Top 5 Worst Thanksgiving Side Dishes

By Andrew Simmons Tue., Nov. 22 2011 at 1:19 PM

A Thanksgiving table.

Thanksgiving is really a spread more than a meal, if you think about it. Cranberry sauce, gravy and turkey notwithstanding, dishes don't necessarily appear together because they compliment one another. Whether they're part of a family routine or a conviction of what the holiday meal is supposed to include, tradition demands that the dishes share a table. While in the right cook's hands, the homeliest of dishes can be wonderful -- when it comes to the soft, mashed, beige-toned universe of Thanksgiving sides, some traditions, even well-established ones, ought to perish along with that pitiful Broad Breasted White you hauled home from Trader Joe's.

dr. coop/flickr

Sweet potatoes, half-mashed.

5. Mashed Sweet Potatoes: You're already having mashed regular potatoes, stuffing, gravy and most likely some other substance you can chew without teeth. Do you really need a glop of this stuff? Thanksgiving food should be comforting, but not necessarily the texture of something your mom used to scrape out of Gerber bottles for you to crush with bumpy little baby gums. At least add some cinnamon and orange juice.

mary w. e./flickr

Corn Pudding.

4. Corn Pudding: Corn is good and all, but fresh corn is not usually putting its best kernel forward come late November. And on a holiday where sticks of the yellow stuff [editor's note: that would be butter, although this is kind of a Kubrick moment here] drop like bodies in a World War II flick, there are infinitely better butter-delivery systems than a dense thick slab of this. Maybe add macaroni and cheese and take away the corn and egg?

thecameo/flickr

Oyster Stuffing.

3. Oyster Stuffing: Our stepmom does this pretty well, but we've had some stinkers: A mealy specimen riddled with celery chunks and studded with whole, slippery, canned oysters seemingly the size of deflated tires. We don't mind a brined bird, but we cannot suffer a brined stuffing that smells like the floor of a grubby fish market.

Tags:

Corn Pudding, Green Bean Casserole, Side Dishes, Sweet Potatoes, Thanksgiving, Top Five, Turkey

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Jessieleine

I guess someone wasn't blessed with culinary common sense, or a grandma like mine. I love green beans as a side, though I do usually prefer stewing them with a ham hock and other spices over making a casserole. I also spend all year dreaming about "candied yams." I love them so much that I never make regular mashed potatoes. How can you hate something that has been baking in bits of butter and brown sugar? And who just mashes them up without preparing them properly? My boyfriend claimed that he hated the dish until he tried one that didn't suck. The turkey problem is easy. Most people aren't kitchen-smart and can't figure out how to make meat juicy. Figure it out, and you'll start enjoying it. I'm sure there are a thousand answers waiting at your finger tips (try Googling for a second). This whole thing makes me sad for you, because Thanksgiving dinner is awesome. I can't imagine growing up in a household where it's not.

One thing I can agree with: Oysters sound like an easy way to ruin perfectly good stuffing. Just thinking about the smell emanating from a can of oysters makes me want to gag. I'm sure the Native Americans and pilgrims would have agreed on that.

wavewench

I like sweet potatoes. Turkey, too. Maybe you just con't cook well..Or your family can't

alisonvalbrecht

Turkey is delicious! Get off your suburban butts, get out to a farm, catch or pick a "pre-caught" free range bird and slit it's throat. Watch the pigs lap up the blood... haul it around by its feet, dunk it in scalding water about 60 seconds (don't want to damage that tasty skin.) Pluck the feathers, chop off the head and feet more for the piggies. Inviserate the abdominal cavity, place in an ice bath. Stand back drink wine, eat prosciutto that has aged along with unpasteurized cheese in a farmer's cellar for a year with your unclean hands and pat yourself on the back for a job well done. Contrary to popular lore the hens are much better than the toms. Hatched in June/July on your table for Thanksgiving. Bon Appetite

FYI...Substitute fresh green beans, make your own Cream of Chanterelle mushroom soup (collect your own...) and frizzle fry some Walla Walla sweet onions!

ghengismcbangus

1 Like

"compliment one another" is incorrect. "complement one another" is correct.

Idrathernot

2 Like

@ghengismcbangus

Maybe the potatoes say nice things about the cranberry sauce, and the green bean casserole adores the turkey's dress(ing). ;)

muckraker

I had oyster stuffing once. It made it easier to chew the rest of my Thanksgiving meal thanks to the oyster gut grit and sand trapped in my mouth.

Sam "Mr. Sam" Samuels

1 Like

As long as we're throwing out tradition, how about dumping the alternative-newspaper tradition of stories like this one where some inexperienced guy in his Twenties offers screamingly obvious advice? Little bit boring at what is often called this point in time.