Chicken is the way to go for Thanksgiving dinner

Ellie McDowell

More stories from Ellie McDowell

It takes a village
April 19, 2023
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Typical Thanksgiving dinner

Thanksgiving is almost here, and it’s time to start figuring out what is going on your table for this feast. Most people have a set group of things for Thanksgiving dinner: cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, corn, green beans, squash, some sort of bread, pumpkin pie, and turkey. 

When people think of Thanksgiving, they think of turkey. One of the problems with turkey is that you can only cook it one way. Turkeys are large birds, so you only need to buy one to feed a family and can still have leftovers for weeks afterward. What if, instead of a large bird that we can only have one of, we started eating a smaller bird like chicken?

Chicken is large enough that you would need two or three for everyone to eat. This means that we can make meat that every person likes. We can make a spicy chicken for those who prefer spicy meat, fried chicken for those who prefer it fried, and just plain old chicken for those who are scared of change.

The other thing about chicken is that it tastes better than turkey. It has so much more flavor, and the texture is so much better. Turkey tastes like chicken if you took all the flavor out of it and only left a little bit. 

This better taste could be because it takes so much less time to cook, and this means that there is less of a chance of the inside being dry. Because of the size of the bird, you don’t have to worry about some parts of it being as dry as flour and some parts being perfectly moist.

Some people may say that we eat chicken all the time, so it makes Thanksgiving less special. In reality, the special part of Thanksgiving is being all together and having a meal as a family. Since we do eat chicken more often, we know that people like it. This makes family dinner a little easier because we don’t need to worry that someone is going to skip out on the protein of the meal because they don’t like it.

Chicken also has a lot of healthy fats, and the skin of the chicken is full of flavor and salts. This means that you don’t need to add salt to your food, and the flavor is kept in the meat for everyone’s enjoyment. This flavor can also be changed with different seasonings put onto the skin before cooking it, which means that there is something for everyone.

Let’s make Thanksgiving into chicken season, because they outweigh turkeys in more ways than one.

This boost of flavor is not something you necessarily get from turkey. Turkey tends to be a bit more bland than chicken; this means that you have to add things to the meat to give it the desired flavor. 

To recap, chicken is not only a cheaper option for our Thanksgiving feasts, but it’s a tastier option too. You can have more variety in seasoning and flavor with chicken, which means there will be something for everyone. 

Let’s make Thanksgiving into chicken season because they outweigh turkeys in more ways than one.