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Thanksgiving in the Upstate
Core 450 Finds Flavorful Twists on Holiday Classics
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Thanksgiving is our most
traditional culinary holiday.
Thanksgiving is our most traditional culinary holiday.
From the thick slices of turkey and mounds of mashed potatoes, to heaping helpings of dressing and sweet-and-spicey pumpkin pie, millions of Americans look forward to this tantalizing Thursday 364 days a year.
And Upstate South Carolina is all about tradition … and traditional flavors.
At Core 450, Thanksgiving is a time to pay respect to vaunted holiday conventions while finding interesting and flavorful spins on timeless main dishes, sides and deserts.
Here are a few of his twists on the conventional thinking and timeless traditions around Thanksgiving.
Meats and Mains
Fall is football season throughout the Southeast, but it’s also prime time for pork. Autumn means maximum marbling on every cut and product, ranging from ribs and shoulders to hams and sausage.
Ham is a Southern staple at the Thanksgiving table, and Warden says he’ll be house curing local hams at Core 450 throughout the year. A pork shoulder slow smoked with peach wood is the perfect Thanksgiving eve meal and makes for great leftovers for football throughout the weekend.
As for turkey, it still has a standing reservation on our Thanksgiving menu.
We make a lot of beer can chicken throughout the year for our beer butt chicken salad at Cherokee Valley. It’s a cooking method that works great for turkey, too. You can either use a beer can, or for a more stable base buy a ceramic turkey roaster.
Seafood and Shellfish
Around South Carolina, the saying goes that if the month ends with an “r” then it’s oyster season. And cool November nights and the warmth of the Thanksgiving table give way to a regional specialty we love preparing for anyone at his table – dressing with freshly harvested oysters.
South Carolina is known for these briny shellfish, especially the famed Capers Blade and Lady Island oysters from Capers Island near Charleston and Beaufort County (Hilton Head, Bluffton and Beaufort). Greenville has a handful of amazing fresh seafood shops that sell oysters seasonally, including Joe Joe’s and Hooked Meat and Seafood Market.
Oysters not your thing? September through December also happens to be shrimp season along the North and South Carolina Coasts. We like to (pleasantly) surprise guests with his rendition of shrimp and grits.
This popular Southern power couple originated in the Lowcountry in the 1800s, an easy-to-prepare dish served for lunch, dinner or even breakfast. We also like to add locally-sourced andouille sausage and insists on using Geechie Boy Mill grits from Edisto Island.
Sides and Sweets
With ample rain, sunshine and a long fall growing season, the Upstate has historically generated a diverse lineup of produce. November is a prime month for enjoying a Southern staple, collard greens.
We’ll take fresh collards and braise them in a malty lager with bacon, onion, cider vinegar, brown sugar, molasses and salt. This is the old school way of making them and they really stick to the ribs and complement a strong main dish.
An added benefit: collards and cooking greens in general are some of the most nutritious vegetables you can eat. They’re chock-full of vitamin A, C and K; soluble fiber calcium, manganese and tryptophan.
They’re also known to lower cholesterol, which isn’t a bad thing this time of year.
When it comes to Thanksgiving desserts, we lean hard toward sweet potato pie, local apple crisp or his favorite – a decadent brown butter and Bourbon Bundt cake.
