Author
Howard Gensler is a veteran journalist who’s worked at the Philadelphia Daily News, TV Guide and the Philadelphia Inquirer and is a founding editor of bettorsinsider.com.
Mississippi’s Favorite Thanksgiving Side Dishes
In the north, it’s called stuffing. In the south, it’s called dressing. But no matter where you are in America, it’s Thanksgiving’s most popular side dish.
BetMississippi.com took a break from monitoring Mississippi sports betting to see which side dishes are moist preferred in the state. To do so, we utilized Google Trends by looking at the search results of each side dish from Nov. 1-Nov. 30, 2022. The dishes analyzed were the most in total searches in the United States, including mashed potatoes, stuffing, mac & cheese, green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole, candied yams, Brussels sprout and cranberry sauce.
Favorite Thanksgiving Side Dishes of Mississippi Residents
Stuffing/Dressing Runaway Top Choice
In Mississippi, dressing is more than twice as trendy as its nearest competitors and was the first-place choice in the state’s largest cities, with a vote ranging from 42% in Biloxi to 48% in Meridian. Politicians aren’t as popular as dressing – and with good reason.
The second choice to sit next to the turkey and ham on Thanksgiving tables in Mississippi is macaroni & cheese. Third place is a tie between green bean casserole and sweet potato casserole, and rounding out our Top 5 is mashed potatoes. Not making the side dish list are candied yams, Brussels sprout and cranberry sauce – which shouldn’t even be on the list because it’s a condiment, not a side dish.
When it comes to dressing in Mississippi, the top choice is corn bread, the most popular type of dressing throughout the southeast. And in keeping with the dressing vs. stuffing name battle, most Mississippians don’t stuff their dressing. Given their fondness for casseroles, they cook it outside the turkey in a casserole dish.
Mississippi is also likely to put a twist on macaroni & cheese with the use of pimentos and pork rinds – for a little kick and a little crunch. The standard cheddar variety is also common. For Mississippi Green Beans, you can leave out the mushroom soup and crispy onions, more common in the north, and add crumbled bacon, because as we all know, bacon makes everything better.
There’s no bacon in a typical Mississippi sweet potato casserole, but the Mississippi Market Food Co-op recommends adding chopped pecans to the marshmallow topping to give it a Southern flair. Bacon does return, however, in the popular Mississippi Mud Mashed Potatoes, which also include cheddar cheese, because just adding butter and cream isn’t decadent enough. Happy Thanksgiving.