The Five Worst Thanksgiving Dishes

More architectural element than food, jellied cranberry sauce from a can has long been an immutable fixture of the Thanksgiving table.

There is no worse holiday for the true foodie than Thanksgiving. Cooking it is like being trapped in a crashing rocket ship, with a joystick that doesn’t respond. Try to change the menu one iota, and all you get are sour looks. Everyone wants the same knee-jerk menu year after year after year. Yet we eat it and like it. Here are the five worst dishes associated with the holiday that we hate the most.

5. Jellied Cranberry Sauce — You know, the kind that’s always decanted from the can with the can lines still visible, as proof that it actually came from the can and it wasn’t you just doing mutant experiments with Jell-O. Cranberry sauce is way too sweet, and should be presented with the dessert course, if at all.

4. Stuffing That’s Never Been Inside the Bird — If you’re not a favorite guest at the Thanksgiving table, the host or hostess may try to serve you stuffing from a baking dish that has never been inside the juicy, greasy, and salty cavity of the bird, and thus is devoid of the true flavor of Thanksgiving.

3. Creamed Corn — Either canned or “fresh,” creamed corn ought to be the punchline of a traveling-salesman joke sooner than being cradled in a flowered dish at the holiday table. And what is that whitish fluid surrounding the kernels, anyway?

2. Tofurky — Looking more like the suppurating testicle of a rhinoceros than an actual turkey, Tofurky is getting increasingly difficult to dodge these days, and it’s been on more than one occasion that we’ve witnessed the horror of Tofurky baking next to Tom Turkey in the very same oven.

What could be worse than Tofurky? Turn the page if you dare.

1. Candied Yams With Marshmallows — Who makes this? How does it end up on the table, with no one claiming authorship? Maybe it’s a prank on the part of children, who are intent on eating marshmallows for dinner even though the sticky white pillows are technically a dessert. Or maybe the dish is owing to some malicious force that Science has yet to identify and describe. If this baked entity doesn’t make you gag, nothing will. You are now ready to eat monkey brain sashimi.

Agree? Disagree?

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