Which one got better grades at Yale?The holidays are upon us, but unless your uncle is Grant Achatz, you probably won’t be eating anything original. Holiday food is staid and traditional and, in most cases, terrible, because it’s highly unlikely your grandma was a semifinalist on Top Chef. So here are the top five GROSSEST holiday foods that are simply unavoidable this time of year.5. Turkey. Turkey finishes in 5th place on this list because it’s not inherently gross. As is the case with nuclear weapons, Silly String, and the ability to see through clothing, it only becomes a bad thing if it falls into the wrong hands. Unfortunately, most people have the wrong hands: They buy a shitty Butterball turkey, then overcook it. As a result, the meat ends up bland and dry, and it tastes like you’re eating a box of Kleenex. The fact is that the full turkey flavor is a shrinking violet–you must have finesse. If ZZ Top videos have taught us anything, it’s that lurking beneath the surface of every nerdy librarian is a sultry sexpot just waiting to be let out. Turkey is the same way. You’ve got to get that turkey to take off its horn-rimmed glasses and unbutton its blouse a couple buttons and shake its hair down out of the bun it usually wears. The best way to do this is by brining it. You can use any brine recipe found on the internet, but don’t forget that you must AIR DRY any turkey you brine; otherwise, the skin will end up pale and puckered, like Santa’s nutsack. Dry it in the fridge for a day, until the skin is translucent and pulled tight across the turkey’s giant breast, much like a bodybuilder, but without the fake tan and roid rage. Then when you roast your turkey, the skin will be crispy, the flesh will be succulent, and your turkey won’t have died in vain!Streisand aficionado.4. Fruitcake.
Fruitcake is dense and studded with fossilized deposits of candied fruit that get stuck in your bridgework, and it’s strangely not sweet enough for how sticky it is. Probably the worst thing about fruitcake is that it’s used as an insult by men who chain smoke and voted for Barry Goldwater. So listen up, John McCain: If you want to lampoon someone’s sexuality, “Streisand aficionado” is far more clever. Let’s leave fruitcake out of this. It’s shitty enough already.Packed with antioxidants!3. Cranberry Sauce. I’m not talking about cranberry relish, cooked slowly from fresh cranberries, sweetened with honey, flavored with citrus zest, and studded with pistachios. No, I’m talking about the shit you get from Safeway for 69 cents. It comes sliding out of the can with an erotic slurping sound and bounces onto the serving platter in a single quivering gelatinous lump. It’s glossy and maroon and looks like a silicone sex toy. It’s cloyingly sweet and devoid of any subtlety. This shit is basically a jello shot made of Ocean Spray. Do your loved ones a favor and don’t serve canned cranberry sauce this year.Old people love him!2. Gingerbread. Old people seem to think that gingerbread is the best motherfucking thing in the goddamned universe. Sadly, they’re wrong. Gingerbread tastes like spicy cardboard. What’s the appeal? Hansel and Gretel only ventured inside the witch’s gingerbread house because they were starving. If I myself happened upon that witch’s house, I’d leave a burning paper bag of dog shit on her doorstep. And if the Gingerbread Man taunted me into chasing him, I’d have to decline, no matter how stoned I happened to be at the time. “Please, bitch,” I’d tell the Gingerbread Man, “Call me when your cousin, the Sour Patch Kid, wants to race.”So fucking gross.1. Green bean casserole. THIS SHIT SUCKS. Every redneck thinks that shitty green bean casserole is classy. It isn’t. Canned green beans are the kind of thing orphans eat. They’re bad enough by themselves, but suck even worse when doused in a can of cream of mushroom soup, and topped with a bird’s nest of Durkee fried onions. The texture of this casserole is terrible, it smells like a booth inside a peepshow, and “Durkee” just sounds like a phrase a retard would utter. Now you that you know all of the world’s worst holiday foods, you can plan you menu accordingly!
