AIBU to find these traditional Thanksgiving dishes a bit much?

[longwayoff]

I spotted a recipe on Sunday for a 'modernised' green bean casserole. The original is green beans, can of mushroom soup poured over them, into oven for 30 mins, top with crispy onion rings. This is served with the Thanksgiving turkey alongside sweet potato pie topped with toasted marshmallows and other less weird things like stuffing and potatoes. How on earth can these have become traditional family favourites? Convince me someone.

Different cultures, different tastes. British people are thought weird for eating marmite!

We are not American but like to celebrate thanksgiving. I made that green bean casserole last year for the first time with a little bit of trepidation - it’s suprisingly tasty!! I hoovered up all the leftovers as well!

Sweet potato and marshmallows though??

Honestly, I do find British "cuisine" a hell of a lot weirder than American. Penchant for veg boiled to mush is particularly mystifying for me.

Sweet potato pie would be a version of the pumpkin pie - sugar would be added to the sweet potato filling. It's not everyone's cup of tea (not mine actually), but I don't think it's particularly weird. Sweet potatoes are called "sweet" for a reason.

Sweet potato with marshmallows is sickly, but it tastes quite nice. I haven’t been home for Thanksgiving for ages, but we tend to have a more modern version of a sweet potato dish now. The thing is, we always had so many different dishes that you’d just have a little bit of each. At my house we’d have turkey, stuffing, cranberry mousse, fresh cranberry sauce, twice-baked mashed potato (my favourite), green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, Waldorf salad, pickles and olives and homemade bread rolls. It’s excessive, obviously, but we had leftovers for days and only had those dishes on Thanksgiving with some Christmas crossover. Some dishes came from my mom, who was from NY, some from my dad, who is from the West Coast, and some from our friends who came for dinner, who are from the Midwest, so the food represented the broad variety of cultures across the country.

It varies, even among Americans (as you might expect). In my family, the sweet potato casserole not pie is never ever served with marshmallows on top. It's still pretty sweet, though, because it's usually topped with a delicious mixture of chopped pecans, brown sugar, and melted butter. I think of it more as a dessert than a savory dish, though it's often eaten with the rest of the meal instead of afterwards.

And though we're Southern (the part of the country most associated with green bean casserole), my family's never gone in for that. Someone might bring it to the larger family get-together, but I've never tasted it.

My favorite part of the Thanksgiving feast is cornbread dressing.

I made a Pioneer Woman sweet potato thing a while ago and it sounded ridiculous - SO much butter and sugar and more butter and more sugar and pecans and god knows what else, but OMG it was the most delicious thing ever. I wasn't (and don't) celebrating Thanksgiving, I just made it to see what it was like, and I've made it a few times since. Yes it's sweet, but I thought it went really well with strong meat. Sweet and savoury together isn't really such an unusual thing.

If you're going to talk about tasty sounding things you should be required to post recipes. I'm waiting for twice cooked mash and sweet potato pie/casserole Please!

I love sweet potato soufflé (which for me is different from sweet potato pie, which wouldn't have marshmallows). Embrace the differences. I'm the sort that will try anything instead of just saying that it's weird though, which is what my UK family tend to do when visiting my family!

Americans think a tin of x + a tin of y = cooking.

Not what you asked but I love Thanksgiving (British but lived in DC for a few years). Christmas without the stress.

This is the Pioneer Woman one:

thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/soul-sweet-taters-step-by-step-recipe/

I've made it several times, although not in a few years now as far as I can remember. No marshmallows, but plenty of sugar and butter.

I have American family. Some of their food is downright disgusting.

I have been served a 'salad' that contained marshmallow and desiccated coconut along with grated carrot and some other veg. It's left overnight to soak up so it's somehow fluffy slime.

They also serve up casseroles that are tins of creamy soup tinned pasta and grated cheese. Looks smells and tastes like baked vomit.

And they have the cheek to say English food is bad.

Tinned tuna and pasta that's meant to say.

And dessert is usually 3-4 shop bought seer things like cookies brownies and popcorn all mushed up together with cream on top.

They also cook ham and chicken with coke and beer.

It sounds like you are mixing traditional foods from Different states. In the NE we wouldn’t have sweet potato pie. Instead our dessert would be pumpkin pie.

Oh my goodness, sweet potato crumble - shouldn’t be good but I bet it’s wonderful, though I’d serve it as dessert I think.

I second watching the Pioneer Woman thanksgiving special. Some of her special versions will make the dishes on your OP seem tame and bland in comparison

My very first visit to the US I was at a meal where there were vegetables in jelly.
But they have delicious food too. All cultures have great and bizarre stuff.

Like this 7,000 calorie pasta “salad” that includes a whole large jar of mayonnaise and a cup of sugar... and very little actual salad of any description:

m.youtube.com/watch?v=u4zw99VsoMA

Usually I think you shouldn’t knock anything until you’ve tried it, but sugary pasta and sweet potatoes with marshmallow served alongside meat and gravy are the exceptions to my rule.

Thank you Shiney!

Not what you asked but I love Thanksgiving (British but lived in DC for a few years). Christmas without the stress.

I have to agree. For a long time I didn't 'get' Thanksgiving but now I also treat it as Christmas without the stress and it's wonderful. We eat enormous amounts of lovely food, relax a lot, and generally enjoy each other's company.

One day I will deep fry a turkey then my life will be complete.

Thanks responders, I like the crumble, thanks shiny, properly belongs on fruit for pudding tho! I'm finding the American food fascinating. I'm going to look up twice baked mash and track down the Pioneer Woman Thanksgiving special. I do have a fancy for cornbread stuffing which sounds rather attractive. Might even give the beans a go. Not the marshmallowy thing though. Never!

I love a good sweet potato casserole 😀 Sweet potato, marshmallows...what's not to like!😅

The US has fabulous food and fabulous home cooks...and some truly weird shit. 'Watergate salad', I'm looking at you 🤢

Suppose some stuff is not worse than any countries regional delights. Pickled eggs? Preserved eggs? Etc etc

My favourite cooking show when I was in the US was Sandra Lee's Semi Homemade. An actual TV show telling you to buy a cake mix, then make a bit of icing 😂

Stupomax

My parents in the UK often deep fry the Christmas turkey. (Outdoor gas burner and a large pasta pan) however they used to use a milk urn from the scrap yard.

They also Finnish off the roast potato’s in there too for extra crispy ones

Why do you celebrate Thanksgiving if you're British? It's Harvest Sunday/Harvest festival in the UK, isn't it? I thought the American Thanksgiving was because of :

Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday in the United States, and Thanksgiving 2018 occurs on Thursday, November 22. In 1621, the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians shared an autumn harvest feast that is acknowledged today as one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in the colonies. For more than two centuries, days of thanksgiving were celebrated by individual colonies and states. It wasn’t until 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, that President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be held each November.www.history.com/topics/thanksgiving/history-of-thanksgiving

Pemajed, that is uncalled for.

I'm American and while I admit there is some gross food there and a lot of "recipes" based on cake mixes, it's rude to say all of us eat from tins. My European DP thinks I go to way too much trouble cooking with fresh ingredients. So there.