Top Five Thanksgiving Sides

5 - Green Bean Casserole

Green Bean Casserole might be the most divisive side on our list. And although the GBC haters are everywhere, they weren’t in the conversation when we placed this beauty at number five. Also, please don’t elevate this dish. Just prepare it with the directions that you can find on the side of the French’s crispy onions you bought. This dish doesn’t require elevation or imagination, just cream of mushroom soup and a willingness to eat something that looks pretty gross and tastes pretty great. We think our friend Maggie put it best when she sent this comment in: “Not up for debate in my opinion - green bean casserole is the elite side dish of Thanksgiving.”

4 - Cranberry Sauce

You might not need a lot of it …but it’s not really Thanksgiving without cranberry sauce. I enthusiastically endorse skipping the canned stuff and going for this relatively easy Epicurious recipe. But even in canned form, cranberry sauce is an essential part of a Thanksgiving table. From time to time, you might catch cranberry sauce on a sandwich during the rest of the year, but primarily, this tart and tasty dish belongs to November. Our listener and frenemy Davis from Northeast has the opposite take. He says that cranberry “tastes like it is dehydrating me.” Davis, we still love you. But you’re making it really difficult to do so.

3 - Mashed Potatoes and Gravy

When we had this conversation on the podcast, we imagined what sides we absolutely had to keep on the table, and mashed potatoes and gravy were top of mind. Letting the gravy boat make a little lake of meaty, savory flavor on top of the starchy mountain is one of the great joys of making the perfect Thanksgiving plate. And yes, gravy has other roles outside of its potato duties, but it is a perfect match, and it only felt right to list them as a single entity.

2 - Sweet Potatoes

You trust doctors, right? Our guest was Dr. Katie Loth, and she was the biggest supporter of sweet potatoes. So at this point, you should like sweet potatoes based on your doctor’s advice. Dr. Loth did point out that the potatoes must truly be sweet, ideally aided by brown sugar and pecans. Sweet potatoes should also receive extra love because they are the secret weapon of any elite leftover Thanksgiving sandwich. No jury would convict you for the carb-on-carb crime of covering that toasted white bread with a layer of sweet potatoes before you get started with the turkey.

1 - Stuffing

If our contributor Tane Danger had his way, his five sides would just be different varieties of stuffing. Stuffing is the rare side that is a must-have that can also evolve and be individualized. Whether you like your stuffing with cornbread, White Castle burgers, or day-old white bread, it’s all good for us. The sage, thyme, and rosemary that give stuffing its taste also sit at the center of the taste of Thanksgiving in general. If you are looking for all the feeling of Thanksgiving in a single forkful, you’d be best served to dig into the stuffing.