Turkey is a bit of a problem because the birds have been bred to have giant breasts and can’t even reproduce on their own. You pretty much have to dry brine them to get decent flavor. To always get a moist bird, use a meat thermometer. Also, go for the dark meat. It’s always better than the light meat.

Fresh cranberry sauce is awesome. Keyword being fresh. It’s just cranberries, sugar, and little bit of water that you cook down for about 10-20 minutes. Make it the night before then spread that on some fresh cornbread.

Stuffing depends on the aromatics. Add some sauted onion and celery then some mushrooms or cooked italian sausage. And one more thing: cook the bread in a lot of butter.

Pumpkin pie tends to be on the dense side and pumpkin by itself doesn’t have much flavor. Most of what we think of as pumpkin pie flavor comes from the spices: cinnamon, nutmeg, and a tiny bit of ground ginger. Homemade is better, but a lot of work. It requires roasting pumpkin, making the pie crust from scratch, and then essentially making a pumpkin custard for the filling. Worth doing at least once. It comes out nice and light instead of dense like the canned and premade stuff.

Casserole is always hit or miss. Aunt Caroline’s recipe is either good or a nightmare.

Mash potatoes, it depends on how you dress them up. You can rice them with some cream and butter to make them nice and smooth. Or use red potatoes for something more rustic along with some cheddar cheese or bacon.

I’ve never heard of mac and cheese for thanksgiving. There are so many better dishes that can be made. Who’s cooking your thanksgiving dinner? Do they even know how to cook? And where’s the gravy? You can make a nice rich gravy from the turkey drippings.