How to Host a Vegetarian Thanksgiving Without Anyone Missing the Turkey

Tell someone you’re hosting Thanksgiving with no turkey and you get the same question every single time. “But what will everyone eat?”

It drives me nuts. We’re talking about a table with stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, mac and cheese, green bean casserole, rolls and pie on it. Apparently that’s an empty table.

Here’s my take. Nobody misses the turkey. They miss three things: something big in the middle of the table, gravy, and the feeling that the host went all out.

All three are fixable.

Nobody actually came for the turkey

The sides are the meal. They always were.

Last year Campbell’s surveyed 5,000 US adults who celebrate Thanksgiving, and 63% said they like the side dishes more than the turkey. Almost half, 47%, said they’d be perfectly happy with a plate full of sides and nothing else.

Yes, Campbell’s sells the soup that goes in the casserole, so it’s not a neutral party. I still buy it. Stuffing is the thing I look forward to all year, and I don’t think I’m special.

To be fair, people like turkey fine. They just like what’s sitting next to it more.

And the “turkey makes you sleepy” excuse for the couch? A Northwestern neurology professor put it flat: “Turkey doesn’t really make us sleepy.”

The nap is coming either way. Blame the giant plate of carbs and the drinks.

You still need something to carve

Twelve sides is not a dinner. It’s a potluck with ambition.

That’s the mistake I’d steer any vegetarian host away from. A holiday table needs one big thing that comes out last and gets cut in front of everybody.

That’s the ceremony, and I think the ceremony is what people are attached to. What’s under the knife matters a lot less than the fact that there’s a knife.

My shortlist is a whole stuffed pumpkin or squash, a mushroom Wellington, a whole roasted cauliflower or a big nut roast. I lean Wellington, because anything wrapped in pastry looks like effort.

If you’d rather buy a vegetarian roast from the freezer aisle, go for it. I’d just rather spend my energy on something that looks like I made it.

Pick one. Not four.

Gravy is doing more work than you think

Take the gravy off a Thanksgiving plate and see how fast that plate gets sad.

What people call “missing the turkey” is, in my opinion, mostly missing savory depth and something to pour over everything. So gravy is the one place I refuse to cut corners.

I reach for mushrooms first, dried shiitake especially. Then something like soy sauce, miso or tomato paste.

There’s a reason I stack them. The Umami Information Center says that when glutamate (the savory stuff in soy sauce and miso) meets a compound found in dried shiitake, the umami taste gets about eight times stronger than glutamate alone.

That’s a number about how taste works, not a lab test on my gravy boat. It’s still the reason there’s a bag of dried mushrooms in my pantry all year.

Your “vegetarian” sides might not be vegetarian

I read labels in November like I’m studying for a test.

Vegetable broth instead of poultry broth is the obvious swap, and I do it in the stuffing and the gravy without thinking. The stuff that gets you is everything else.

Start with the marshmallows on the sweet potatoes. The Jet-Puffed bag lists gelatin, and gelatin comes from animals.

Boxed stuffing is worse. Stove Top’s “for Turkey” mix lists cooked turkey and turkey broth right in the ingredients, before you’ve added a thing, so that box stays on the shelf.

Worcestershire sauce is the one I’d forget if I didn’t check. Lea & Perrins lists anchovies, and it’s exactly the kind of bottle I’d splash into a gravy without thinking.

Cornbread? The original Jiffy corn muffin mix contains lard. There’s a vegetarian Jiffy made with vegetable shortening, so I grab that box, and I use butter or vegetable shortening in pie crust for the same reason.

Then there’s the cheese. Real Parmigiano Reggiano has to be made with calf rennet under its own production rules, so the real thing is never vegetarian. Generic “parmesan” varies by brand, which means more label reading.

Good news, though. The green bean casserole is usually fine. I still read the can.

Recipes change, so I check every year instead of trusting last year’s cart. And no judgment if you’ve served any of this. I just don’t want to get surprised by the guest who reads labels.

One more thing. Vegetarian is the bar here, so the butter, cream and eggs all stay.

I don’t put the word “vegetarian” on anything

No announcement. No apology. No little card that says “vegetarian stuffing.”

It’s stuffing.

I’ve got backup on this. In an MIT experiment, people picked the exact same dish less often when the menu called it vegan, and the researchers concluded those labels “do more harm than good.”

That was people choosing between menu options, not a holiday table. It still matches my gut. The word makes people brace for something.

Names work the other way too. In a 2017 Stanford study at a university cafeteria, vegetables with indulgent names were 25% more likely to get taken than the same vegetables with a plain label. One label was “rich buttery roasted sweet corn” instead of plain “corn.”

So I describe food by how good it is. Crispy, buttery, roasted, caramelized. All true, all more appetizing than a dietary category.

This isn’t about hiding anything. If a guest asks what’s in a dish, they get a straight answer, every ingredient.

And I’m realistic about the room. As of 2023, Gallup had 4% of Americans calling themselves vegetarian and 1% vegan, so about 1 in 20 adults. Most of the people at my table aren’t vegetarian, and that’s fine by me.

I’m not trying to convert anybody over pie. I’m trying to feed them.

The bird was the expensive, wasteful part anyway

Want to know the biggest line on the classic Thanksgiving bill?

Last year the Farm Bureau priced its classic dinner for 10 at $55.18, and the 16-pound frozen turkey was $21.50 of that. That’s about 39% of the bill for one item.

I’m not claiming my table is cheaper. A Wellington and good cheese can easily cost more than a bargain frozen bird.

But ReFED estimated 320 million pounds of food would get wasted last Thanksgiving, and that 40% of what gets tossed is turkey. I’ll still make too many sides, to be clear. I just like my odds with leftover stuffing.

The real test isn’t whether anyone complains

It’s whether anyone notices.

Give people a centerpiece to cut into, a gravy worth fighting over and a host who obviously went all out, and I don’t think the missing item even comes up.

The turkey was always the thing you ate to get to the stuffing. So skip to the stuffing.