My family makes a delightfully sinful version of green bean casserole. It has layers of corn, sour cream, sharp cheddar cheese, crumbled ritz crackers, and a stick of melted butter added to the usual green beans and cream of mushroom soup. MMMMM mmmmm good!
We’ve always had it every year. But let’s face it, it’s pretty much just a vehicle for the fried onions but I do love the dish as a whole.
Not everyone.
For me, there’s no single item of food that needs to be on the table for any holiday. I did not grow up with strong traditions. I like some food more than I like other food, and I know that some food is more likely to be available on some holidays, but that’s about it.
FWIW, I had never heard of green bean casserole until I read this thread.
It doesn’t have to be food. For me, it’s not Christmas unless my wife and I can get drunk on bourbon while watching Bad Santa. When I was a kid, we watched the Godfather I and II every Christmas, that was what made it Christmas.
You sound like my wife. My MIL never would make it because she’s got weirdo food issues with canned vegetables, as well as some woo-ish health ideas about canned food as well.
So my wife is totally fiendish in her desire to have green bean casserole every holiday meal now. We do change it up with fresh green beans and often we add slivered almonds and sauteed mushrooms to it though.
I grew up with it, but I can usually take it or leave it; it’s not something I particularly look forward to, or feel a void if I don’t eat. But I’ll usually have a portion if it’s there.
Not our tradition. I’ve had it from doing Thanksgiving with other people at their houses.
Our family nearly always goes with fresh vegetables, usually winter squashes and roots like rutabagas and acorn or butternut squash and leafy greens like turnip greens, then some kind of peas or beans.
My daughter insists on it; because I also love it I indulge her. My mom enjoys it, and my husband tolerates it. I’ve tried straying from the path a couple of times: once I tried making it with the fresh green beans and mushrooms, with homemade béchamel and onions, and there was outright rebellion. The other time I tried using off brand fried onions; it was edible, but not the same at all.
So, we’re all corporate on this one: canned French-cut green beans, Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup, and French’s Fried Onions. Yum.
It’s the only way I’ll eat green beans.
In reading through this thread, I have one question: When did this shit with adding nuts to everything start? Now don’t get me wrong, I like nuts. As a matter of fact, I look forward to this time of year when the bulk shelled nuts show up in the store. But I do not want them in my salads, or GBC, or meat, or potatoes or anywhere else they don’t belong. Sam I am. 
Also, I read the recipes for GBC on both the Campbell’s site and the French’s site and Campbell’s fancies it up with soy sauce and black pepper!
That’s just some punk with a newly printed marketing degree… trying to make it sound gourmet. Some things will never be gourmet and GBC is at the top of the list.
That is to say if you figure exotic ingredients like soy sauce and black pepper are gourmet… but in the GBC world they are.
Am I the only one who can’t imagine anything that could be described as a “casserole” (green bean or otherwise) as having a place at a Thanksgiving dinner?
Yes.
There shouldn’t be glop, as far as I’m concerned. I think of it like pasta sauce or salad dressing - enough soup to coat the green beans, not enough that the beans are sitting in it. If there’s more than half an inch of soup/sauce/glop in the bottom of the pan, it’s more than I’d prefer.
Though, to be honest, I’ll eat and enjoy just about any green bean casserole. The only exception to date: my relative who adds corn niblets and pickled jalapeno rings.
I dunno, I could describe stuffing as a sort of casserole, especially if you don’t actually cook it in the bird (as seems to be the current fashion). So yeah, maybe it’s just you.
I’ll chime in with another “yes.” A casserole of some sort seems like the perfect sort of auxiliary food for a Thanksgiving dinner. Casseroles are awesome and very homey comfort food–which is what Thanksgiving is to me. (Now, granted, we don’t do casseroles for our Thanksgiving, but it seems perfectly natural to me.)
Besides the stuffing and the green bean casserole, there’s often sweet potato casserole of one ilk or another, and macaroni and cheese I hear is popular as well. Creamed pearl onions and/or peas, spinach souffle…more casseroles. Casseroles are ideal for a big meal, because they tend to be cheap and they stay warm for a long time after you take them out of the oven, freeing up the oven for last minute things like rolls.
I think John Mace might just be thinking of main-dish casseroles. But there’s such a thing as a side-dish casserole, too.
Good point.
My ideal Thanksgiving meal is macaroni and cheese casserole with some turkey on the side and sweet potato casserole for dessert (and oh yeah, COLLARD GREENS!). But a casserole with meat in it, like baked ziti or something? It’s not like I’d throw it away in disgust. But it wouldn’t be the first item I’d dish up.
I never had it either on Thanksgiving or any other time.
Not any more. My aunt used to bring it, and few people ate it.
Personally, I like green beans better by themselves, or with some other stuff in it. Though I don’t mind actual mushrooms or onions being thrown in. The problem with green bean casserole is that the ingredients overwhelm the green beans.
And I do like mushroom gravy, BTW.