Americans' Least-Favorite Thanksgiving Dishes, According to Instacart
It's just two weeks until Thanksgiving, so if you're hosting this year's meal, you're probably already fussing over the menu, wondering how you've managed to lose two of your 'nice' napkins, and worrying about where to sit everyone's least-favorite uncle. If you're not hosting, then all you have to do is start Googling "nice eating pants" and crossing your fingers that nobody serves green bean casserole.
Instacart recently conducted a survey of more than 2,000 Americans, and it learned that yes, green bean casserole is one of the least-liked parts of the Thanksgiving meal. It was second only to cranberry sauce; 29 percent of respondents said they didn't like that gelatinous side dish but ate it because of "tradition"—and a full 46 percent of those surveyed said they thought it was "disgusting." Hopefully, your casserole and cranberry sauce elicit such responses, but if you're looking to up your game this year, here are our favorite cranberry sauce upgrades (how about this roasted cranberry and grape sauce recipe?) and holiday-worthy green bean recipe ideas.
According to some of the survey's other findings, 80 percent of adults have hosted their annual Thanksgiving eat-fest at some point, but almost a quarter of them (21 percent) said that they had to pretend to enjoy it. (We're guessing that they're the ones who got stuck sitting beside Uncle Doug.) Of the millennials—the respondents between the ages of 23 and 38—a total of 42 percent admitted that, on the occasions that they hosted, they served something other than turkey as the main course.
Surprisingly, more millennials (32 percent) than boomers (18 percent) said that they were less likely to keep any of the leftovers that were still on the serving plates after the meal. Twenty-three percent of Americans overall said that they didn't have any interest in day-after turkey sandwiches or reheated stuffing.
An overwhelming majority (94 percent) said that they served pie every Thanksgiving, and the most popular varieties were pumpkin (46 percent), apple (28 percent) and pecan (10 percent). (And apparently 14 percent of us are devious enough to let our guests believe that we made that store-bought pie from scratch.)
More than half of Americans (65 percent) serve some kind of alcoholic beverage with the meal, and the most popular selection is wine (75 percent) by a landslide. Red wines (47 percent) are the most-served, followed by whites (39 percent), sparkling wine (20 percent), rosé (17 percent) and orange wine (7 percent). Check out our Thanksgiving wine recommendations here, or for something different this year, try one of these perfectly paired cider options.
One of Instacart's weirdest findings was the amount of Cheez-Whiz that we all seem to buy just before Thanksgiving. For the last three years, the company says that Cheez-Whiz sales spike by a whopping 158 percent in the three weeks before Thanksgiving, which is a bigger jump than in the weeks before Christmas, and even the week before "the NFL Championships." (We'll assume they mean the playoffs and the Super Bowl.)
Regardless of whether you're hosting, or just attending in a pair of just-purchased pants with a soft waistband, we hope you have a super Thanksgiving. Also, those two napkins are stuck to a flat sheet somewhere in your linen closet.
