Thanksgiving Menu Thread

Cafe Society
1

I’m a little surprised that I haven’t seen this thread around here yet (hopefully I’m not just blind) and I figure it’s high time one was started to whet our appetites.

What are you having for Thanksgiving this year? What’s on your menu?

Me and my GF are going to take over my parents kitchen this year and cook a full on Turkey Day meal. Pretty traditional. A few items are still up for discussion, but it’ll be a fresh locally sourced free range bird, brined using the Good Eats recipe and roasted traditionally. A pan gravy that I’m still trying to figure out, some doctored up Stove Top stuffing (we had to save some work somewhere), mashed potatoes (garlic mashed? Hmm) and homemade cranberry sauce. The GF is making a deep dish apple pie from scratch, a veggie dish that is some big secret and fresh bread. We’re going to put together a cheese, meat and dried fruit tray for appetizers and pick up a pumpkin pie from Bakers Square. Pretty stereotypical Midwestern Thanksgiving Feast I’d say.

What about you guys? Anyone going off the reservation with something wild? Got some really funky recipes or takes on the traditional? Who’s smoking/frying/grilling their birds?

Here’s a handful of links to threads that I’ve noticed around the Dope talking about Thanksgiving meals and whatnot.

Let’s Talk Gravy
My kingdom for a brine…
Who doesn’t do turkey for Thanksgiving?
Restaurants on Thanksgiving:yea or nay?
Seasonal foods – pumpkins, apples, etc.

Anyways, have at it. Let’s get our feast on.

2

I just found out this morning that I am going to host Thanksgiving. For the first time. Long story involving much family drama, which I won’t get into here.

I had already ordered a locally raised free-range turkey, which is in the freezer right now. (I was going to defrost it and take it to Mom’s place for her to cook, but now I guess I get to take a shot at it.) It’ll be my first time roasting a turkey in my own familiar kitchen; I did it once in a crappy convection oven in England, and the bird wasn’t properly defrosted (which is another long story), so it didn’t work out very well. I’m hoping to do better this time. It will probably be fairly standard: salt, pepper, butter, baste with drippings. Standardish gravy, maybe fortified with sherry.

Stuffing (mostly done inside the bird) will involve wild rice, brown rice, onions, green apples, some other kind of dried fruit (likely apricots), and maybe some toasted almonds or hazlenuts.

Mom is going to bring homemade whole-berry cranberry sauce, some kind of green veggie to be determined, and…I forget what else. Oh yeah, some kind of appetizer, I have no idea what. Mom’s a good cook, so I’m not worried about it.

The rest:

Sweet potatoes with ginger, pineapple, and orange

Some kind of bread, probably involving onions and herbs - I’ve made a rosemary and dill one in the past which is fabulous

Pumpkin pie with a pecan praline topping

Mashed potatoes, probably with a ton of roasted garlic and maybe some goat cheese and chives

We don’t vary Thanksgiving much; maybe the veggie sides, maybe exactly what is done to the sweet potatoes, maybe the type of pie.

Oh yes - there will be wine.

Now I just have to figure out who is coming…that will be the fun part.

3

Very basic, since I’m teaching someone how to make a turkey dinner. She can get all experimental on her own later on.

Turkey, roasted
Stuffing, bread/sausage
Mashed
Giblet gravy
Fresh cranberry sauce with orange
Roasted sweet potatoes
Veggie dish
Salad with goat cheese, candied walnuts, currants, greens and passion fruit vinegar
Pumpkin pie

4

Honey-glazed spiral-cut ham, au gratin potatoes, green bean casserole, rolls, pecan pie, pumpkin pie. I’ll save the duck for another time.

5

When I posted the OP I forgot to link to this excellent thread and I think it’s important everyone here read it.

Thanksgiving tips

6

The usual stuff:

crudités
turkey, rubbed, seasoned, wrapped in foil and buried on coals
dressing
pea & bacon salad
sweet potatoes
rolls
cranberry sauce
gravy
pecan pie
apple pie
pumpkin pie
wine with, cognac after

All prepared on camp stoves and campfire in the middle of the lower Mohave desert 50 miles from nowhere.

7

our buffet menu

Salads
Panzanella Salad: dried cherries, toasted pecans, carrots, celery, orange sage vinaigrette

Roasted Sweet Potato Salad: caramelized apples, cipollini onions, Nueske’s bacon, roasted garlic dressing

Winter Root Vegetable Salad: turkey confit, wild mushrooms, marsala vinaigrette

Autumn Harvest Green Salad: Brussels sprouts, green beans, candied walnuts, chestnut cognac dressing

Classic Caesar Salad: romaine lettuce, garlic croutons, SarVecchio Parmesan cheese

Fig and Pear Salad: frisée, spinach, brie cheese, toasted almonds, sweet onion vanilla vinaigrette

It gets more interesting after that. :smiley:

8

It will just be my husband, his mom and dad, our daughter, and myself. So, dinner won’t be anything fancy.

I’ll be making a turkey, sausage & mushroom dressing (husband asked for this one), a vat of homemade noodles (because MIL loves them), cream cheese & roasted garlic mashed potatoes (daughter asked for them), corn, cauliflower & broccoli in a four cheese sauce, homemade rolls (husband and daughter expect these), deviled eggs, assorted veggies/dips, pumpkin pie with fresh whipped cream, and chocolate cake.

9

Breakfast the following day: sausage and bacon gravy with fennel and sage, on biscuits. Then turkey sandwiches till we puke.

10

I’m only having 2 or 3 people come to my house. So, I probably am planning on too much food (total of 4 - 5 people), but that’s okay.

  1. Roast turkey (a tiny one not quite 8.5 lbs). I’m planning to brine it, but not totally sure. It’s a heritage breed that’s supposed to have a lot more dark meat than the normal turkey of the season (I love dark meat), so I’m not convinced it needs to be brined. I’ll probably do it anyway.

  2. Mashed potatoes and turnips. This is mostly because I have a bunch of both from my CSA, and they make a decent mash together. Hopefully, they won’t be too off.

  3. Mashed sweet potatoes. I’d actually love to do something else here, but I’m at a bit of a loss. I would be inclined to roast chunks, but I feel like that’d take a very long time compared to the turkey resting period. (No marshmallows. I promised one of the guests I’ll make her marshmallow sweet potatoes some other time, but not for Thanksgiving. Somehow, she’d never heard of this dish, and is now very interested in trying it.)

  4. Homemade cranberry sauce. I’m not a huge fan, but I like it more when I make it than out of a can, so that’s a start. Plus, I’m hoping I can make it fit one of the many funny jello molds my grandma gave me a few years ago.

  5. Roasted brussels sprouts. These I know can go in while the turkey’s resting. There’s probably bacon involved in this recipe.

  6. Rum spiced pumpkin pie. I made this for the first time last year, and just loved it.

  7. Some sort of orange jello thing with pineapple that one of my guests is bringing. It’s apparently a Minnesotan thing. I just have no idea what I’m getting into here.

I’d like to have more pie, or some cookies or something, but I won’t make myself crazy doing it. I’d also like something else green on the table, but that’s unlikely. Maybe a salad from the copious lettuce our CSA is likely to bring. I may also butter poach some radishes, but most likely I’ll save that for some future dinner that doesn’t involve quite so much planning.

11

Sis and I are taking over Mom and Dad’s kitchen to cook for ~40 people (Great Scott! We’re old enough to be in charge of stuff like this? :stuck_out_tongue: ). The menu is looking something like this:

Crudites
Ham stuffed mushroom caps
Tuna stuffed cherry tomatoes
Broccoli salad
Mandarin spinach salad
Cranberry walnut salad
Turkey with both bread dressing and cornbread stuffing (this works for both the southern and midwestern contingencies)
Blackforest ham with a molasses / mustard glaze
Mashed Yukon potatoes
Mac and cheese (baked as only my cousin Lynn can!)
Green beans with bacon and little red potatoes
Chunked roasted sweet potatoes (Why yes, Mom does have a double oven and two toaster ovens, she did this for many, many years)
Turnip greens
Dill onion bread
Mom’s recipe cloverleaf rolls
Pumpkin pie
Turtle cheesecake
Cherry Delight
Carrot cake (this is kind of a belated birthday cake for my dad, since I wasn’t there to celebrate on his actual bd)
Coffee, iced tea and soft drinks

Wonder if we’ll have enough to eat? :stuck_out_tongue: Most of this will be prepared by my sister and me, some of it ahead of time and some beginning in the wee hours of T-Day morning.

ETA: Oh, yeah, giblet gravy.

12

Hm. We’re only going to have six people, one of whom is a vegetarian who doesn’t like mashed potatoes. This leads to different side dish choices. Right now, it’s looking like:

Spiral cut ham
Mashed potatoes
Scalloped corn (kind of a corn pudding thing)
Quinoa-stuffed acorn squash (here).
Pasta with radicchio and mushrooms in a cream and cheese sauce (here).
Homemade rolls (here)
Roasted broccoli
Cheesecake with cherry topping
Coconut pie

13

I’m going to a friend’s house…she is an amazing cook and is cooking for about 20 this Thanksgiving. She’s doing turkey, roasted winter vegetables and mashed potatoes. Many of us others are bringing a side dish.

I thought this spinach/cranberry salad looked worthy of trying, so that’s what I’m bringing.

If it were a different crowd, I’d be tempted to bring something non-traditional like my home made dolmades or wheatberry-cheese salad, but I know the general taste of this crowd (her husband’s side of the family) and they tend to regard anything non-tradional or “different” with alarm and suspicion. And I don’t want to truck 150 dolmades or 5 lbs of wheatberry salad back home.
**
Angel of the Lord**, your meal looks awesome!

14

For me, it is tradition to get a honey baked ham spiral cut, a small turkey, and some catered pulled pork, I then make a special super slow baked mac and cheese that uses some of the spiral cut ham, that everyone in my family loves and asks for every year. (it takes a little more than a day) Sadly this year I may forgo the entire bird since not a single other person in my family eats it, and i only buy a bird for the gravy drippings.

Then there is the normal stuffing and mashed potatoes that I make gallons of gravy for from the turkey drippings. Rolls and a Greek salad are also a must in my house.

Dessert is always a pie and vanilla ice cream that has honey and praline walnuts on top.

Every year family members bring their own dishes as well some are not so good but man does everything taste good the next day all constructed in a sandwich.
These dishes would be some sweet potato and marshmallow casserole and green bean casserole with French’s battered onions on top.

So my question is what dishes do you serve every year and which family dishes do you look forward to each year? What sides do you expect each year and make sure get made by asking ahead of time? I would like to know what makes your meals so desirable to you.

15

I’ve reported this post to the mods for moving. It really belongs in Cafe Society, as there is already a thread on the subject there.

Pralines and ice cream…yum!

16

Merged duplicate threads in proper forum.

17

We’ve been invited to our neighbors’ house for Thanksgiving this year. We found out after living here for a year that my husband and the wife next door work at the same hospital (he’s a resident, she’s a nurse) and we’ve socialized some since then. I have no idea what to expect, and as a vegetarian, I’m really not sure what I’ll be eating. I plan on calling tomorrow to see if there is anything we can bring.

18

Going to the in-laws’; she’s roasting a turkey breast so no soup. :frowning: I ordered some backs and wings to make my own soup the next day. :slight_smile: I am the Baking Czar so I’m making whole wheat rolls and a Red Velvet cake.

19

Mushroom soup
Kale in garlic oil
Brined kosher turkey
Mashed potatoes with blue cheese
Chestnut and sausage stuffing
Sauteed string beans
Cranberry sauce
Pumpkin pie
Sweet potato pie

20

Wednesday (at my house, where I’m cooking):
Lobsta
Corn on the cob
Taters
Green beans
Best Potato Salad in the World
Pumpkin Pie

Thursday (at Brother In-law’s, where they cook)
Crappy Turkey
Crappy Stuffing
Crappy fixins