My brother often brings a fried turkey. It’s not breaded. It’s just cooked in hot oil. It’s not really hugely different from roast turkey.
My mom made a great one while I was growing up. Only me and my dad ate it so plenty for us.
This year I realized I’m an idiot. There is never enough room in the over. Completely unrelated I always cut the legs and thighs off to cook separately. Why am I an idiot? I just realized I could (should) be cooking the dark meat on the grill which incidentaly frees up oven space.
Cooking the turkey in pieces? What heresy is this? 
A thing I’ve been incorporating lately is a nice apple cider (not hard, can be sparkling) in glass stemware. I don’t drink and my kid is underaged and doesn’t like alcohol yet, so it’s a little bit of something fun and more fancy than water, less trashy than soda. Plus I find the cider taste goes well with all the turkey, taters, corn, rice, etc. It doesn’t go well with my other new addition: blanched snow peas that are then fried up with soy sauce, garlic, and sesame oil, then tossed with some sesame seeds.
My family is the same . You should have heard them howl when my sister- in-law made a salad that didn’t use iceberg lettuce. They will sometimes accept something new but 1) if they like it we must have it forever (we’re still eating the green bean casserole one of my in-laws brought 30 years ago even though the in-law doesn’t come for dinner anymore) and 2) Nothing can get dropped from the menu.
This is my family’s Thansgiving menu. Occasionally, something else might be added but nothing is ever removed.
Turkey
Ham (for people who don’t eat turkey)
A vegan or vegetarian main ( depending on who is coming to dinner. These are the among the least picky people at the dinner)
Two kinds of roasted potatoes ( onion and garlic)
canned yams with marshmallows ( modified for the vegans)
Stuffing
Gravy
Salad (must contain iceberg lettuce- no spring mix or arugula), and a few specific vegetables . Tomato, peppers, celery, carrots and maybe radish. No fruit or nuts,
Cranberry sauce - must be canned. Someone was nearly killed when they brought fresh cranberry salad.
Corn
Cauliflower
Broccoli
Green bean casserole
Italian bread
Dessert is the only thing that’s different every year - it depends on what I feel like making. Might be cheesecake, might be tiramisù. Whatever it is, I usually make some cookies , too. No pies unless someone buys one - and if they do, it won’t be pumpkin.
Same here. For 25 years – 25 YEARS!!! – we have eaten the exact same meal, using the exact same recipes, at the exact same time (1pm, which means waking up at ~4am to start cooking) every year save one: 2020, when Covid was in full swing, our little family of 4 stayed at home and ate what we wanted. But that was the one exception.
We – and be we, I mean I – cook about 90% of the Thanksgiving meal each year. At this point Thanksgiving dinner could be cold Spaghettios straight from the can and I would be perfectly happy.
However, what we have to have each year, lest I incur the wrath of the in-laws, is:
- Turkey, brined ahead of time using the Alton Brown recipe although I might use a premade mix this year.
- Gravy
- Cranberry sauce (homemade is mandatory, I now incorporate some tips given by ChefGuy)
- Stuffing (due to all the other stuff I have to cook, I’ve resorted to using Stove Top. So shoot me.)
- Potato salad (my wife’s family insists)
- Apple pie
My wife’s family contributions:
- Ham
- Green bean casserole
- Mashed potatoes
- Rolls
- Charcuterie board
- My MIL’s revolting imitation wallpaper paste she passes off as food
- chocolate, pumpkin, and banana crème pie
This entire menu is repeated on Christmas.
While I’ve eaten the sweet potato with marshmallow topping stuff, I’ve never had it at Thanksgiving. I’ve never had non-traditional stuffing: oyster, cornbread, sausage, etc. Corn has never been served at our Thanksgiving, although my mother says that was part of her childhood T-day. Dunno why she didn’t incorporate it into her own holiday dinners.
Turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, some mashed potatoes, and a double dose of green bean casserole would be the perfect Thanksgiving dinner. Everything else I can take or leave.
In my family, we call sparkling juices “kids wine”, and yes, they’re a nice classy addition to a traditional family meal.
And while we’ll always have some sort of salad, what kind is variable, and it never involves iceberg lettuce. Mom has always taken all of her vegetable dishes seriously.
Cauliflower salad is a good choice. The basis is just fine-chopped cauliflower and mayonnaise. Possible add-ins include bacon, shredded cheddar cheese, peanuts, French fried onions, and a bit of celery seed. Sugar is completely unnecessary.
Honesty, I could do without the turkey, it’s just not one of my favorites to sit down and eat. I do enjoy turkey sandwich leftovers though. I like stuffing, but agree 100% with Chefguy, no oysters. My sister-in-law does a fabulous sweet potato dish. I don’t care too much for the sweets with marshmallows.
I’m not a huge fan of turkey, and i only cook it once a year, for Thanksgiving. I don’t buy turkey cold cuts. I don’t get turkey sausage or ground turkey or anything else turkey the rest of the year. (I’ll eat it if it’s served to me.) But for Thanksgiving, i shell out for a heritage turkey that actually has a strong turkey flavor, and it’s pretty good. The house smells nice when it’s cooking. The gravy is delicious.
My vegan relative holds a vegan thanksgiving with other vegans. She doesn’t want to watch us carve and eat a whole bird. You know, it actually looks like a dread animal on the table. That’s fine with me, it means i don’t have to be careful about not adding butter to stuff.
I’ve mentioned this before, but our Millennial kids and their cousins, who are iconoclasts in every other way (not one of 'em owns a TV)…
…HAVE to have a Thanksgiving weekend IDENTICAL in every way to the ones they grew up with.
So granny, even though she’s pushing 100, HAS to make her mandarin orange Jell-O. And we HAVE to serve our traditional cranberry concoction as well as the jellied cranberry (“Make sure it has the can lines on it!”). And three specific pies.
Hey, it’s all delicious, but someday I’d love to deviate from the norm. Maybe when the kids are in a retirement home…
My MIL was one of those “We MUST eat the same thing every year, and nothing weird!” people. When I tried to add liver/giblets from the turkey to the stuffing, she said “What are you doing? That’s dog food!” Since she passed, we’ve expanded our menu a bit (although no giblets in the stuffing!). Last year, my SIL actually wanted cornbread stuffing!
I live for turkey sandwiches. So so so MUCH better than any deli meat!
Ground turkey is cheaper than ground beef, and if you’re putting it in something like chili, you will not notice the difference. Plus it has less fat, so a bit healthier. Same for turkey sausage.
I used ground turkey once for keema, which is very highly seasoned, and it was a nuisance dealing with the excessive fat in ground beef.
Oh hell yes i noticed. It didn’t taste rich and beefy, it tasted like washed out turkey. Nope. Ground turkey is gross. It’s like using crisco instead of butter in the chocolate chip cookies. If you don’t want the beef, why not go all the way and use textured soy protein. 
Now i buy very lean ground beef if i want to make that recipe.
I was the main chef for Easter, T-Day, & Xmas for 30+ years. My feasts always had some traditional elements and some stuff I just decided would be nice that week.
Gotta say I’m darn glad I never had to deal with the “No changes EVAR!!1!” crowd. They’d be asked told to eat elsewhere next year.
Just FYI, the issue is really that if you’re cooking the whole thing enough to where the stuffing and the interior of the bird is at the requisite 165 degrees, the rest of the bird will be WAY above that 165 and be dried out and nasty.
Conversely, if you cook it such that the interior of the thickest part of the breast is at 165, the interior of the bird and the stuffing won’t be at that temperature, and may be unsafe to eat.
I think the issue isn’t with the preparation, it’s with the actual flavor of sweet potatoes. I don’t hate them in the sense that they make me gag or that they’re so nasty that I can’t eat them, but I just don’t like them either. There’s a flavor that they have that’s almost musky or cloying or something like that (it’s hard to articulate), and I don’t care for it.
Depends on how long you cook it. If you’re patient enough, you can get all of the bird to the same, safe temperature.
Or you can go with Alton Brown (and other recommendations) and cook/par cook the stuffing prior to introducing it to the turkey. Personally, I cook the stuffing separately and stuff the cavity with aromatics - couple of onions or shallots, herbs, etc. Or you can just put the stuffing in the turkey during the “rest” period after it’s hit the target temps and let it absorb some of the fluids released then.
Or whatever option works best for the cook and their guests.
I don’t eat stuffing/dressing - I prefer to get my allotment of starch from smashed 'taters. A few years back, my mom started making stuffing balls, and they seem to be a hit. It’s just the usual stuffing recipe formed into balls about the size of baseballs, then baked. They freeze well, too. So I’ll make a batch and send the leftovers home with my daughter, since she loves them.
Our guest list has shrunk and it may end up just being 6 of us. Meanwhile, I still intend to smoke one bird, roast another, and smoke some ribs. Leftover meats will be wrapped in meal-size portions and frozen for future meals. Sides will be made day-of so I will cook what we need. And I’ve already bought heavy-duty paper plates and a sack of solo cups - at least dishes will be easy!
I’ve never eaten green bean casserole with fried onion on top. I’ve never eaten sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top. I hope to stay that way.
My mom never cared much for the traditional Thanksgiving meal, mainly because I don’t think she likes turkey. She still cooked it (minus the aforementioned nausea inducers) in the 80s when not at relatives’. Later, she started experiments with Cornish game hens and even salmon for Thanksgiving.
I don’t expect to actually host a Thanksgiving, due to being remote geographically and relationally. I still have a dream menu.
• Spinach salad with warm bacon vinaigrette
• Mashed purple potatoes with lavender honey butter
• Green beans almondine
• Turkey porchetta - turkey breast roulade filled with sausage and stuffing
• Butternut squash and nutmeg deviled eggs
• Apple pie shipped in from Draeger’s Market in the SF Bay Area
• And, of course, crescent rolls
I’d have to include traditional stuffing and some gravy, but I’m likely to leave that off my own plate.