The Thanksgiving Staples Ina Garten Doesn't Bother Serving

A large part of Ina Garten's professional TV cook persona is being an impeccable hostess, creating incredible meals from her home kitchen to serve a neverending list of guests that arrive at the end of each "Be My Guest" episode. So you're probably thinking that her Thanksgiving dinner would be a more elegant version of the classic spread. However, Garten's Thanksgiving dinner is anything but typical. She has admitted opting to omit two Thanksgiving staples that will surely spark major controversy among her fans.

Perhaps Garten's most jaw-dropping omission from the classic Thanksgiving meal is stuffing. "You don't need stuffing," she told "Food and Wine Magazine." Her reason? "People have more fun if they don't eat so much they have to be taken home in an ambulance." Considering how many stuffing recipes we've shared here at Tasting Table, stuffing is a must-have at most Thanksgiving tables. Plus, many of us might feel entitled to the food coma Garten seems to abhor.

"And no hors d'oeuvres; I learned this from the French," said Garten. Perhaps this statement is a joke since hors d'oeuvre is, of course, French, meaning, "outside of creation" with the term referring to a pre-dinner snack. While cocktail hours and snacks can precede a dinner party, Thanksgiving dinner is a feast so large that snacking would contribute to Garten's fear of the perils of overeating. Maybe she has a point, but also, for a lot of people, overeating is part of the fun of Thanksgiving.

Despite Garten's anti-stuffing and zero hors d'oeuvres sentiments, she still gives the public what they want by offering stuffing recipes. She's developed many classic Thanksgiving recipes in her cookbooks and on her Food Network shows. Last year, she partnered with New York Times Cooking to show viewers how to elevate store-bought frozen stuffing by using it as the foundation for her mushroom and gruyere bread pudding recipe, as an alternative to traditional stuffing. She uses this Herb Seasoned Cubed Stuffing from Pepperidge Farm. You can take her advice by using Pepperidge Farm Corn Bread stuffing to simplify our recipe for chorizo and cornbread stuffing.

But what are Garten's personal choices when she makes a menu for her loved ones? She says, "I serve turkey with spinach gratin and smashed sweet potatoes with orange." A far cry from an ultra-sweet, sweet potato and marshmallow casserole, her recipe is a more sophisticated pairing that we've written an entire article about. You can use our recipe for creamed spinach, topping it with a thick layer of gruyere cheese and baking it to turn it into a gratin.

Garten also alludes to making a baked carrot dish and an apple crisp for her Thanksgiving meal. If these dishes whet your appetite, pop our recipes for honey glazed carrots and our classic apple crisp recipe onto your prep-list for this year's Thanksgiving dinner.