25 Vegetarian Thanksgiving Dishes That Deserve a Spot on the Table

The best things on the Thanksgiving table are the sides, and most of America agrees.

A 2025 Campbell’s survey found 63% of Americans like the sides better than the entree. And 47% said they’d be happy with a plate of nothing but sides.

So the vegetarian at the table isn’t missing the meal. They’re eating the part everyone else came for.

There’s a catch, though. A lot of “obviously vegetarian” dishes quietly aren’t, because of what’s in the box. Here are 25 vegetarian Thanksgiving dishes that deserve a spot on the table, plus the labels worth reading before you dig in.

1. Stuffing

Stuffing is the #1 side in 42 states and top three in all 50. It’s also the dish most likely to betray you.

Kraft’s Stove Top Savory Herbs lists meat and meat-based broth in its ingredients. “Savory Herbs” sounds like the safe box. It isn’t.

Homemade doesn’t get a free pass either, since plenty of family versions use meat-based broth and sometimes meat. Ask before you scoop.

2. Mashed Potatoes

Second place nationally, and #1 in nine states. The only question is whether somebody mashed them with meat-based broth, because some cooks do.

3. Mushroom Gravy

Traditional gravy starts with meat drippings, so that boat isn’t yours. A mushroom or vegetable gravy made with vegetarian stock and no meat drippings is, and honestly the potatoes can’t tell the difference.

4. Green Bean Casserole

This one’s a corporate invention. Dorcas Reilly created it in 1955 in Campbell’s home economics department in Camden, New Jersey, and the original name was “Green Bean Bake.”

As of 2020, Campbell’s estimated it shows up at 20 million Thanksgiving dinners a year, and about 40% of the company’s cream of mushroom soup sales go into it. Reilly donated the original recipe card to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002, which is a better legacy than most casseroles get.

The classic version checks out, but check your can. The risk is the “upgraded” one, because 1 in 5 Americans experiment with add-ins, some of which aren’t vegetarian.

5. Sweet Potato Casserole With Marshmallows

Marshmallows on sweet potatoes started as an ad. In 1917 the Angelus Marshmallow company hired Janet McKenzie Hill, founder of the Boston Cooking School Magazine, to write a recipe booklet. It holds the earliest known printed recipe for mashed sweet potatoes baked under marshmallows.

It worked. Sweet potatoes are a top-three side in 24 states.

The problem is the topping. Standard marshmallows contain gelatin, which comes from animals, so Dandies are the gelatin-free bag to look for.

6. Mac and Cheese

Nothing on the table is climbing faster. It moved from fifth to fourth nationally, it’s #1 in Florida and New York, and it’s the top side for Gen Z at 41%.

70% of Gen Z think it belongs at every holiday meal. Gen Z is right.

James Hemings, Thomas Jefferson’s enslaved chef who trained in French cooking in Paris, is credited with popularizing it in America. So it’s been a special-occasion dish for a very long time.

7. Cornbread

The classic blue box of Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix lists lard as an ingredient. Yes, the cornbread.

In 2014 Jiffy launched a separate Vegetarian Corn Muffin Mix that swaps the lard for vegetable shortening. Jiffy sells a box labeled Vegetarian, which tells you everything about the other one.

8. Corn Casserole

Cheesy, golden, and usually the first dish scraped clean. It’s also usually built on that blue Jiffy box, so it inherits the lard from number 7.

9. Cranberry Sauce

The label on the can is upside down on purpose. The can is filled and labeled so the air bubble sits at the rounded end, which lets the log slide out whole.

Marcus Urann first produced cranberry sauce commercially in 1912 in Hanson, Massachusetts, and Ocean Spray took the canned version national in 1941. It now sells tens of millions of cans a year.

An Ocean Spray survey found canned beats homemade in every region. In the South it’s 68%. The ridges are the tradition.

10. Brussels Sprouts

Older varieties really were bitter. In the 1990s Dutch plant breeders tied the bitterness to two compounds and bred them down, and a sweeter variety, Maximus, came out in 1994.

So newer sweeter varieties taste less bitter than those older ones. Just ask whether they were roasted in meat drippings, because that’s the default “upgrade.”

11. Glazed Carrots

Nobody fights over the carrots, and nobody skips them either. They’re the designated driver of the table: sweet, reliable, never the problem.

12. Potato Gratin

Cream, potatoes, cheese. No notes.

One thing if it’s showered in Parmesan. Real Parmigiano Reggiano is made with animal rennet under its protected-name rules, so the genuine stuff isn’t technically vegetarian. Plenty of vegetarians eat it anyway, and that’s their call.

13. Braised Greens

Collards or kale cooked down until they give up, maybe with beans. Ask what they were cooked with before you load your plate.

14. Wild Rice Pilaf

Wild rice isn’t rice. It’s the seed of an aquatic grass, and the Ojibwe name, manoomin, is commonly translated as “good grain.”

Good grain is underselling it.

15. A Fall Salad That’s Actually Good

Every vegetarian knows the sad version. The only thing you can eat is a green salad, and then there’s meat tossed in there too.

The good version has kale, shaved sprouts, apples and pecans, and people go back for it.

16. Butternut Squash Soup

It looks like the safest bowl in the house. But the stock may not be vegetarian, so ask whoever made it.

17. Dinner Rolls

Often fine. Check the ingredient list on the tube or the bag anyway, then go back for more.

18. The Store-Bought Roast

“But what’s your main?” already has an answer. Seth Tibbott founded Turtle Island Foods in 1980, and the Tofurky roast launched in 1995. It sold a few hundred roasts in 1995 and millions since.

It’s a wheat and tofu roast with wild rice and bread crumb stuffing, and it’s still made in Hood River, Oregon. Field Roast’s Celebration Roast is another name you’ll hear.

Plenty of vegetarians skip the whole category. If you don’t like meat, you’re probably not looking to replicate the meat-eating experience.

19. Stuffed Pumpkin

This isn’t a new trick. The Christian Science Monitor was telling people to stuff a pumpkin for a vegetarian feast back in 1983.

20. Mushroom Wellington

This is the showpiece, the main that makes the rest of the table lean over and ask for a slice.

Store-bought pastry can contain lard, so read the box.

21. Whole Roasted Cauliflower

It arrives whole and gets carved at the table, which is most of the appeal. Some people fill it with stuffing. Respect.

22. Vegetable Lasagna

The unglamorous one that always gets finished. Vegetable lasagna can take the main-course spot if a roast isn’t your thing.

23. Pumpkin Pie

The #1 Thanksgiving dessert is hiding something.

Libby’s uses a pumpkin variety bred from Dickinson. And Libby’s cannery in Morton, Illinois supplies roughly 80% of America’s canned pumpkin.

The real catch is the crust. Pillsbury’s refrigerated pie crust lists lard and hydrogenated lard in its ingredients. Lard-free store crusts exist (Wewalka is marketed as one), so check the label.

24. Apple Pie

The #2 dessert, and the same crust rule applies. Read the box for lard, then relax.

25. Pecan Pie

The glossy version everyone knows came from corn syrup marketing. Karo dates its pecan pie to the 1930s, and the recipe is still called “Karo Pie.” Big cookbooks like Fannie Farmer and The Joy of Cooking didn’t include pecan pie before 1940.

That makes three “traditions” from three marketing departments: Campbell’s in 1955, Angelus in 1917, Karo in the 1930s. Grandma had help.

The Bottom Line

47% in the 2025 Campbell’s survey said they’d be happy with a plate of only sides.

So the most dangerous thing on a vegetarian’s Thanksgiving table isn’t the meat. You can see the meat coming. It’s a box of corn muffin mix.