Ugly but loved
You know exactly what I mean
Thanksgiving is easily my favorite holiday but not for the reason you’d think. Although my mom is both a great cook and an exceptional baker, she never made Thanksgiving dinner. That was the holiday reserved for my aunt, and later my sister’s parents-in-law, and occasionally our best family friends. Thanksgiving dinner was hosted by a cast of wonderful characters, but never my mother. Given this arrangement, my family has created our own traditions that have nothing to do with dinner but instead focus on breakfast.
Every year on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, my family and I make homemade cinnamon rolls together. Although my mom will often make the dough before we come home for the holiday, it takes a couple hands to roll out the dough, form the log evenly, and cut it precisely with a piece of thread. Personally, my favorite part is spreading the room temperature butter on the rolled out dough before scattering the cinnamon and brown sugar filling all over. I’ve always loved to squish things with my hands (I’m sure that says something about me). Once we cut the slices and place them in the pan, I like to stake a claim to my cinnamon roll even before it proofs. These days, I will happily concede it to my niece or nephew but absolutely not to another adult.
On Thanksgiving day, my mom wakes up at the crack of dawn to put the cinnamon rolls into the oven so we can all wake up to the smell of them cooking. It’s as incredible as it sounds. When we’re up, we put a fire in the fireplace, turn on the Thanksgiving Day Parade even though we haven't recognized the people in it for years, and devour the cinnamon rolls with homemade hot chocolate. As a kid, I always had two. As an adult, the sugar rush of half a roll makes me crash at 12pm but hey, that’s what naps are for.
Every year my mom and I argue over the recipe. She has at least three printed recipes, covered in notes, all tracking her changes year over year. To me, it’s the Rosetta Stone and I highly doubt I could “follow” her recipe. Just yesterday I was asking her about her recipe for this year and we argued about whether or not she put the butter and brown sugar combination on the bottom of the pan for extra stickiness. I said it’s her signature, she said she hasn’t done it in years. This drives me crazy. It shouldn’t be this hard.
You know what’s coming next. Yes, we built something at Roux to preserve my mom’s cinnamon roll recipe, and your uncle’s pecan pie that always falls apart but is delicious, and also the stuffing that has to be on the table to avoid a mutiny. Capturing these recipes is really important because every November we’re bombarded with au courant Thanksgiving recipes, promising that this year's new root vegetable will finally liberate us from marshmallow-topped sweet potatoes. But for most of us, Thanksgiving isn't about culinary innovation – it's about those misshapen, unfashionable dishes that only your family could love and without which the holiday wouldn't feel the same. This is the food that defines our tables, not because it's Instagram-worthy, but because it's ours.
We invite you to immortalize your "it wouldn't be Thanksgiving without it" dish in the first-ever Roux Thanksgiving Community Cookbook. Share those gravy-stained recipe cards, the techniques passed down through muscle memory rather than exact measurements, and the stories that make each creation a cherished part of your family's tradition.
From our perspective, there's profound meaning in the dishes that connect us to who we are and where we come from. Your grandmother's slightly lumpy gravy carries more wisdom than any test kitchen creation. That cracked pumpkin pie tells a story no filtered photo can capture. Roux is where these culinary heirlooms live on, where the heart behind a recipe matters more than technical precision.
Ready to contribute? Head to Roux and tap Community Cookbook on the homepage. Choose wisely – each person can only share one recipe. The cookbook will be open for submissions starting today until Monday, December 9th.
This community cookbook will serve as a testament to the imperfect perfection of real-life holiday cooking and a home to document and celebrate our culinary stories. This Thanksgiving, let's reclaim our taste and honor the dishes that define us, not the ones that define the moment.