Thanksgiving recipes with New Orleans flair: Dressing, turkey gumbo, pie and more (2024)

FAQs

What is a traditional Thanksgiving dinner from Louisiana? ›

It's common to see a pot of gumbo or jambalaya along with the turkey. Before the meal, you might see andouille or boudin, a pork sausage that contains rice and spices. Shrimp is another common option on a Cajun Thanksgiving menu.

It's the most wonderful food holiday of the year - Thanksgiving! And in New Orleans, it gets even better, courtesy of local favorites like oyster dressing, turkey gumbo, carrot souffle, dirty rice and collard greens.

Cornish game hen, goose, duck, ham, beef, salmon, and mushroom recipes make worthy centerpieces for holiday meals.

Cranberry sauce

You can't serve up your Thanksgiving turkey without this sauce of the season. The first pilgrims learnt all about cranberries from the Native American Indians, who picked these berries at this time of year.

This is usually a mix of traditional Thanksgiving food and Black culture. You'll see the classic Thanksgiving dishes like turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing paired with collard greens, yams, mac and cheese, and other traditional Black dishes.

Millions of people across the United States will sit down to a traditional Thanksgiving meal, including turkey, potatoes, squash, corn, and cranberries. These foods have become synonymous with Thanksgiving, but how did they end up on tables from Maine to California?

But a few things are guaranteed, no matter where I am or who I'm with: There will be turkey; there will be stuffing; there will be cranberry sauce, gravy, potatoes, and pie.

According to Wick, the tart fruit became popularly used to create cranberry sauce for turkey and other types of meat in the late 17th century. Within a hundred more years, cranberry sauce became a staple dish in the U.S., with its popularity taking off even more throughout the 19th century.

Cranberry sauce is a crucial component of the Thanksgiving table, where its tart, bright acidity cuts through all of the heavy turkey and gravy and stuffing and mashed potatoes.

Turkey is often dry, salty, and bland, which makes it the perfect partner for something sweet and moist. Cranberries are not overly sweet. Their tartness pairs well with the more bland-tasting turkey. Our palates would be bored by singular tastes.

What was the original traditional Thanksgiving dinner? ›

Although turkeys were indigenous, there's no record of a big, roasted bird at the feast. The Wampanoag brought deer and there would have been lots of local seafood (mussels, lobster, bass) plus the fruits of the first pilgrim harvest, including pumpkin. No mashed potatoes, though.

There's Thanksgiving, and then there's a Cajun Thanksgiving, which means a table spread of almost ludicrous proportions - at least two meats, not necessarily including generous chunks of boudin and andouille; seafood gumbo; sweet and white potatoes; dirty rice; macaroni and cheese; cornbread; Spinach Madeleine; green ...