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.

Americans don't have the same aversion as many Brits to serving sweet and savoury together for the same course. I'm not a lover of the sweet potato and marshmallow dish that's served with the main course at Thanksgiving (note above aversion) but I do like sweet potato pie (though given a choice pumpkin pie will ALWAYS win out) which is actually a dessert dish.
The greenbean casserole is actually quite tasty and very easy to make even for non-Americans like me who want to help out with TG dinner prep but are scared to fall afoul of the 'family recipe' law regarding other traditional dishes - it's a minefield!

I remember looking up a cake recipe from an America site and it's was literally, ' get your box of yellow cake and mix in your wet ingredients, line your tin and bake @ 450 for 25mins, to decorate use your favourite cream cheese frosting mix (store bought) etc.

Had the worst coleslaw in America once, studded with dried cranberries, raisins and some unidentifiable nut it was soooo sweet it made my teeth itch.

They don't do back bacon either, can't make a decent bacon sandwich over there.

i have travelled all over the states and there is some seriously delicious food. But as a generalisation I find it much sweeter than UK food.

aversion as many Brits to serving sweet and savoury together for the same course.

The Brits that traditionally do cranberry sauce with turkey, redcurrant/cumberland sauce with whatever it is, apple sauce with pork, duck with cherry or orange sauce, pineapple on gammon....etc??

@cyclingpast

We are British and we celebrate Thanksgiving at home. We basically celebrate any occasion which can be marked by food as we love cooking and eating! We also celebrate Burns Night, Chinese New Year, Cinco de Mayo and so on.. Any excuse for a celebration!

Oh, sweet potato pie with marshmallow topping is actually really nice. As is peanut butter and jam, and peanut butter with chocolate (which is finally getting some recognition in the UK).

I grew up in the US, so celebrated quite a few Thanksgivings (a bit weird as we're all from the UK), but we never had marshmallow and sweet potatoes - my mother clearly considered it an abomination.

Ham cooked in coke is lush though (see Nigella for details). I always cook gammon in something sweet (coke / apple juice / cider).

green beans and marshmallow dish is actually really really nice. Df is American and made it one year when celebrating tg. I wasn't sure of it but was extreamly nice.

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

Pema that’s downright offensive. If you think that after living in the US you either went to the wrong restaurants or weren’t invited to anyone’s house that liked you.

I’m British living in the US and have eaten some amazing food here.

And no one has ever served me either of the dishes mentioned in the OP at Thanksgiving.

I don't like sweet potatoes but that pie thing is lovely.

When I watch food network I'm always amazed at the effort American restaurants put into making their sauces and marinading and smoking meats for 24 hours etc. You don't get much of that here.

Well there are plenty of British people who think that cooking from scratch involves boiling shop bought pasta and heating up a jar of sauce, so not sure we're in much of a position to criticize. Some USA shortcuts are genuinely handy - whoever thought up pre boiled eggs is a genius imo. As for the dreaded chicken in a tin, is that really any different to Fray Bentos? Every country has its own food quirks and it doesn't mean they're shit at cooking.

As for sweet + savoury, as well as the UK examples given, have a look at middle Eastern food some time - tonnes of recipes for meat plus apricots/lemons etc that have been around for donkeys' years. It's hardly a new fangled notion.

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

This was exactly my (American) ex-MIL's view of cooking !!

I made the sweet potato and marshmallow pie a few years ago and served it as pudding. I could not bring myself to serve it up with the main (and I wasn't sure whether I was 'supposed' to or not, so went for the 'or not' option). I did like it, but still wouldn't want it on the same plate as my meat and two veg.

I'm not a lover of either dish but to say they're a bit much? They're just different.

There's plenty of vile tinned food in the UK, plenty of awful casseroles, and stodgy food as far as the eye can see -- if we want to make generalisations.

However, someone mentioned cooking chicken with beer and when that's done right, it's succulent and amazing.

Serving a fruit sauce with meat or using a fruit in a stew type dish is traditional in many cuisines, but in most of the cases listed below: cranberry sauce with turkey, redcurrant/cumberland sauce with whatever it is, apple sauce with pork, duck with cherry or orange sauce, pineapple on gammon....etc?? the fruit side is not sweetened but should be quite tart, and is intended as a contrast. Likewise if you add apricots to a tangine type dish you don't get a sweet dish. The US recipes are more like the terrible curries we used to make in the UK full of saltanas.

American tastes do often tend to the sweet, as an example store bought sliced bread has lots of sugar (well high fructose corn syrup mostly). There is also a liking for cooking with cans of soup etc, oddly presented as home made, although 'cooked from scratch' is a UK term I think. I live in Canada rather than the States and if I'm searching for recipes have to watch out as google will put North American sites higher on the list, and lots are really pretty shit. On the other hand there is also more home baking, jam making etc and so lots of delicious American recipes too.

but yet American have pancakes for breakfast with bacon.

pancakes and icecream /sweet filling isn't as popular

Brit living in the US here - I find a lot of food here is very sweet , even milk and bread. I try to buy as much organic food as possible as it’s definitely better. I find there’s a blandness about most restaurants too - the food is nice enough but just seems to be missing something. The vast majority of restaurantsnear where we live are chains though, so that is probably why. When we get away and find a decent independent restaurant though, the food is definitely better.

Another Brit in the US. I personally have found the food in the US to be a better quality than available in the UK. We have a much wider range in the supermarkets and it’s cheaper.

I can say I have noticed that things are sweeter.

I have noticed that the range of restaurants locally is limited to American, Italian and Chinese but that doesn’t bother me.

Just looked up Watergate Salad- WTAF?

Was that concocted as some kind of penance for political misdemeanours?

I have American friends and we all bring a dish each to Thanksgiving. Bean casserole is my specialty but I make it from scratch, not with tinned mushroom soup (which I can’t get here anyway). I improvised with a white sauce with chopped mushrooms stirred in, and it worked fine. Sweet potatoes with candied pecans on top are lush. Marshmallows are overkill.

I cannot wait to try some of the recipes in this thread, starting with the green bean casserole! (Brit)

@AutumnMadness no 'Brits' under the age of around 75 would cook their veg to a 'boiled mush'. That's a very outdated stereotype 😂🙄 Even my lovely old 82 year old Mum knows how to steam a perfectly crisp carrot without reducing it to baby food!

I personally have found the food in the US to be a better quality than available in the UK. We have a much wider range in the supermarkets and it’s cheaper.

that depends very much where you are in the US.

Yeah but the pancakes and bacon generally come smothered with maple syrup. Not knocking it but a shed-load of sugar to start the day.

It is only August- why think of this already?

Should we make a list of all the food oddities in Britain? Lamb with mint sauce? Yorkshire pudding? Mince pies? Haggis? Fried mars bars? Chips and curry sauce? Scotch eggs? Steak and kidney pie?

I have dual citizenship (UK and another country) and while I can stomach some of the above, some dishes on that list puzzle me and seem very exotic (for want of a better term ).

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.