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The Isabel Brown Show
Thanksgiving Food TIER LIST: Ranking Every Classic Dish from Elite to Trash
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And when we say premium, we're proving it with the long awaited seven part epic series the Pendragon Cycle Rise of the Merlin. The Legend begins streaming January 22, 2026 exclusively on Daily Wire plus All Access members get early access to episodes one and two at Christmas Day. 50% off. Black Friday is our biggest sale of the year. It only happens once a year. When it's gone, it's gone. Go to dailywire.com subscribe and join now. It's Thanksgiving week people and this might be a really hot take, but Thanksgiving dinner, the meal itself is the greatest meal of the calendar year. I don't know what is up the people's butts that say they hate Thanksgiving food. Cannot relate actually. Growing up at summer camp we used to have this tradition where we would go on backpacking trips through the woods of Colorado in the beautiful mountain scenery. We were way outside of cell service, of kitchens, of showers, etc. And in the middle of the backcountry like day four or five on our backpacking trip growing up we would do TG for dinner. Thanksgiving dinner. And of course it was like the very low budget horrible version of it of like freeze dried everything and canned turkey. It was not good. But when you've been hiking through the woods for five days that is elite. That is elite level food. And of course actual Thanksgiving dinner is even more elite than that. Those are my some of my favorite memories growing up. I always loved Thanksgiving as a kid. My dad always made it to so beautifully and this year for the second time ever I am cooking Thanksgiving dinner. Last year I had some people to host for my in laws came into town for Thanksgiving this year I think it's just me, my husband and our almost seven month old daughter. So the proportions are going to get a little confusing. But your girl is excited and heck, maybe we'll do a cooking vlog on the channel in the process because this is a time honored hallmark important American tradition. But today, to share this with you guys and to share one of my favorite holidays and certainly favorite meal on the calendar year with you, I figured it would be fun to do a tier ranking list of the most elite to the hard pass disgusting foods on the average American Thanksgiving dinner table. If you've ever seen one of these tier maker lists, they work really easily. There is the E status, the elite. I will absolutely get second status. Then there's a great tier. It's okay, I could eat it. I'm not immediately gonna rush for it. Maybe like if I'm really having some extra room on my plate, I'll probably put this on my plate or hard pass. This food is disgusting and I will not eat it. Don't come at me for my correct opinions. Okay? I'm just saying that up front. I am right, you are wrong when it comes to the rankings that are about to come out on this list. But if you vehemently disagree, as always, please feel free to let us know in the comments of this video. All right, we're jumping in and we'll start with the main ticket item, Turkey. Is it elite? Great. Okay, maybe. Or a hard pass. I gotta be honest. It's okay. It's okay. You're not eating Thanksgiving dinner solely for the turkey. In fact, if you did it right, you are smothering said piece of turkey with something else. With gravy, with cranberry sauce, with a massive forkful of wonderful creamy mashed potatoes. The turkey may be the main event, visually speaking, on the beautiful spread Norman Rockwell painting that is your family Thanksgiving Thanksgiving dinner table. Wow. I can't even talk Thanksgiving dinner table. But it's not what you're there to eat. Let's be really honest. Granted, I've never had a deep fried turkey. A lot of people claim that is like the elite level of making turkey. So I may change this in years to come if we end up frying our turkey. But as it stands, turkey is okay. I'm gonna come back to dessert because that's the the end of all of this journey. But it is suggesting that we do it next. So we'll come back to that. Biscuits. I don't care what type of biscuit it is. Biscuits are elite. I Will always get second, second, third, fourth, fifth rounds of biscuits. Pre canned biscuits, Homemade biscuits from scratch. Doesn't matter. Biscuits are elite. We've got brussels sprouts. I never had brussels sprouts growing up for Thanksgiving. Seems like an odd choice for Thanksgiving. I like a good brussels sprout. Shockingly, I know a lot of people hate them. I like a good brussels sprout, especially given how they are prepared mostly in the air fryer these days in our house. Delicious. But it's not a Thanksgiving food in my mind. So I'm putting it in hard pass. But that's not to say I don't like. Just has no place on the Thanksgiving dinner table. Same with squash. Like, who is just eating butternut squash by itself? I love butternut squash. I love a butternut squash pasta sauce. I love butternut squash mixed into something like a ravioli. Elite. We did a cooking class a couple years ago where we made butternut squash ravioli with like a pumpkin sage sauce on top and brown butter. Oh, it was so good. But I've never had squash by itself as its own dish on the Thanksgiving table. And if you do that, you are a heathen. So I'm putting that in hard pass as well. Here's where things are gonna get spicy. And again, I just want to remind you what I said before we started this ranking list. My answers are correct. This is just object. We seek truth here in Isabel Brown's content. I will always tell you the truth, even when it's difficult to hear. I tell you that all the time. Remember that in the back of your mind before this happens. Jellied cranberry. Like the cranberry that's in the can. The cranberry that looks like the can when you take it out of the can. It's elite. It's elite. It's so good I could eat it by the spoonfuls. And I know that is not maha of me at all, like, at all. But jellied cranberry is elite. I use it a just like on my plate for adding on top of turkey or anything else. I use it on my sandwich the next day. Which is the better way to eat Thanksgiving dinner one day later when it's all piled onto a king's Hawaiian roll sandwich. Oh, yeah. And you need a healthy, healthy dose of jellied cranberry in that. I use it in this little appetizer dish that I will make for Thanksgiving I've been making since college with some brie and some rosemary and some jellied cranberry. Jellied cranberry is elite. And again, don't come at me. Cranberry sauce with chunks of cranberry. Hard pass. Hard pass. Not gonna happen. Not on my Thanksgiving dinner table. Maybe it's a texture thing, I don't know. But when I'm biting into something with sauce on it, it's under the sauce. And I want a creamy, nice sauce addition to whatever I'm eating. And I get a chunk of something. No. Vomit inducing. Immediate. No. No. Absolutely not. Hard pass. Again, don't come at me. I am correct and you are sadly mistaken if you disagree with this. Here's another pretty controversial one. And it's controversial in my own house because, interestingly, this is one of my favorite Thanksgiving dishes and my husband hates it. I have made like five different versions of this for him. You. In a desperate attempt to get him to like it and he is just not having it. But green bean casserole Elite. Elite. I love green bean casserole. Maybe if you don't like it, you're eating it wrong. Or you're preparing it wrong. Or your ingredients are wrong. When it is made correctly. Divine. So good. Where can you go wrong? It's green beans, which are generally pretty good in terms of general vegetable rankings. Okay, it's fried onions. Don't know who hates fried onions. You're stupid if you hate fried onions. And it's like a creamy cream of mushroom soup and sometimes cheese, depending on the recipe. What is wrong with any of those things? Put them together and it's great. I sound like Joey and friends when they're eating the trifle on Thanksgiving that Rachel messes up. What's not to love? Meat, good. Jam, good. Banana. Good. It's great. Okay. And again, you are wrong. If you hate green bean casserole, I will die on this hill. We never did just like corn on the cob for Thanksgiving. Weirdly, when I was growing up, and maybe this is just because of how my parents were raised, corn on the cob is like a summer dish. We always had corn on the cob for 4th of July. We would have corn on the cob for people's birthdays in the summer. My dad's birthday is in July. So I associate corn on the cob with grilling and summertime, not Thanksgiving. So I'd be open to it. I guess I'll put it in maybe. Like, if it was on the plate, I'll eat it. I love corn on the cob. I have no problems with corn. I'm a good old fashioned. All American Heartland Girl, I love my corn, but I wouldn't necessarily associate corn by itself with Thanksgiving. Honestly. Same with cornbread. We didn't ever really make a lot of cornbread in my house growing up unless we were making chili, cornbread and chili and fun fact, actually, my dad growing up in Kansas, Kansas City area, when he was growing up, they make chili in Kansas with cinnamon rolls, at least when he was growing up. So we love cinnamon rolls with our chili far more than we love cornbread with our chili. But again, I guess if it was like on the plate, on the option buffet of all of the choices that I have, sure, maybe I would put a piece of cornbread on my plate. But not compared to biscuits or frankly, because they're on here. To dinner rolls Elite. Elite will get seconds and thirds and fourths and fifths. And the next day we'll pile all of the ingredients of my Thanksgiving dinner into a dinner roll, preferably a King's Hawaiian roll. Heat that sucker up and I will go to town. Back to my correct opinions in just a second. But first I want to tell you Today's video is sponsored by our friends at Meta. Meta is investing in people and communities across the United States to lead the nation in innovation and opportunity. They recently committed over $600 billion to strengthen communities, create meaningful workforce expansion opportunities, and build out the next generation of AI technology and the AI infrastructure. But this goes way beyond technology. It is about the real impact on real people. It's it means supporting new jobs that enable parents to provide for their families in their hometowns, giving them more time to spend with their loved ones. It means stronger local economies where small businesses can thrive and building the kind of future where our kids will have incredible opportunities. This investment reaches into every corner of our country, from new job opportunities being built in local communities to workforce training programs that will prepare America for tomorrow's careers. As we build the next generation of AI technology, we we are also building a stronger, more prosperous America. Because at the end of the day, American progress starts with people, with families, and with communities welcoming new opportunities for the next generation. And that's exactly what Meta's $600 billion commitment represents. A belief in America's potential and an investment in our shared future. Learn more@meta.com BuildingAmerica Again, we're getting controversial here, but for the same reason. Cross cranberry sauce with actual cranberries is an immediate no go creamed corn hard pass. Absolutely not. It's a texture thing. It's gross. It's not how corn was Meant to be eaten. Okay. And you are a heathen. If creamed corn is put on your plate to celebrate gratitude, there's something severely wrong with you, and you should go to confession immediately for that. Gravy. Elite. Elite. 100%. You know, growing up, we didn't have gravy a lot. Interestingly, maybe that was my parents being, like, preemptively Maha before Maha was a thing. Although let's be totally honest, Maha was not remotely touching the Brown family household. When we were growing up, we had every single, like, freezer food known to man. We would make the Stouffer's freezer lasagna, like, at least once a week. Truly, we were like that American family. All of our friends in the mountains of Colorado, which our community generally was very Maha ahead of its time. Everybody eating, like, organic everything, sugar free, everything. Everything had to be really healthy. Our friends would come over to our house and they would open our fridge and freezer and say, your mom lets you eat that? It was a pretty fun time. Fun time to be alive. That said, with gravy, we didn't have a lot of gravy growing up. Gravy I only associate with Thanksgiving, particularly this type of gravy. We never had white gravy growing up until I learned a recipe for biscuits and gravy, which I did not have until college, until senior year of college, which is elite food, by the way. God, my husband's gonna hate me for saying that. He grew up in Alabama, so biscuits and gravy is everything. I learned a great recipe for biscuits and gravy in college from a friend of mine. That was the very first time I ever had white gravy, which is also amazing. But gravy of all kinds is elite. It's basically just deliciousness on. On your plate, smothered over everything, and it deserves to be included in your Thanksgiving. All right, here's the debate. Are you doing turkey or ham on your table? If you've been listening to me for the last several weeks and all of our amazing plugs for our friends over at Good Ranchers, perhaps you are doing a ham this year because they are offering free holiday hams with certain purchases, if I recall correctly. Or you can just go on and buy one. Use code Isabelle for a lot of other goodies. But their holiday hams look really, really good. So I'm honestly half tempted to do ham this year instead of turkey for that exact reason. And there is nothing better than a honey baked ham now that we're entering the Christmas season. Now I'm so excited to watch Christmas with the Cranks. Oh, and do you guys see the cute little Christmas tree behind me? We're getting ahead of ourselves. I. But this set is going to be decked out for Christmas. Make no mistake about it. Ham, I would say is better than turkey, generally speaking, is a Thanksgiving food. Although I would often call it more of a Christmas food. We would have ham on Christmas because we had turkey on Thanksgiving. I would call it great. Ham is consistently great. It's elite if it's a honey baked ham. It's great if it's any other type of ham. But I wouldn't always put it in elite the same way I would like a prime rib. You know what I mean? It's just, it's great. It's consistently good. I'll always get it. Mac and cheese. No explanation. Oops, wrong tier. We do not think Mac and cheese is great. We think Mac and cheese is elite. I don't care how you prepare it. It could be boxed, disgusting, powdered cheese, Mac and cheese. Or it could be the most elite spectacular gourmet, slow cook prepared with the perfect shavings of your own cheese. Mac and cheese. It's elite every single time. And again, you're wrong if you disagree. If you are lactose intolerant, I don't care. You're eating Mac and cheese on Thanksgiving. And all of my lactose intolerant friends, and let's be honest, my husband, who probably is lactose intolerant, he's just refusing to admit it. And every time he eats cheese or anything with milk in it and ice cream is his favorite too, he goes, my tummy. Yeah, he needs to go to the doctor. So I'm putting him on blast. You guys need to help me get my husband to the doctor. This man would eat like an entire casserole tray of Mac and cheese and not think twice about it and then be miserable for the next three to four business days. So there you go, Mashed potatoes elite again. It could be the crappy, disgusting plastic microwave mashed potatoes, which are not great, admittedly, or it could be the most gourmet, perfect, hand whipped, slow cooked, garlic, cheesy mashed potatoes. I don't care. It's perfect. I will be eating several heapings full of mashed potatoes. And importantly, in the Thanksgiving rotation, they are kind of the vehicle for all of the other stuff on your plate. You know what I mean? If mashed potatoes got mixed in with your green bean casserole, it's still going to be delicious. With your Mac and cheese still going to be delicious with your ham or turkey. It goes with those things. You put the mashed potatoes on the fork first and then you pick up the ham and the turkey and whatever else you want. No matter what it touches on the plate, it makes everything better. So in many ways, mashed potatoes is really the hallmark keystone ingredient of Thanksgiving dinner, in my opinion. In my opinion. While we're on the note of great food, today's video is sponsored by our friends at Good Ranchers. I am so excited for one of my favorite meals of the whole year with Thanksgiving dinner. But truly, this time of year it has meant so much to just gather with my family for every dinner around our family dinner table. It's so much more fun when the food is good and when great conversation allows us to share our values all together. 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All new subscribers to any Good Ranchers box using code Isabelle will get an additional $100 off your first three orders, $40 off your first, $30 off your second, and $30 off your third. Plus free meat for life when you subscribe. So hit up good ranchers.com this holiday season. Full of delicious meals. Again, use code isabelle@goodranchers.com let's all get back to the table. All right, what else we got roasted vegetables. Again, not really a Thanksgiving specific food. We never made that growing up for our Thanksgiving sides. We always just had like green bean casserole, a different potato casserole, mashed potatoes, et cetera. So I would probably put it in hard pass. But you know what? Maybe I'll put it in maybe, like if it's on the buffet option, I'll probably get a little bit of it. I like vegetables a lot, especially if they're roasted and it's like a nice little vegetable medley. But I'm not going out of my way to make that for Thanksgiving or to seek it out because there are far more compelling options on my plate. We've got scalloped potatoes. Scalloped potatoes are yummy, but again, I'm not necessarily making them for Thanksgiving. They're really yummy. Like, I will eat them all the time, but that's more of, like, a random family dinner night during the week than it is Thanksgiving. So I guess we'll stick that in maybe as well. Stuffing elite. Elite Stuffing is elite. Again, whether it's boxed Stouffer's stuffing that is, like, horrible for you, or it is perfectly handcrafted stuffing is elite. Can you guys tell I like Thanksgiving now? I'm getting so excited for Thanksgiving dinner this week. I am going to eat so much food, it's ridiculous. And I'm finally losing the baby weight. But that's all coming off this week. Apparently. Gloves are off, the scale will be broken. I will be wearing my fat pants, and I'm so excited. All right, we got one more, like, true Thanksgiving side, and it's sweet potato casserole, which obviously is elite. I don't really know if technically you can call something a casserole if it's just marshmallows and brown sugar and one starchy vegetable, but I'm here for it. We love a good rebrand. A good, good little fake news moment. Sweet potato casserole is amazing. My dad makes the best sweet potato casserole I've ever had in my entire life. My husband, weirdly, doesn't like that one either. And he loves sweets. Like, he is far more the sweet tooth in our family than I am. I am the savory person. He's the sweet tooth. And I've made it for him, like, five or six times, and he won't eat it. He doesn't like it, granted. And this baby brings us into dessert. My husband has this tendency to, like, look at a food, and he makes up his mind in his own inner workings of the machinations of his mind that something is going to taste bad based on what something looks like. So I'm wondering if he just hasn't really given it the honest college try, because I had been together with this man. We had dated, been engaged, and been married by the time I finally got him to take one bite of pumpkin pie. One bite of pumpkin pie, which is my personal favorite pie, and he's like, this is disgusting. I'm gonna hate this. I'm gonna throw up everywhere. The drama, right? I mean, they say women are more dramatic. I don't know. I don't know about that. Takes one bite, one tiny little morsel of pumpkin pie eats the whole pie in one sitting. Last Thanksgiving, this was our third Thanksgiving together, so obviously it's elite. You are literally in need of psychiatric help. If you do not like pumpkin pie, I'm sorry, I don't trust you. You probably are a communist. You cannot recognize good things when they are right in front of your face. Pumpkin pie is elite. And I will go out of my way to save room. I'm not even a dessert person. I don't like cake very much. It's too sweet. I'm not a candy person very much. It's too sweet. I can eat an entire Costco pumpkin pie, like the big, gigantic pumpkin pies, in one sitting by myself. It's quite a sight to behold. And I will do it. Of course, it also has to be smothered in whipped cream, because who's eating pumpkin pie without it being smothered in whipped cream? And the same, honestly, goes for apple pie. But again, apple pieces, to me, is more of a summer thing. I'll still put it in elite because it's incredible. It is beyond everything you could ever hope for in a dessert. Everything is wrapped up Americana in one perfect, warm slice of apple pie. But I think of apple pie as Fourth of July. Am I the only one who does that? Not Thanksgiving chat. Am I crazy for that? When I close my eyes And I think 4th of July, I think corn on the cob, burgers, hot dogs, watermelon. A big, gigantic bowl of watermelon and apple pie for dessert. Why is this in the Thanksgiving thing? I guess some people do it. I don't know. If you're not doing pumpkin pie and you're doing apple pie, I might have some trust issues with you. And last but not least, we've got the beverages. Last year, I was very pregnant on Thanksgiving. You guys didn't know that at that time. Gosh, that was so fun, hiding that from you guys for so long. In case you're new to following me and you might not know, we announced our pregnancy a little over the halfway mark at New Year's. On New Year's Day. On social media, of course, with the caption Project 2025, which I will just say I cooked with that. That might have been the best Instagram caption I've ever posted in my entire career as a content creator in elite times. So you guys didn't know on Thanksgiving or Christmas or any of the things that I was pretty pregnant. Some of you were kind of guessing because we weren't streaming as often and I wasn't feeling very well and we weren't posting a whole lot of full body videos, if you will. But I had to drink sparkling apple cider and sparkling juice all of the holidays last year. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, all of it. But let's be honest, ever since I was a little kid, I love sparkling apple cider and sparkling juice. I don't care if I'm going to be 67 years old. 6. 7. Or I'm going to be 12. Elite. It is always elite to have sparkling juice 100% of the time. Same goes with red wine. I'm a big wine aficionado. My husband, gosh, I really am throwing Brock under the bus in this video. Also hated wine until we went on our honeymoon in Italy. And now he is all about a nice glass of red wine after work and at the dinner table. So as you can see, everything in the elite tier will be made for my Thanksgiving dinner. Let me know. Actually, I'm soliciting your feedback if we should do turkey or ham because I honestly still have time to think about it. We're just gonna do a very small portion, not like a huge thing because it's probably just the three of us this year. Do you vote turkey or ham? Let us know. For the Belcher family Thanksgiving in 2025. Put it in the comments. And again, if you decided to be stupid and disagree with me on any of these things, also let me know in the comments. Happy eating. This is the one time a year I will ever endorse morbid obesity and we all should be endorsing it for Thanksgiving Day. Enjoy. Eat up. I've been told by some reliable sources that there is indeed still a fat con happening early next year. We've made some videos about that in the last few years in Seattle, Washington. So depending on how much you eat at Thanksgiving this year, you may be eligible to attend and perhaps we will see you there. Love you guys so much. Happy Thanksgiving. And truly, I just want to let you know I am so, so grateful for every single one of you. It has been the dream of my life to build this community over the last several years. First totally on our own and now welcoming all of our Daily Wire friends and families into the fold. We, we love you guys from the bottom of our heart and we really do feel like you are here around our family's Thanksgiving dinner table too. Happy, Happy Thanksgiving. And we will be back very, very soon for more episodes of the show. The world moves fast. Your workday even faster. Pitching products, drafting reports, analyzing Data. Micro Microsoft 365 Copilot is your AI assistant for work built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other Microsoft 365 apps you use, helping you quickly write, analyze, create and summarize so you can cut through clutter and clear a path to your best work. Learn more@Microsoft.com M365 copilot.