Thanksgiving foods, ranked best to worst | 2025 Edition
Every year, thousands of families are met with an impossible task: Make a huge meal with way too many side dishes while sticking to tradition and giving everybody what they want. Also, you have to do it with family members you only see about twice a year. That includes your weird cousin who's into pickleball and Bitcoin.
Thanksgiving can be a beautiful time of year when all of your favorite people gather in a warm environment to eat, drink and watch the Dallas Cowboys lose on national television.
But you can't make every traditional Thanksgiving food. Fortunately, I'm here to help you out with my yearly ranking of foods.
As always, these rankings are not scientific, but they are correct. Also, I did not, at any point, check to see where I ranked anything in previous years.
Thanksgiving foods, ranked best to worst | 2025 edition
1) Stuffing— Stuffing is more than a food. It's a Thanksgiving Day lifestyle. It's a command. It's a playbook for how I approach the day.
Food? I'm stuffing. Football on TV? I'm stuffing. Dinner rolls at the table so I don't say anything inappropriate to relatives? You better believe I'm stuffing.
Stuffing is bread that's evolved. It's ascended into another form. I'd call it Thanksgiving enlightenment if not for the fact that it makes me quite heavy by the end of the day.
2) Gravy— Sure, it's not a front-line Thanksgiving food by itself. But gravy improves everything it touches.
Gravy has your back when all other foods fail you.
What's that? You're guilted into trying those nightmare TikTok dishes where people dump pumpkin pies onto a Blackstone griddle? Gravy is here to save the day.
3) Whipped Cream— Whipped cream is the gravy of dessert. It can salvage anything.
4) Dinner Rolls— Thanksgiving dinner will not be on time. This is not a complaint to the people in the kitchen trying to fit four days of cooking into one. It's just the reality.
Fortunately, dinner rolls are there to ease the burden of those doing the real work.
No, the turkey isn't done yet. It needs 20 more minutes so you all don't get food poisoning. Now be quiet, eat some rolls and watch the Cowboys lose the afternoon game.
5) Pecan Pie— Pecan pie is a cultural cheat code. It's just sugar pie. It's an elaborate Pop-Tart that's tricked everyone into thinking it's a seasonally appropriate dessert.
6) Butter— What's that? Butter isn't a "food?" I'm sorry, things must be different where you live in QuitterTown. I live in ButterVille where we embrace the sticks of dairy gold brought down from the heavens.
7) Turkey— I don't want to hear anyone complain about turkey. It's the Batman of Thanksgiving. It's the hero Thanksgiving deserves, just not the hero people need at the moment.
It's the protein that carries the meal on its shoulders. It soaked up the gravy. It brings a foundation to the stuffing. It adds a meaty palate for cranberry sauce.
It is the Atlas holding up the sky of Thanksgiving dinner and it's about time we showed it some appreciation.
8) Macaroni and Cheese— There are some people who will argue that mac & cheese isn't a Thanksgiving food. This is not an argument I understand.
How could someone even contemplate arguing for a reality where there's less mac & cheese?
9) Pumpkin Pie— My preferred method of eating pumpkin pie is to cover it in whipped cream.
Now, when I say "cover," you may think I mean "top." No. I mean that I fully entomb it in whipped cream. You will not see an uncovered speck of pumpkin pie on my plate.
10) Mashed Potatoes— Name another scenario where it's socially acceptable to make a volcano at the table. Gravy volcanoes forever.
11) Green Bean Casserole— There are a lot of people who feel really strongly about this. One of them might make me sleep on the couch if I say anything bad about it. Moving on!
10) Apple Pie— Listen, it's a great dessert. But it's a great dessert you can have anytime.
11) Ham— Few things in life are as invigorating as sneaking into the fridge to grab a piece of cold, leftover ham.
Do I need ham at 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving? No. But there's also no way you're going to stop me.
12) Peas— No one can argue that you have no vegetables on your plate if you have five peas on there.
13) Carrots— If you roast carrots correctly, I'll go to town on them. If you roast them wrong, they will not be touched.
14) Squash— Nothing has marked my journey into adulthood more than my changing opinion of squash. I used to hate it. Young me was dumb.
15) Scalloped Potatoes— Listen, I'd love to celebrate the combination of cheese and potatoes. But this dish has the magical ability to either be way too hot or way too cold. There are 15 seconds where its a good temperature.
16) Candied Yams— Stop wasting good marshmallows. Just make sweet potatoes.
17) Brussels Sprouts— Brussels Sprouts can be good if roasted correctly. But for Thanksgiving dinner, they always get pushed to the side and overlooked.
18) Salad— My stance on salad at Thanksgiving is the same as it is every year. It's like having an EMT at a tee ball game. No one's going to actually need to use it. But we all feel a little better that it's there.
19) Creamed Corn— Full disclosure: I don't think I can eat corn for a while after the Creamed Corn Oreo I ate recently.
20) Cranberry Sauce— Imagine explaining cranberry sauce to someone — we start out with a fruit that the majority of the population will not consume on the other 364 days of the year. But for one Thursday in November, you're apparently crazy for not liking it.
It's called a berry. But can you name any other berry that's scooped out of a bog with giant industrial nets?
It's called a sauce, despite the canned version clearly being a jelly.
I feel like I'm going insane. What magical spell do the bigwigs at CranberryCorp cast on us every year to trick us into thinking this stuff is essential?
I mean, fine, I will admit that the tartness helps cut down on the starch of everything else at the table. But we can't find anything else that works?
Previous versions:
How does this ranking compare to previous versions? You tell me. I refuse to go back and compare:
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(No list in 2020. It was a weird year for everyone.)
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Want more "I Ate It" food coverage? You can follow Nick on Instagram (@NickAteIt) and TikTok (also @NickAteIt)
"I ate it so you don't have to" is a regular food column about off-beat eats, both good and bad. I picked the name years ago and now we're sort of stuck with it.
You can send any praise/food suggestions to nomalley@masslive.com . Please send all criticisms and complaints to mperri@masslive.com . You can check out the rest of the series here .
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