What dishes do you need in order for it to really feel like Thanksgiving?

[N9IWP]

In my family it is the gravy (that’s the main purpose of the turkey - to generate gravy).

Dressing and potatoes as gravy delivery devices.

The past few years I’ve made a pumpkin cheesecake.

Rolls - the man purpose of these are for turkey sandwiches a few hours after dinner.

We have other stuff, but that would be good for me

Brian

[Buttercup_Smith]

Turkey, cornbread dressing, giblet gravy, cranberry sauce (whole berry), collard greens, candied sweet potatoes, and some sort of pie.

Not necessary but we usually also have creamed corn, green beans, mashed potatoes, deviled eggs, pimento cheese stuffed celery.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@pulykamell

Oh, that sounds yummy. Do have a recipe you can post or link to?

Sure! Here it is from my family recipe book. If any resident bakers have ideas on improving them, I’m all ears.

These are almost like cake: they’re all white flour, white sugar, milk, butter, and eggs. Eat them slathered in butter, or make the world’s best salmon sandwiches with them.

Ingredients
2 cups milk
1 cup water
2 Tablespoons yeast
½ cup sugar
3 cups white flour
1 egg
½ cup (1 stick) butter, melted
1 scant tablespoon salt
2 or more tablespoons dried dill
3 or more cups white flour
Baking spray

Heat the milk in a pan until tiny bubbles begin to form around the edges (i.e., scald it). Add the water, and set it aside until it’s warm (it should feel comfortable on your wrist).

Pour into your breadbowl, and add the yeast and the sugar. Wait 5 minutes to make sure the yeast gets all bubbly and good; if it doesn’t, either you added it while the milk was too hot or your yeast is old and dead and awful.

Gradually add the flour and stir it in with a wooden spoon or spatula, incorporating as much air as possible You want to end up with a mixture with the texture of rubber cement or very thick glue. Crack an egg into the mixture and schloop it in thoroughly. Set in a warm spot for an hour or so until it’s good and risen. (I usually turn the oven on for about two minutes, turn it off, and put it in the oven. BE SURE YOU TURN THE OVEN OFF FIRST! Otherwise, tragedy strikes).

Stir in the salt and butter and dill, and then gradually add flour, stirring, until the mixture is bread-dough consistency. Turn onto a floured board or pastry sheet and knead for 10 minutes, adding flour as necessary to keep it from sticking. You can mix more dill in at this point if it’s not dilly enough for you.

Clean out your breadbowl, grease it with butter or baking spray, and add the dough, turning it thoroughly to get the top greasy. Cover it and set it back in the warm spot for another hour or so. Punch it down and let it rise again.

Punch down one last time, set the oven to 350, and grease a cookie sheet. Pinch off a small piece of the dough (between the size of a jumbo egg and a baseball), and pinch the edges of it together at the bottom, so that the other side of it looks all roll-like. Put it on the middle of the baking sheet, pinched-edges on bottom.
Continue making rolls in this fashion, placing them in a ring pattern around the middle one with all their edges touching one another. When you’re done, whisk an egg in a cup and add a dash of water to it; brush the resulting mixture over the top of all the rolls. Let rise for 10 minutes.

Bake for about 20-25 minutes until they’re all golden-brown on top. Eat the first ones hot.

[Little_Nemo]

The basics: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, dinner rolls.

Nobody’s really crazy about green bean casserole or cranberry sauce in my family so those items have been dropped from the menu.

The only unusual item in my family is we all want my mother to make her cheese sauce. It’s supposed to be for the vegetables but it goes great on everything.

[Becky2844]

The must haves:

turkey
dressing
gravy
broccoli casserole
deviled eggs
pickled okra
pumpkin pie

Corn and potato dishes vary. This year I’m fixing mashed sweet potatoes in scooped-out orange halves with as many marshmallows as I can fit on each one.

[purplehorseshoe]

@IvoryTowerDenizen

The main elements of our Thanksgiving haven’t changed since 1996 when I hosted for the first time:

Turkey
Herb, cracker and leek stuffing
Marbleized root vegetable mash
Herbed gravy

How I make the sweet potatoes or squash, what kind of rolls, jellied or homemade cran sauce can change, but the four items above must be there. To the point that I’ll make small versions for us when we’ve had thanksgiving elsewhere.

Marbleized? Explain, please?

[LavenderBlue]

Pie, pie, pie and more pie. Sweet potato, pumpkin and pecan are a must. Mashed potatoes and gravy are also vital.

[JohnT]

Turkey, mashed potatoes, rolls, gravy, english peas of the Leseur variety. Pretty basic, but what the hell.

Not into pies, cranberry sauce, or stuffing.

[IvoryTowerDenizen]

@purplehorseshoe

Marbleized? Explain, please?

It’s so good. Make a purée of carrots in one pot. In another, potatos, turnips, parsnips and a pear. Boil until soft and mash with butter and cream.

Fill a dish with alternating scoops of carrot purée and potato mash. Run a knife through it to marbelize.

Here’s a picture from a food blog. A Favorite Thanksgiving Side Dish | eggs on sunday

[El_Kabong]

Turkey, stuffing, mashed potato, gravy, cole slaw is the minimum. I’m surprised I’m the first to mention slaw; that was an absolute fixture at my family’s Thanksgiving meals.

[BigT]

Dressing (the stuffing kind), primarily. Turkey helps, too. Everything else changes, but those need to be there.

[flodnak]

@Amateur_Barbarian

Sing it, bro. The bird cooks itself. The potatoes are a regular. The dressing is all in the prep. But the gravy… that’s the mark of the meal, and the cook.

There’s also the ancient flodnak family wisdom: Piping hot gravy covers a multitude of sins. The turkey might have turned out a little dry, the potatoes a little too lumpy, the stuffing a bit under-seasoned – but serve good gravy, piping hot, and all will be forgiven and quickly forgotten.

For me, the main dishes I require are stuffing (in the bird, thank you very much, the food safety police can go pound sand), candied sweet potatoes (no marshmallows), and proper homemade gravy. The turkey is just an excuse for the existence of these things. For dessert, pumpkin pie and shoo-fly pie.

[alted315]

[quote=“JohnGalt, post:37, topic:705405”]

Turkey (of course), mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberries in some form.

No one else has scalloped corn?/QUOTE]
YES! I think that’s why my mother got invited to so many meals, so simple but yet so delicious:P

[Cheesesteak]

Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, cranberries and pumpkin pie. Everything else is optional.

[TheFaerie]

Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy. All else is optional. I get the choicest piece of roasted turkey skin because I roasted the darn thing. It may be a wrastln match this year because TheElf is going to grill the bird.

[Wile_E]

I don’t think turkey is a must. My sister cooked a giant chicken once (a special roaster chicken, not an actual giant) and I think it was better than turkey. I do want stuffing though. Also green bean casserole (shut up! I like it and it’s tradition)* and sweet potatoes. And the sweet potatoes are just baked and served with butter, no sweet crap needed - they are delicious just baked.

*My sister and I always teased our mom about the GB casserole every year but she apparently didn’t notice that we always ate it. One year she didn’t make it and we gave her a hard time about it and she said “I thought you didn’t like it because you give me a hard time about it every year” and my sister and I said in unplanned unison “but that’s part of the tradition!”. Now that mom is gone my sister and I still have it every year, she saves it for me to make when I get to her place, and we are also the only ones who eat it. I guess her kid/grandkids won’t be carrying on that tradition.

[NVME702-redux]

Mr.NVME wistfully mused about how his late mother served pearl onions at Thanksgiving (first I’ve heard of this in the 6 years we’ve cohabitated) so I’m going to have to look up how to prepare them. Here is our menu, and it hasn’t changed for me in the 17 years that I’ve served a Turkey Day Dinner

Olive and Sweet Pickle platter
Deviled Eggs
Cheese plate and club crackers

Turkey
Stuffing
Mashed Potatoes
Gravy
Green Bean Casserole
Sweet Corn Casserole (changing it to a Mexican Street Vendor Corn Casserole, hell ya!)
Brown and Serve rolls
Pumpkin Pie
Apple Pie
Blackberry Pie
Cheesecake
Cool Whip

[Arkcon]

I’ve got the answer everyone iin this thread can agree with. Ready …

It doesn’t matter what the food is, its that its homemade, by me.

Other people can cook just fine, and its a fine dinner any day of the week – but Thanksgiving is Thanksgiving because its made by me.

On a more humble note, carefully crafted drippings gravy is what really makes the day. Likewise homemade cranberry sauce.

[Soul_Brother_Number_Two]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

Turkey of course. I definitely need my sweet potatoes. Some sort of green vegetable–gren beans are best. Cranberry sauce. Pumpkin pie (as well as other pies, but one of them has to be pumpkin). Copious wine.

And a weird one for me is dill rolls: they’re a specialty of mine that I’ve made every year for so long at Thanksgiving and Christmas that they’ve become a tradition. They’re great when they’re fresh out of the oven, plus they make fantastic sandwiches with leftover turkey.

You tease. Where’s the recipe?

[MadTheSwine]

Baked sweet potatoes without any added ingredients(except a little bit of butter).

Pecan pie.