Of all the arguments that get had at Thanksgiving dinners, there are very few arguments about Thanksgiving dinners. Which is to say, people rarely argue about what should be present at the meal itself. Sure, no one really wants Aunt Gladys' string-bean casserole, but no one tells her not to bring it. The spread stays pretty standard from year to year.
Or does it? Depending on where you grew up and what your family's or community's food allegiances were, you might have slightly different ideas about what the perfect Thanksgiving dinner entails. Or, at least, we here at WIRED do. During a routine Slack conversation we discovered that many of us disagree—vehemently—about what's necessary on Turkey Day. In an attempt to turn that fight into content, we've recreated it below. Enjoy.
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Round 1: Canned Cranberry Sauce or No?
Angela Watercutter: This one's easy: canned. No one eats that crap anyway.
Alexis Sobel Fitts: UH WHOA, Angela. Throwing shade from the start. I'm all for the canned cranberry sauce—for nostalgia alone—but you can't discount its importance. Cranberry sauce is crucial; it's the only real acidic element on the table, which we all know makes the meal—that sharp and sweet little kick draped over the assortment of buttery carbs. (Also, it's the easiest make-ahead item: maple syrup, cranberries, orange zest … done.)
Watercutter: Hey, I come out swingin'. Though I will admit, cranberry sauce is a weird thing to have a strong opinion on.
Andrea Valdez: I want to like it. I've tried to like it. But any cranberry sauce—canned or slavishly homemade—just doesn't belong on my Thanksgiving plate. Sweets belong at the end. But, Alexis, you do have a point that there is a scientific necessity to including acidity to offset the richness of so many of Thanksgivings' sides. For me, I add pickled jalapenos to everything.
Peter Rubin: Andrea, it took me decades before I came around to cranberry sauce, and I'm not going back now! I'm afraid Alexis is incorrect, though—canned is the only conceivable croption. Not because it's delicious, but because its texture, while uncannily gelatinous, is far preferable to the disquieting glop of uncanned cranberry sauce. (I think it might be officially known as "fresh," which is an offense to both freshness and quotation marks.) Take that mess back to the bog.
Emily Dreyfuss: Whoa, wow, I'm so sorry about how wrong you all are. Canned cranberry sauce is fine … for children. And stewed cranberry is also fine. But he best version is no-cook cranberry sauce: take cranberries, orange (with the rind), some sugar and blend in a food processor until you get a crunchy slaw-like side. It's sweet and sour and perfect and brings the whole meal together.
Round 2: Mashed Potatoes or Potato Casserole?
Watercutter: I'm going to be the pro-carb advocate here and say "both." I love mashed potatoes, especially with whatever gravy can be made from the turkey. BUT, my favorite dish to make is my mom's cheesy potato casserole (#ImFromTheMidwest). Since I would never suggest someone not have mashed potatoes, I usually offer to bring a second potato option, just for variety. In my world, "variety" and "gluttony" mean the same thing.
Sobel Fitts: Not gonna argue with extra potatoes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Valdez: Scalloped potatoes are only occasionally great. Too often, the enterprising cook that takes this dish on fails to slice the potatoes thin enough to allow them to cook throughout OR they undercook the casserole, resulting in that sludgy cheese curd mess and undercooked potatoes. Mashers are a sure thing.
Rubin: I'd like you all to meet a man who grew up in a casserole-free home in the Midwest. (Please, let's save the Q&A for after the holiday.) For that reason alone, I would side with mashed—preferably made with a ricer, not the stone-age cudgel known as a masher. But I cannot condone the atrocity of a starch binary. WHERE ARE THE YAMS, PEOPLE?
Round 3: Yams
Watercutter: Actually, I think Peter is the only one who gives a flip about yams. They're D-list Thanksgiving celebs in my book.
Dreyfuss: Yams are baby food.
Rubin: Yams was the spiritual center of ASAP Mob, and his namesakes are the spiritual center of the Thanksgiving plate. Especially if you're nixing the cranberry sauce, their sweetness is a crucial component to any all-in-one bite of food. I stand by my yams.
Watercutter: Conceded.
Round 4: Cornbread, Regular Bread, or Rolls?
Watercutter: Although I love cornbread, I gotta go with rolls here. Who doesn't love a buttery roll? Come on!
Dreyfuss: Preferably Hawaiian sweet rolls.
Sobel Fitts: Cornbread belongs in stuffing (see below). Regular bread belongs in sad workday lunch sandwiches. Rolls belong at Thanksgiving.
Valdez: Hard to argue with that, Alexis.
Rubin: Regular bread? How did that get in here? (We can save the cornbread fight for later, Alexis.)
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Round 4: Dressing or Stuffing?
Sobel Fitts: Is this a real question? But while we're here a few important things about stuffing. 1) It's crunchy, pliable, fatty stuffing that signals Thanksgiving, not the stupid dry turkey. It's the most important thing on the table and please treat it as such. 2) Stuffing/dressing goes in a separate tray, not in a bird or a pumpkin or some other appendage that'll cause it to get soggy and limp and ruined. 3) I speak for all vegetarians when I say: We look forward to stuffing all year, so please don't stick sausage or bacon or some other unnecessary component in yours. And 4) the only appropriate way to make stuffing is with a 50/50 mix of cornbread (for richness) and a loaf bread, like baguette or sourdough (for body and texture). Bows
Dreyfuss: You are wise, Alexis. And the thing about stuffing is that it's everyone's favorite, so make a lot. My favorite Thanksgivings are when we have at least three different stuffing options–none of which have been jammed inside a animal cavity.
Watercutter: I grew up thinking stuffing and dressing were the same thing, TBH. That said, I think the option I usually stan for is stuffing.
Valdez: OK, going out on a limb here: cornbread dressing with pork shoulder all stuffed inside Tom Turkey. I know scientifically this is a terrible way to cook a turkey! But there is something absolutely barbaric about the tradition that I love. As for putting meat in my dressing (which I suppose is technically stuffing the way my family cooks it), there are no vegetarians in my family, so it's never been an issue. One thing I will not abide: apples in the dressing.
Rubin: I don't think I've ever seen so much wrongness in one place! Alexis, you get partial credit for both recognizing stuffing's greatness and insisting on cooking it separately. (Andrea, enjoy your sad uncrusted porky petri dish of a side.) Angela, I still don't know what dressing is. But here's how you make stuffing. First, you just make ÅCTUAL CORNBREAD, which is the stuff of gods and shall never be demoted to a mere ingredient, and you set it aside to be eaten with copious smears of butter. Second, you embrace the world of processed foods by using one (1) bag of seasoned bread cubes and one (1) bag of unseasoned bread cubes, just to calibrate the commercial onion-powder tang. Third, you include both chicken broth and turkey sausage—sorry, Alexis, I know—in order to justify treating leftover stuffing as a well-rounded meal for the next few days. (Celery's still a vegetable, right?)
Watercutter: Fun fact: Back when WIRED had a How To section (RIP), I wrote a piece on how to make a Turducken. It was delicious, if a bit salty, and made for great Day 2 sandwiches. I share this because I think Alexis would be horrified.
(Also, celery is a vegetable insomuch as no other food group has stepped forward to claim it.)
Lily Hay Newman: IDK where to put this, but turkey is bad. It's just gross. Don't make turkey for Thanksgiving. I'll see myself out now.
Valdez: Lily, what about Cornish game hen? Quail? Duck? Dare, I say it: squab?! Or is it all, ahem, fowl to you?
Issie Lapowsky: Counterpoint: I buy turkey all year long, even when it's not Thanksgiving, because I love it that much.
Watercutter: I think Lily is wrong, but her comment does remind me of one other thing: If you don't want to make turkey, just don't. Order pizza or something. Tofurkey is not an option, and if you're not going to have the traditional centerpiece dish, what are you even doing? (Ham doesn't count either.)
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Dreyfuss: Turkey wasn't present at the first Thanksgiving. The main protein on the table was eels—wriggly, slimy, life-sustaining river eels, which Native Americans fished out of the mud and served the desperate pilgrims. So, if you hate turkey, don't worry about it. It's not historically accurate anyway. (I personally agree with Issie, though, and think turkey is a perfect food. My hunch is that if you hate turkey it's because you're, uh, cooking it wrong.) But to be truly be in the spirit of Thanksgiving, you don't need a turkey. You need an eel, or some equally delicious and nutritious wild protein. Pizza really doesn't count.
Rubin: I'm not necessarily anti-turkey, and I've definitely had a pizza Thanksgiving, but I think we can all agree Thanksgiving is about the sides—so even if it's not turkey, I'd argue for making something that at least supports the rest of the plate. Or don't, and just make it Sidesgiving! (Secret benefit: more room for pie. But lemme not get ahead of myself.)
Round 5: Sweet Potato Pie or Pumpkin Pie?
Watercutter: Pumpkin. Fight me.
Sobel Fitts: Isn't the answer to all things "both"?
Valdez: Pumpkin, especially if you have the patience to use the actual fruit, not the stuff from a can. It's certainly more laborious, but when you pit real pumpkin against sweet potato, which is typically made with those actual root vegetables, the race gets much closer.
Rubin: Andrea, I agree that "pumpkin pie filling" has no place in a house of love. However, there's no need to sully the reputation of actual canned pumpkin (like 100 percent pumpkin). It's perfect for pie, and that's just science. I hate choosing here, because I love both, but now that I've clearly changed everyone's mind and singlehandedly canonized yams (right? right?), the sweet potato family is well represented in the meal. So the Sophie's Choice answer is pumpkin—but only as a pie, not as a latte.