The day after Thanksgiving is a difficult one because you now have to figure out what to do with all those leftovers from the big meal. Not all of them will be as good on their second serving. The turkey will be drier. Any vegetables or potatoes you cooked will be at risk of being overcooked when you heat them up again. Dishes that involve words like "casserole" are almost certainly best disposed of because they were bad ideas to begin with.
There is one exception. There's always room for pie.
Smart planning for Thanksgiving means preparing more than one pie to ensure that you can have enough pie to survive to the day after. While pumpkin pie is the traditional pie for Thanksgiving dinner, having another kind of pie on hand is the bonus you deserve for having enough restraint on Thanksgiving to ensure you can have more pie.
What other kind of pie do you want to have?
Sabrina Elfarra curated data from Google Trends in 2023 to find out what other kinds of pies Americans were looking up recipes to cook in the days leading up to Thanksgiving that year. Here's her map illustrating what she found to be the most popular Thanksgiving pie recipe search by state:
The alternate (non-pumpkin) pie recipes include:
- Apple
- Blackberry
- Cherry
- Coconut
- Grape
- Banana Cream
- Banoffee
- Buttermilk
- Butterscotch
- Cream
- Key Lime
- Chocolate
- Mississippi Mud
- Peanut Butter
- Pecan
- Frito Chili
- Sweet Potato
- Tamale
- Shoofly
If you're looking for non-pumpkin pie options, you might consider these for their second pie potential at next year's Thanksgiving holiday. Choose wisely!
Image credit: Different types of pies on a dining table by grabadonut on Wikimedia Commons. Creative Commons Creative Commons 4 - CC BY-SA 4.0.