Turkey, corn, mashed potatoes, and gravy: the traditional dishes served on the Thanksgiving table. When it comes to Hispanic households, traditional American meals are not enough.
Hispanic families are known for passing down cultural values and incorporating them throughout the holidays. Food plays a huge role in these values, whether it’s the unique recipes with authentic ingredients that abuela makes or the Cuban store-bought platanitos.
Hondurans, Argentinians, and Venezuelans infuse their Hispanic cultural values differently, but their Thanksgiving table holds similar meals. From yellow rice with sweet corn to brown rice with frijoles, it’s cooked and served.
Carne Asada con Arroz
A stuffed turkey may be the main meal at every Thanksgiving dinner, but no Hispanic dinner is complete without carne asada. The steak is often cooked on a barbecue to be eaten alone, shredded in with pico de gallo, or mixed with white rice.
Tortillas
Tortillas are the foundations of many Hispanic meals: like a burrito, it holds the other food contents together to make a dish. Along with meat and salsa, corn and flour tortillas can make baleadas, a traditional Honduran dish of beans, cheese, mantequilla, steak, and avocado wrapped in a tortilla.
Bizcocho
Bizcocho is a specialty cake made in the Dominican Republic. Baked with orange juice and fresh pineapples, Bizcocho is known for its moist texture and whipped meringue. Although it originates in the Dominican, it is a common dessert seen on the dinner table.
From different ways to cook the steak to the combinations of ingredients together, Hispanic families have a different but unique way of hosting a Thanksgiving feast. No matter where the dish originated from, each dish holds a cultural ethic distributed in family meals.
