Who needs meat when these vegetarian Thanksgiving recipes are so good? (2024)

FAQs

How do vegetarians celebrate Thanksgiving? ›

Cornish game hen, goose, duck, ham, beef, salmon, and mushroom recipes make worthy centerpieces for holiday meals. This is collaborative content from Food & Wine's team of experts, including staff, recipe developers, chefs, and contributors.

Show-Stopping Main Dishes

Obviously, the classic choice here is a roasted turkey, but you don't have to feel limited by that. You could do a whole turkey breast for a smaller crowd, or go off the beaten path with long-braised turkey legs and thighs. Southern Thanksgiving often involves a ham, which is always delicious.

Indigenous to the area and plentiful, turkeys were larger than chickens, ducks, and geese, making them economical to serve to a crowd. Also, turkeys didn't provide milk like cattle, or edible eggs, so slaughtering one for its considerable meat just made sense to North American homesteaders.

Nut Roast. The most popular Christmas meal for vegetarians and vegans is the nut roast. This typically describes a mixture of nuts, breadcrumbs, leeks, onions, broth and either oil or butter. However, this recipe is malleable and offers the opportunity for many alterations according to personal preference.

Intake and status of vitamin B12, vitamin D, iron, zinc, iodine, calcium and bone turnover markers were generally lower in plant-based dietary patterns compared to meat-eaters. Vegans had the lowest vitamin B12, calcium and iodine intake, and also lower iodine status and lower bone mineral density.

Although turkeys were indigenous, there's no record of a big, roasted bird at the feast. The Wampanoag brought deer and there would have been lots of local seafood (mussels, lobster, bass) plus the fruits of the first pilgrim harvest, including pumpkin.

Ham Is Easier and Quicker To Cook

As we mentioned, fresh ham has a higher fat content than turkey, so it won't dry out nearly as easily; this means you don't have to watch it as intensely. However, that only applies to fresh ham.

What is healthier than turkey for Thanksgiving? ›

Try it out on Thanksgiving by substituting tofu for your turkey. Tofu can be cooked in a variety of flavorful ways and comes with a ton of nutritional benefits including a lot of calcium, iron, magnesium, vitamin B, and protein.

Mashed potatoes are a traditional Thanksgiving side dish for a reason, and we definitely look forward to serving up this delicious dish every November. Click here for the recipe!

Turkey is the most common main dish of a Thanksgiving dinner, to the point that Thanksgiving is sometimes colloquially called "Turkey Day." Alexander Hamilton proclaimed that "no citizen of the United States should refrain from turkey on Thanksgiving Day", and Benjamin Franklin had high regard for the wild turkey as an ...

There are only two surviving documents that reference the original Thanksgiving harvest meal. They describe a feast of freshly killed deer, assorted wildfowl, a bounty of cod and bass, and flint, a native variety of corn harvested by the Native Americans, which was eaten as corn bread and porridge.

As for cooking methods, duck, pheasant and goose can roast in the oven just like you would a turkey. The fattier duck and geese should be slow-roasted so the fat renders and you get a crispy skin. A quick reminder: Just like all poultry, make sure your bird reaches an internal temperature of at least 165°F.

Is there a plant-based turkey? Yes. There's Tofurkey, there's Gardein, there's Field Roast.

Guinea fowl, pheasant, duck and quail – even a good old roast chicken will do the job. Here we're sharing general guidance on cooking game birds and chicken, plus a selection of recipes to try.

According to the Vegetarian Society, vegetarians are people who do not eat the products or byproducts of animal slaughter. Vegetarians do not consume: meat, such as beef, pork, and game. poultry, such as chicken, turkey, and duck.