HOMEMADE VERSUS STORE-BOUGHT THANKSGIVING EDITION
We did a super scientific test to see which Thanksgiving sides are worth making from scratch, and which are better off store-bought
There was also one factor I didn’t consider: nostalgia. Even if the dish is made of the most proccessed and unhealty foodstuffs, warm memories of grandma serving it trumps any gourmet and homemade version.
EVERY
YEAR HOME COOKS put themselves through the ringer with Thanksgiving dinner, feeling the pressure to impress everyone at the dinner table with a perfectly cooked bird and all its trimmings. But there’s nothing wrong with enlisting some help to lessen the stress of cooking for the holiday, especially if it means saving money — and spending more time with friends and less time huddled over a stove.
Aside from having a potluck where each guest is in charge of bringing a dish, or getting someone in the kitchen to help wash and cut vegetables, there’s the option of using a few storebought items as a shortcut. But which dishes do you decide to make using storebought items and which are best done from scratch?
I did an unofficial taste test in the newsroom, preparing store-bought and from-scratch versions of three classic Thanksgiving sides. Some found that from-scratch dishes tasted vastly better, while others found the difference to be negligible. There was also one factor I didn’t consider: nostalgia. Even if the dish is made of the most processed and unhealthy foodstuffs, warm memories of grandma serving it trump any gourmet and homemade version.
First up is dressing, which is essentially stuffing that’s not served inside the turkey. Time-crunched cooks tend to favour dressing over stuffing because cooking an unstuffed bird is much faster, especially if the turkey is spatchcocked (another word for butterflied). A flattened turkey may not look like something from the pages of a magazine, but it ensures much more even (and faster) cooking. A typical 15-pound spatchcock bird would take just under two hours.
As for the dressing itself, the most popular store-bought brand is Stove Top. Preparing it is really simple: stir the dehydrated seasoned breadcrumbs into hot water mixed with margarine and let it sit for five minutes. Homemade dressing, however, is a more involved process that requires browning vegetables, fresh sage and crumbled sausages in a pan before adding the bread and a splash of orange juice. Total cooking time is closer to the 30-minute mark, and the cost of a pound of sausages alone was slightly more than what I paid for five boxes of Stove Top.
While I found the taste of the Stove Top to be super salty and one-note with an oddly spongy texture, some of my coworkers said the reconstituted stuffing reminded them of their childhood. Still, all of them preferred the homemade version, calling it a meal in itself because of the addition of sausages. They also liked the subtle sweetness from the orange juice, plus the pop of colour from the vegetables.
Then there’s the green bean casserole smothered in cream of mushroom and topped with fried onions, created by the Campbell’s soup company in 1955. To my surprise, the original recipe is a bit more than just pouring a can of its mushroom soup over beans and baking it: two cans of the soup have to be first whisked with soy sauce, milk, black pepper and the French’s brand of fried onions that comes in a plastic container.
The homemade version requires making the cream of mushroom from scratch: first browning onions and mushrooms then adding cream, taking an extra 30 minutes compared to using the canned soup. The price of the homemade casserole is comparable to the store-version, however, as two cans of soup and a container of fried onions cost around $8.50 total while fresh mushrooms, cream and raw onions cost about $8 all together.
A few of the testers said that if they were short on time they’d make the green bean casserole with the storebought stuff. Others would do a mix: make the mushroom soup from scratch, but use store-bought fried onions. All of the testers favoured the from-scratch version, which contains a lot more mushrooms and has a lighter, creamy flavour.
Finally, the ultimate storebought Thanksgiving staple: tinned cranberry sauce. At $2.79 for a 348 mL can of Ocean Spray, it’s cheap, full of kitsch and easy to serve: open the can and pour it into a bowl. The downside is that my coworkers said it tasted mainly of sugar, with little of the tart cranberry flavour coming through.
The homemade sauce costs a bit more to prepare, with a bag of President’s Choice frozen cranberries priced at $4 (it went up to $5 the next day). Most recipes use about 3 cups
(750 mL) and the bag contains about 5 cups’ worth, but the extra cranberries can be repurposed in a punch or refrozen for a future recipe. My homemade version uses way less sugar than most online recipes and takes about 20 minutes. It’s a one-pot side dish that only requires some stirring (plus it can be made in advance). My coworkers preferred the homemade version, saying that its burst of tart cranberry flavour with a hint of warm spices — cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and star anise— would cut through the salty, juicy turkey nicely.
In the end, everyone preferred the taste of the homemade dishes but half wouldn’t hesitate to make green beans with canned soup and pre-fried onions or use a few boxes of Stove Top to relive their childhoods. If they were to make one thing from scratch, it would be the cranberry sauce.