Photo: Sang An
In my family everyone has their annual Thanksgiving cooking assignments. My father-in-law roasts the turkey, my mother-in-law mixes up the cocktails, and my job is to make the gravy. With holiday must-haves like cranberry sauce, stuffing, mashed potatoes, turkey, green beans, sweet potatoes, gravy, and dinner rolls, there is no shortage of things to prepare.
What dish do you cook for Thanksgiving?
Photo: Sang An
Get a load of this startling statistic: Seventy-four percent of Americans buy cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving as opposed to making it, according to the folks at Ocean Spray. What? So only 26 percent of us are turning those bags of berries piled high at the supermarket into homemade sauce?
Come on, people! Of all the iconic elements of Thanksgiving, cranberry sauce is the easiest and fastest to make. There’s the back-of-the-bag raw version in which you grind the cranberries in the food processor with sugar and a chopped-up orange, and the cooked version, which requires nothing more than dumping a bag of berries into a pot, adding sugar and water, and cooking it until the berries pop, a mere 10 to 15 minutes.
Despite the ease of making sauce from scratch, I think I know the allure of the jellied canned stuff. When I was a kid, my mother bought it until she discovered what a cinch the homemade sauce is. My brothers and I loved to open the can at both ends, push the cylinder of jelly onto a plate, then gleefully watch it slip, slide, and jiggle as we carried it out to the table. Continue reading
Photo: Gourmet
Thanksgiving dinner is one of the most iconic and delicious meals of the year. Featuring family favorites like stuffing, mashed potatoes, candied yams, cranberry sauce, turkey, and pumpkin pie, it’s no wonder everyone looks forward to the big feast.
What are you most looking forward to eating this Thanksgiving?
