What Soul Food Thanksgiving Sides Do You Actually Need?

Thanksgiving has a way of convincing us that more food automatically means a better table. Beautiful Soul, you do not need every Thanksgiving side dish. You need just a few of the classics.

For a regular dinner, I’ll usually serve two sides. Thanksgiving deserves at least three. And if you choose them well, those three can give your plate everything it needs without leaving you exhausted before the turkey is carved!

For me, building a soul food Thanksgiving plate is almost instinctive. I want savory. Sweet. Creamy. Something green. Something bread-y. And don’t forget something tangy and tart to cut through all that richness.

I don’t consciously stand in my kitchen assigning everybody a role. The ancestors got this right, and we’ve just been following suit for generations. So instead of choosing Thanksgiving sides by recipe count, here’s how I think about building the plate.

What are the essential soul food Thanksgiving sides?

If you ask me for the core lineup, I’m starting here:

Baked mac and cheese → creamy
Collard greens → savory and green
Candied yams → sweet and spiced
Cornbread dressing → savory and bread-y
Cranberry sauce → tangy and tart

That’s my sweet spot.
And notice something important: every dish brings something different to the plate.

That’s why the food is so good when those flavors start running together. Yes, I said running together. I want some candied-yam goodness finding its way toward those collards. I want dressing catching cranberry sauce. That’s part of the plate!

💡 I’ve already thought this through: Build the plate, not the recipe count

If you’re trying to decide how many Thanksgiving sides to make, here’s my guide.

The Essential Table: 3 sides

My first choice: Collard greens + candied yams + baked mac and cheese
Savory. Sweet. Creamy.

A very close second: Collard greens + candied yams + cranberry sauce
Savory. Sweet. Tart.

The Classic Table: 5 sides

Collard greens + candied yams + baked mac and cheese + cornbread dressing + cranberry sauce
Beautiful Soul, this is the sweet spot.

The “Everybody’s Coming Over” Table: 7 sides 

Who all gon’ be there? Everybody’s coming over!

So we’re making: Collard greens + candied yams + baked mac and cheese + cornbread dressing + potato salad + cornbread + cranberry sauce
Now we’re having Thanksgiving!

The point isn’t that your table must look exactly like mine. It’s that you don’t need twelve sides simply because twelve recipes exist! Choose enough classics to give the plate contrast and balance—and save yourself some Thanksgiving sanity!

🥄 Shaunda’s signature flavor touch

🥄 Shaunda says: Seasoning doesn’t mean putting the same seasoning in everything.

Here’s where soul food side dishes really distinguish themselves: Season your food.
But seasoning doesn’t mean shaking the same blend into seven different dishes. Each side should have its own flavor identity.

• My baked mac and cheese gets standout flavors from ground mustard and paprika.
• My dressing gets rosemary, sage, and thyme.
• My collard greens get Old Bay seasoning, plus layers of flavor from honey, Worcestershire sauce, and hot sauce.
• Candied yams get warm cinnamon and nutmeg.
• And my potato salad starts with sugar, salt, and pepper, then gets flavor-changing ingredients like mustard, mayonnaise, and rice vinegar.
• Even garlic—which I love—adds flavor, but garlic alone is not seasoning a dish.

That’s why “season to taste” has never adequately described how I make soul food. The seasoning profile is part of the recipe… Beacuse bland could never be The Soul Food Pot® brand!

The soul food Thanksgiving classics

And yes, you can serve cornbread AND cornbread dressing

At a Black Thanksgiving, these are two completely different things.

Cornbread is essentially the dinner roll. It’s there for eating alongside the meal, sopping up pot likker, and picking up whatever deliciousness is left on the plate.

Cornbread dressing is a separate side dish. And dressing can have a personality of its own—chicken, oysters, liver, gizzards. I’m from coastal Virginia, so oyster dressing has a special place in my heart.

Don’t make me choose between cornbread and dressing because they happened to meet earlier in their life cycle!

Put some respeck on cranberry sauce’s name

If there’s one Thanksgiving side I think deserves a promotion, it’s cranberry sauce. Especially homemade fresh cranberry sauce.

Black folks will give cranberry sauce the side-eye because many of us grew up seeing that canned cylinder land on the Thanksgiving table almost as an afterthought.

And that’s precisely my point. Fresh cranberry sauce brings something the other classics don’t: tangy-tart contrast.

Think about everything else happening on the plate—rich mac and cheese, savory dressing, seasoned greens, sweet yams, juicy turkey. Then cranberry sauce cuts through it all with that bright tartness. She’s doing WORK over there!

Potato salad: Don’t ask questions.

Black folks eat potato salad for every holiday: Winter. Spring. Summer. Fall.
That’s just what we do.

And yes, it goes cold right on the same plate beside all those hot Thanksgiving sides. Say less. ‘Nuff said. Its permanent place on Black holiday tables is exactly why people are so protective of it.

By the time I’m making Thanksgiving potato salad, however, I’m usually TIRED. If my daughter is around, I’m recruiting her to peel potatoes, dice celery and onion, and measure seasonings. Because The Mister and my son aren’t trying to hear anything about Thanksgiving without potato salad, so apparently retirement is not an option for me!

👩🏾‍🍳 Make-It-Your-Way: What about mashed potatoes, green beans, and deviled eggs?

Not every familiar Thanksgiving side has the same ranking on a soul food Thanksgiving table.

Mashed potatoes? Delicious. My daughter loves them. But she doesn’t even ask for them on Thanksgiving.

They’re a nice-to-have—not something I’d remove one of my soul food classics to accommodate. Candied yams and mac and cheese are already representing quite nicely for the starches. Same with rice. Welcome if you want it, but you bet’ NOT replace one of my classics with it!

Green beans make plenty of appearances because they’re flavorful, easy to prepare, and work beautifully with the rest of the meal.

And then… Deviled eggs. 

Some of you Beautiful Souls consider them Thanksgiving essentials. But my mother-in-law? Ask her to make deviled eggs on Thanksgiving Day… and you might get your head bit off! She considers Thanksgiving deviled eggs an old-school soul food no-no and says that’s something the younger generations started doing.

YIKES! So we tread lightly on that one… And that right there is why I love family food traditions: even within soul food, every table has its own rules.

More Thanksgiving sides to make it your way

Once you’ve covered the classics, there’s plenty of room to make your Thanksgiving table your own. These aren’t dishes I’d put in my essential soul food Thanksgiving lineup, but they’re delicious extras for a larger gathering, family favorites, or simply adding more variety once your classics are covered.

Which Thanksgiving side takes the longest to make?

For me? Cornbread dressing. And that’s why my Thanksgiving strategy isn’t only about deciding what to cook. It’s deciding where and when everything gets cooked.

💡 I’ve already thought this through: Don’t make everything fight for the oven

I’m not new to this; I’m true to this! My Thanksgiving game plan can involve four Instant Pots, my Instant Pot convection oven, and my traditional oven. And on Thanksgiving Day? That traditional oven belongs to the turkey. The pies were baked the night before!

⏲️ See how I make a soul food Thanksgiving dinner in about 4 hours →

What I’ve learned from cooking Thanksgiving dinner

Thanksgiving is not the day I recommend experimenting with a table full of unfamiliar recipes! Black folks take this meal SERIOUSLY! It’s the one day when we expect to get all those classics together on one plate. So please—pardon my French when I say—“Don’t eff that up!”

My rules after doing this repeatedly:

• Start early.
• Have a game plan.
• Don’t make too many sides.
• Make your desserts the day before.
• Start the turkey early.
• Season from the beginning so flavor develops while the food cooks—not after it’s finished.
• Don’t plan five dishes that need the oven at the same time.
• And get some help!

✨ Shaunda’s Soul Food Sense: tips, truths & traditions

If you’ve printed your recipes or have recipe cards, one of the easiest jobs to delegate is measuring the seasonings for each dish into individual ramekins. I do this for photo-shoot days, too.

Someone else can peel, dice, measure, boil, and prep. The turkey and desserts? Shaunda’s got those. I don’t have time for somebody to get those wrong!

So, how many Thanksgiving sides do you actually need?

At least three for me.

Five is my sweet spot.

Seven says everybody’s coming over!

But the number matters less than choosing sides that work together.

Give me something savory. Something sweet. Something creamy. Something green. Something bread-y. Something tangy and tart when the table gets bigger. And most importantly: Make the classics taste like the classics!

Because a soul food side dish earns its place on my Thanksgiving table when it’s seasoned right—and isn’t anything unfamiliar trying to make its debut on Thanksgiving Day!

Beautiful Soul, you don’t need every Thanksgiving side. You need just a few of the classics, a good game plan, and enough flavor to make everybody glad they came.

Come cook with me

Explore the stories, kitchen tools, cooking guides, and helpful resources behind the recipes—everything you need to bring your soul food Thanksgiving table together with confidence.

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“It’s giving the South on a spoon.” —Shaunda Necole, on The Soul Food Stack