
Forums:
DISCLAIMER: Forum topics may not have been written or edited by The Key Play staff.
Comments
1) Pumpkin Pie
2) Wine
3) Stuffing with gravy
4) Mashed potatoes
5) Bacon (when you cure your own bacon it can be a side dish)
1. Stuffing
2. Sweet Potatoes
3. Gelled Cranberry Sauce
4. Brussel Sprouts with Prosciutto
5. The bacon that was cooked on top of the turkey in the grill
1. Green Bean casserole
2. Pumpkin Pie
3. Dressing/Stuffing
4. Cranberry relish/sauce
1) Dressing - A) it's dressing unless you stuff the turkey with it and B) ours is made with a pound each of sausage and bacon for maximum deliciousness
2) Cranberry bread - the good ol' Ocean Spray bag recipe. Skip the relish, though, and jut eat that shit toasted, with butter
3) Garlic mashed potatoes
4) Pumpkin pie, though we'll have to see how this year's experiment with pecan pie brownies goes...
A) Mac and cheese - can't be firmly placed in the list, as it depends on what recipe is used. Definitely top 5, though
And gravy is a condiment...
Agree that gravy is a condiment, not a side.
Gravy is one of the four major food groups. Just ask anyone with roots in SW Va.
Haha, SWVA born and raised... I agree that Gravy in general is a staple, but no one goes back for just a ladle full of gravy with nothing else to go along with it (other than to dip your roll). Plus you put gravy on top of other sides... gravy is an enhancer, thus making it a condiment.
not with that attitude we don't
LOL. Don't me wrong, I love gravy, just not as a standalone "side".
To hell with the Mannequin Challenge (stupid anyway...), I hereby submit to you, the fine folks of TKP, the #GravyChallenge.
I feel like you could have an entire power ranking of gravy types.
Cranberry sauce is the UVA equivalent of side dishes. Trash.
I make delicious homemade cranberry sauce every year. Come at me bro.
First, +1 cause you made me laugh. Second, cranberry sauce is awesome. You're trash.
Oh. So we're fighting today, is that what we're doing?
The wrong person is preparing your cranberry sauce.
I'm guessing it's from a can, which means at some point you've gone down the wrong path, but even the canned stuff has it's place --- and that place is better than UVa.
Cranberries, Bourbon, bring to boil. Mash. Enjoy
I'll take that hold the cranberries and heat
1) real, slow cooked, true southern green beans from my grandparents garden
2) creamed corn
3) stuffing/dressing
4) homemade rolls
5) oyster pudding
What's oyster pudding? Never heard of it.
It's a baked oyster casserole basically
Ah, my cajun friends make the best oyster dressing (i'm guessing its the same as oyster pudding).
1). Stuffing (50/50 cornbread and breadcrumb based) with gravy
2) Wife's Dutch apple crumb pie
3) Wife's home made Carmel pecan yeast rolls
4) day after leftover turkey and sausage gumbo
5). Daughter's cookies and cream pie
1. Gravy (over turkey)
2. Gravy (over stuffing)
3. Gravy (over biscuits)
4. Gravy (over mashed potatoes)
5. Gravy (wherever else it ends up on the plate)
What time should I come over for?
1. Biscuits
2. Turnip Greens cooked down with smoked turkey hocks
3. Macaroni and Cheese
4. Mashed Potatoes
5. Gravy with Stuffing
1. My grandma's sweet potato casserole
2. My sweet potato casserole
3. My mom's sweet potato casserole
4. Smoked turkey
5. Stuffing
1. Stuffing (Grandma's recipe, before you argue, know that you're wrong.)
1. Stuffing (yep, that's not a typo)
3. Cranberry sauce (jellied)
4. Gravy with roasted potatoes, onions, and carrots
5. Butter with Cornbread
1. Pumpkin Pie
2. Apple Pie
3. Sweet Potatoe Pie
4. Pecan Pie
5. Chocolate Pie
Gravy on everything. (Turkey, potatoes, Mac n cheese, rolls, everything)
Cranberry sauce
Collard greens
Rolls... I hate biscuits.
Stuffing/dressing.
Sorry bro, I've just never had a biscuit that wasn't overly dry and/or turn to a paste like consistency when you start chewing it.
that's a real shame
It is. A well-made biscuit is heaven. That said, it is infinitely more difficult to make a good biscuit than a good roll.
Since you apparently don't have a mama... next time you're in Blacksburg, try a side trip to Roanoke, and get breakfast at the Roanoker Restaurant near Towers mall. They make the best biscuits, hands down. You'll never have to hate biscuits again.
They'd be hard pressed to beat Biscuit Head in Asheville.
But you probably don't have to wait ~2 hours for them like at Biscuit Head
That was a great, great movie.
Tom, get these men some muskets.
There are no spare muskets.
(Pause)
Wait here muskets will be available shortly
This is my favorite. You nailed the reaction in a GIF perfectly. For this you have my vote for winning the interwebs today.
1. Sweet Potato Pie
2. Sweet Potato Casserole
3. Boiled Owl
4. Rolls
5. Turkey skin/mashed potatoes
..boiled owl?
Broccoli, Cauliflower, Cream of Mushroom soup, cheese and mushrooms baked in oven.
and an owl.
My top Five:
1. Dressing
2. Gravy
3. Brown Rice (family recipe from wife's family, made by wife, lick the bowl clean goodness.)
4. Homemade Mac &Cheese
5. Sweet corn from Poppa's garden.
Then, after dinner:
#1 desert: Wife's Buttermilk Pie. (Easy now....)
Stuffing
Green bean casserole
PINEAPPLE CASSEROLE
1. Preparing to beat UVA (I suppose it's more of an appetizer than a side)
2. Dressing
3. Gravy
4. Cranberry compote w/orange and allspice (get out of here with that gelatinous glob)
5. Sauteed green beans and garlic
Thank goodness I'm not the only one who isn't interested in the jelly.
1) My grandma's German chocolate cake
2) My grandma's rice and gravy
3) My mom's rolls
4) Candied yams
5) More of 1 through 4
1. Beer (how am I only the second one to post about beer?)
2. Sweet potato souffle with candied pecans on top, not the marshmallows.
3. Stuffing
4. Corn pudding
5. Cranberry relish - none of that jelly stuff. I'm a weirdo and enjoy the actual produce in cranberry sauce/relish.
Bonus: if we're talking desserts then my mom's bourbon chocolate pecan pie is awesome
Upvote for sweet potatoes with pecans, not marshmallows.
Isn't gravy really more of a condiment? You add it to everything on your plate, but unless you're Chris Farley, you aren't going to drink gravy straight.
Share your recipe for green bean casserole - I've been roped into serving Thanksgiving meal for the In-Laws (it's a fair trade, if they come visit I get to escape and go to Lane on Saturday) and Mrs.VTmbaHacker insists on these things called vegetables.
2 cans French style green beans, drained and patted dry
1 can cream of mushroom soup
8 ounces sharp cheddar cheese, grated
1 large sweet onion, diced
1 whole stick unsalted butter (not margarine)
1 pack Ritz crackers, crushed
Preheat oven to 350.
Melt butter in large skillet. Saute onion until translucent. Transfer onion from skillet into strainer, collecting butter drippings in a bowl.
In casserole dish, layer as follows:
Drizzled melted butter drippings over top of crushed Ritz crackers. Bake uncovered for 45-55 minutes, until bubbling along edges. Turn on broiler and broil on high for 3-4 minutes to brown cracker topping.
Serves 4-6.
This sounds amazing
1. Giblet Gravy (Giblets must be smoked with the turkey)
2. Cornbread Dressing - nobody stuffs anymore right?
3. Cranberry salad - agreed nobody wants to see that gelatinous blob
4. Green beans slow cooked with a ham hock
5. Bourbon pecan pie (with a glass of bourbon)
Edit: typo
Thank you for being the only one here to make the very important distinction between stuffing and dressing. Stuffing is stuffed into the turkey, dressing is made in a pan. And dressing is just plain better.
Ahem.
Fair point, EP brought this up first. However, regular gravy may be a condiment but giblet gravy is indeed a side dish in it's own right. And for gods sake remember "half the giblets go in the dressing, otherwise it's just cornbread." And yes that's a direct quote from my mother, who is a razorback from Arkansas but raised two proud Hokies and taught us both to cook.
Aha, didn't see yours, leg for you! We have to spread the word.
1. Stuffing
2. Green bean casserole
3. Cranberry sauce
4. Bacon
5. Grandma's homemade mac and cheese
Washed down with a tall glass of Wahoo tears.
1. My mom's scalloped oysters. Think slightly under cooked oyster stew mixed with saltines. Cause Mom and oysters.
2. My aunt Diana Banatsa's home made noodle lasagna, even though I have not had it in 25 years. Something about seeing the pasta draped over close lines in the kitchen to dry when you came over in the morning.
3. My mother-in laws garden grown butter beans in the pod, cooked for canning, but that one pot full put in the refrigerator instead of the cans, and slow re-cooked all day in fat back and butter for Thanksgiving.
4. Brussels sprouts oven roasted in with Wrights Burboun Barrel Bacon, tossed with candied hot peppers ad toasted slivered almond in a basaltic glaze. Best new side dish I've had in a decade.
5. My wife's crok-pot Mac and cheese. Crispy on the outside, chewy underneath, and creamy in the middle. The trick is five cups of shredded cheddar for every 8 oz's of pasta, plus the bacon, cream, evaporated milk and seasoning. Fried cheese on a solid platform.
Lima beans is the only food I like less than cranberries. I do not count gravy as a side, but a condiment I use to enhance.every side not named here. Pie is dessert, and again not a side, though we do the traditional pumpkin for family reasons, which almost as low on the dessert list as cake. I also do not count beer as a side, as I start on that when the turkey hits the egg, cause I "need" to do something with half a Fosters before seasoning it and shoving it up the turkey's a$$, and what difference will one more make is good all day on Thanksgiving., so might as well start before the sun comes up, which in my mind disqualifies it as a side, but hey, I'm the one putting up with my relatives, so don't judge till you party with them kinda run on thing. I have to spend the Holiday with a WVU fan, a Wahoo, and Tarheel. We'd never get along without starting early. Happy Thanksgiving!
Maybe it's a South Carolina thing, but sweet potato crunch is peerless. mashed sweet potatoes with cooked in chunks of cinnamon and brown sugar. It's seriously unlike anything else and you plan your portions accordingly (around maximizing sweet potato crunch).
YES. Mom makes this as well and it is GLORIOUS.
1. Wahoo Tears
2. Stuffing
3. Gravy
4. Sweet Potatoes
5. Mashed Potatoes
6. Real Cranberry Sauce (nothing sliceable).
Desserts are a whole different matter.
0. Pheasant (if my uncle gets one this year)
1. Stuffing!
2. Ocean Spray Whole Berry Cranberry Sauce. We've been over this!
3. Mashed potatoes
4. Steamed green beans with almond slices
5. Corn. On or off the cob, or in bread form
6. Brown sugar orange vegetable (carrot or yams)
a. Gravy over all of it
1. Bourbon and Brown Sugar Sweet Potatoes
2. Mashed potatoes and gravy
3. Corn Bread Stuffing
4. Green bean casserole (really its just french's fried onions)
5. Nana's cranberry sauce with REAL cranberries and mandarin oranges
All the cranberry love on here makes me question yalls life choices.
You may need to look into a mirror of your own, grasshopper.
1. Turkey- Deep fried. When Adam Sandler wrote the song, he was inspired by deep fried turkey.
2. Collard greens
3. Sweet potato casserole, and sweet potato pie
4. Stuffing, and cranberry sauce - lumpy cranberry sauce, jelled, whatever
5. Broccoli casserole
Turkey as a side in the Leonard household?! Is an entire pig the main course?
Actually, we do a traditional oven roasted turkey breast, and the deep fried turkey is for me. My birthday is typically during Thanksgiving week, so I get to choose. I choose deep fried turkey and OG collards - with ham hocks.
That sounds awesome
Happy bday Leonard
Thanks, brother.
My birthday is also thanksgiving week. It's got its advantages and disadvantages
Mine's close by, but it depends on what you define as Thanksgiving Week, does the 20th count as that sometimes?
Not even close my sister's BD is 12/28 and she has been screwed all her life! LMAO!
You're the only other person that listed collard greens. Good guy.
1. Beer
2. Stuffing
3. Chipotle Burrito
4. Cookout Milkshake
5. Football
1. Oyster stuffing
2. Slowed cooked green beans with bacon slices
3. Garlic mashed potatoes with mozzarella cheese
4. A few tall iced cold beers
5. Hot apple pie with vanilla ice cream on top
Happy Turkey day to all TKPer's and safe travels
1. Stuffing
2. Stuffing
3. Stuffing
4. Stuffing
5. Stuffing
(Also, gravy is a sauce, not a side. All of the stuffings above include gravy)
1. Corn Pudding (necessity)
2. Mashed taters
3. Stuffing
4. Pumpkin Pie
5. Chess Pie
If you don't put marshmallows on your sweet potatoes you're doing it all wrong
if swapping pecans for marshmallows on sweet potatoes is wrong, I don't wanna be right.
Sweet potatoes are not good. They aren't even a potato.
1. Sweet Potato Casserole (nuts, cinnamon, sugar on top, no marshmallows!)
2. White Bread Dressing with gravy and a bite of turkey
3. Mashed Potatoes with gravy and a bite of turkey
4. Homemade cranberry sauce
5. Green Bean Casserole
6. Broccoli Casserole
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
98. Cornbread Dressing - the stuff is mealy and awful. You people should be ashamed of yourselves (my wife included)
If you're not using the turkey as more of a relish/add-on to stuffing, mashed potatoes, and/or cranberry sauce, you're doing it wrong (unless it's a turkey leg).
Does the piecaken count as a Thanksgiving side? Where does it rank?
That's where that abomination belongs.
Damn right. If you want something that has pie and cake qualities while satisfying neither fully, make a cobbler and be done with it.
I think cobbler qualifies as pie.
I agree, cobbler is the brother of pie.
1. single fried Eastern Shore, VA seaside oysters
2. single fried Eastern Shore, VA seaside oysters
3. single fried Eastern Shore, VA seaside oysters
4. single fried Eastern Shore, VA seaside oysters
5. single fried Eastern Shore, VA seaside oysters!
Deviled eggs (without mayo)
Since I'm one of the few members of my family that despise mayo I always have plenty of deviled eggs left over...thanks momma!
Dressing
Homemade Biscuits
Corn Pudding
Sweet Potato Cassarole
Pecan Pie (or, when that's gone, any other pie)
Eat. Watch Football. Sleep. Repeat until gone.
The correct answer is corn pudding and its not close.
1) Mashed potatoes and gravy
2) Dressing balls covered in gravy
3) Mac & Cheese
4) Green Bean Casserole
5) Pumpkin Pie
Ok I have lots of questions: mac and cheese for thanksgiving dinner? Gravy covering up the hours long cooking deliciousness of turkey? Cranberrys?
Yes.
Gravy makes everything better. And if its not making everything better, somebody done screwed up the Gravy. In which case they should be banished to kids table.
Cranberrys. I got nothing there. It just ends up taking plate space that could be used for more Gravy.
Do you put steak sauce on a perfectly cooked steak also?
What is cooked steak?
If the only steak you have eaten comes off a grill then you have missed out. Pan seared, sous -vide and oven cooked are great other ways to cook a steak.
My grandpa was a butcher. I have had every cut and type of meat there is cooked in every way shape or form out there. I know how to make them good :)
Country fried steak + gravy = heaven
beer
1. Roasted Garlic mashed potatoes (with light gravy)
2. Green bean casserole
3. Stuffing (with dark gravy)
4. Homemade Bourbon cranberry sauce.
5. Wife's chocolate chess pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream
What is this bourbon cranberry sauce you speak of??? That would be of interest to some of us.
put cranberries and bourbon and a little brown sugar into a pot on the stove and heat to boiling.
reduce heat to medium low after you get a good boil going
10 minutes later: (whole berry) store in fridge (jellied) blend in food processor or mash while in pot, then put in fridge
Thanks 07, that is now on my menu for Thursday.
This sounds delicious, my only concern is the lack of alcohol after boiling the bourbon (I don't have a problem, you have a problem).
1.) smoked Wahoo
2.) sweet potato casserole
3.) cornbread salad
4.) baked dressing - the key is using homemade buttermilk cornbread (not that cheap store bought bread crumb crap in a bag)
5.) pumpkin roll
and no marshmallows on the sweet potato casserole......save them for the hot cocoa.
Screw all of that. We are having prime rib and lobster. Several times when all could be here we had New England Clam Bakes.
](https://postimg.org/image/gk1zx92ir/))
OK we have a winner in the non-traditionalist category. That just made the salivatory glands kick into overdrive.
so... low country boil plus clams?
This was my exact thought.
1. Stuffing
2. Gravy
3. All the pies
4. Beer
5. More beer
1. Mom's pumpkin pie
2. Mashed potatoes
3. Rolls
4. Dressing
5. Gravy
1. Grandma's rolls
2. Taters in any form
3. Dressing
4. Dressing
5. Dressing
1) Gravy
2) Bourbon
3) Bourbon
4) Bourbon
5) Gelled Cranberry Sauce
There is just too much family involved in Thanksgiving for my list to be much different.
You had me at bourbon.