Side Dish
4106 recipes found
Cassava Oven Fries
Cassava (also known as yuca) is a terrific vessel for a variety of dips like ata din din and guasacaca, or doused with a cilantro-garlic sauce. The root vegetable is ideal for roasting, and these fries can be a quick snack or a wonderful side. Don’t skip the first step that calls for blanching them in hot water, otherwise, the oven’s dry heat will dehydrate the starchy root, and the goal here is a tender soft interior in a crisp, golden brown shell. These fries are best finished with salt and served hot. You can reheat any leftovers in a hot oven the next day, but they are way too delicious to save, and will likely disappear rather fast.
Grapefruit-Herb Salad With Coconut and Crispy Shallots
This grapefruit and herb salad puts citrus front and center. It’s based on yum som-o, a pomelo salad from Thailand, where the fruit is abundant. Grapefruits are used here, but if you happen on pomelos, grab a few: They are much easier to peel and loosen from the protective piths. Fragrant toasted coconut, salty peanuts and crunchy shallots all create layers of texture. The dried shrimp adds a saltiness that greets your tongue in little bursts, and the fresh chile a lingering spice. This is a refreshing, vibrant side to accompany any rich meal.
Fried Shallot Caesar Salad
The dressing here is great on this salad, but it can find a second (and third, and fourth) life in so many other simple meals. Use it as a dip for grilled asparagus and broccolini; slather it on burgers and BLTs; or combine it 50-50 with Greek yogurt and add chopped dill and black pepper to make a fried shallot Ranch dressing for dipping crudités (or chicken wings). Add it to a roast beef sandwich (or just serve it with the roast beef). It’s a great party dip for chips (or anything you’d serve French onion dip with). This recipe calls for making the mayo from scratch, but you can use store-bought mayo as the base to make it even easier.
Grilled Oysters With Lemony Garlic-Herb Butter
Garlic, lemon, herbs and butter form a classic European pairing that is perfectly at home spooned into a hot grilled oyster, but if that’s not your style, try out these recipes for Buttery Soy-Sake Glaze or Harissa-Parmesan Butter — or, better yet, make all three. Any leftover flavored butter and sauces are excellent melted over grilled vegetables, such as asparagus or zucchini, or over grilled chicken, fish or even steak, and they can be stored in the refrigerator for several weeks or in the freezer for several months. When shopping for oysters, look for specimens with deeply cupped bottom shells in order to help retain their natural liquor and provide ample space for the flavored butter.
Smoky Stir-Fried Greens
Wok hei, or the “breath of a wok,” is the elusive smokiness found in restaurant-style dishes that rely on high-powered burners and a skilled hand to achieve it. To create a similar flavor at home, I rely on a hand-held blowtorch, which I use here for simple stir-fried greens. I recommend using either a butane canister with a high-output torch head or a propane canister with a trigger-start head. If you do not have a wok, a heavy cast-iron or stainless-steel skillet can be used instead.
Duchess-Style Twice-Baked Potatoes
Unlike American-style twice-baked potatoes, which are laden with cheese and sour cream, these potatoes, inspired by the French dish pommes duchesse, get their richness primarily from egg yolks. While you can scoop the filling back into the skins with a spoon, piping it with a star-tipped pastry bag makes the potatoes especially fancy.
Hot and Numbing Stir-Fried New Potatoes
These stir-fried potatoes are inspired by a modern street snack served in Xi’an, China. They can be parboiled in advance, require only a few minutes of stir-frying in a wok before serving, and can be flavored with a wide range of spices and aromatics, making them an ideal side dish for any menu, simple or complex. In addition to the Xi’an-style original with hot and numbing spices, you can also make a curry-spiced version with crunchy, fried cumin and mustard seeds, or a rosemary and garlic version that would be at home on a traditional Thanksgiving table (see Tips).
Honey Butter Grilled Corn
This technique for grilling corn uses a side pan of honey butter to thoroughly drench the corn in flavor while keeping it hot and juicy until you’re ready to eat. If you are feeling creative, change the ingredients of the liquid bath: Add a couple of tablespoons of Korean gochujang and a few minced garlic cloves to the base mixture, then finish the corn with toasted sesame seeds for a sweet-hot version. Add a half-cup of sake, two tablespoons of light miso paste and two tablespoons of soy sauce for a sake-miso glaze. Blend a couple of canned chipotle chiles with a few tablespoons of lime juice, add it to the bath and finish the corn with freshly minced cilantro or mint. To complete this recipe, you’ll need a disposable aluminum 9-by-13-inch baking pan, or a similarly sized stovetop-safe vessel that you don’t mind getting a bit dirty.
Roasted Squash With Spiced Onion Gravy
Make a meal out of this smothered squash by having it with rice and salted yogurt, or serve it as a side for roast chicken or a seared pork chop. The mild winter squash gets a punch from a spicy and tart onion gravy that comes together while the squash roasts in the oven. Be sure to season the gravy aggressively with salt so the vinegar, chile and spices pop.
Pommes Boulangère
Like a creamless gratin, this potato casserole gets its flavor and richness from caramelized onions and chicken (or turkey) stock. For a sliceable texture, bake the casserole ahead of time and let it cool completely (during which time the gelatin in the stock and the starch in the potatoes will set), then reheat before serving.
Callaloo (Leafy Greens With Tomato and Onion)
Callaloo is a simple stewed dish of greens, tomatoes, onions and Lawry’s Seasoned Salt. The dish is eaten across the Caribbean, but this version comes from Hazel Craig, the mother of the pastry chef Jessica Craig of L’Artusi in Manhattan. Hazel makes the dish every Christmas exactly as she ate it in Jamaica: with saltfish, which adds heft and a pleasant funk. If you’re not able to get callaloo (which can be found in fresh or canned form at Caribbean markets and some international grocery stores), any sturdy green will do, like kale or Swiss chard.
Grilled Portobellos With Chile Sauce, Sour Cream and Corn Nuts
This is a wonderful vegetarian main dish to serve in the center of your table, with tortillas or rice and a zesty green salad. Be sure to ventilate your kitchen well when you’re grilling the mushrooms and onions indoors, but, if weather permits, you can always grill them outdoors. If you’d like to make this less spicy, then feel free to leave out the dried chiles, making a simple bell pepper sauce instead. Keep this dish vegan by swapping out the sour cream for a nondairy alternative.
Butternut Squash, Leek and Za’atar Pie
This comforting pie makes a great vegetarian centerpiece, ideal for a celebration. It benefits from being assembled the day before, receiving a good amount of time to set in the fridge and thus involving a lot less work on the day you plan to enjoy it. You can also bake the whole thing a few hours in advance, then just reheat it in the oven for 20 minutes, if you like. Use any extra pastry trim to cut out fun, festive shapes like holly leaves or stars to personalize your pie. Serve this alongside roasted veggies or a big leafy salad.
Pan-Fried Collard Greens
Collard greens are a mainstay of Liberian cuisine, brought to the country from the United States by formerly enslaved Africans. Here is a classic Liberian preparation that’s spicy with habaneros (Liberia is known for being the “Pepper Coast” of Africa), and rich with the flavors of ham, turkey and chicken. Each meat brings a distinct taste, creating the base for a gravy that you’ll want to spoon over rice. This is one of those vegetable dishes that’s hearty enough to be a main, whether it’s for Thanksgiving — which is celebrated in Liberia with foods like this one — or any other gathering.
Brown-Butter Butter Beans With Lemon and Pesto
These roasted beans are treated in much the same way as toasted gnocchi, and yield similar results: They’re nicely browned on the surface, then coated in an unctuous, lemony, buttery sauce. Make sure to have your pesto and warm brown-butter sauce ready to pour onto the beans right when they come out of the oven, so that the beans remain crispy and the sauce nice and loose. For a vegetarian version, you can swap out the anchovies for some briny capers and leave out the Parmesan. The whole experience is quite rich, so serve these with some lightly cooked leafy greens.
Squash and Spinach Salad With Sesame Vinaigrette
This vibrant squash salad can stand on its own as a main salad or as a side to accompany all sorts of roasted meats or fish. Kabocha squash can be cooked with its skin on, and a simple roast results in supersweet, creamy flesh. The triple-sesame vinaigrette combines sesame seeds for crunch, tahini for smooth texture and toasted sesame oil for rich, nutty flavor. Equally tasty warm or at room temperature, this salad is super adaptable. (Delicata or acorn squash also have edible skins and are great alternatives.) It makes a terrific lunch, with the addition of beans or soft-boiled eggs for extra protein.
Potato and Celery Root Gratin With Caper Brown Butter
This is the perfect side dish to a Sunday roast or winter spread. Cutting the vegetables into batons as opposed to thinly slicing them lends a wonderful texture to the dish, and it looks pretty funky too. If you can’t find celeriac (celery root), then swap it out for an equal amount of Yukon Gold potatoes or similar semi-waxy potatoes. This is the kind of dish that tastes better as it sits, so feel free to serve it at room temperature if you prefer, adding the brown butter just before serving.
Wild Rice With Mushrooms
In Wisconsin, wild rice is truly wild, not cultivated as in other states, the tassels rising and swaying over rivers, lakes and floodplains come late August and September. Called manoomin by the local Chippewa, it is a protected crop that can be harvested only by state residents holding a valid license. And only by hand, as the Chippewa have always done, using wooden flails gently (the grains should fall from the stalk without great effort) from canoes propelled by paddles or push poles. Shellie Holmes of Rhinelander, Wis., who shares her recipe here, likes to cook wild rice just until it pops open. This is a break with her family’s tradition, which favored a chewier texture and did not allow popping. “Do not mix with other rice,” she urged, lest you lose the flavor of the wild.
Stuffing Panzanella With Cranberry Vinaigrette
The best way to reheat leftover stuffing? Press it into a pan, cut it into cubes and fry it in oil until crisp. The exterior browns and caramelizes, while the inside remains tender and creamy, just like the best bread pudding. This trick works best with stuffing made from smaller pieces of bread, but even if you don’t end up with perfect cubes, they will still be delicious. Serve them warm, on top of a fresh, raw salad tossed in a tangy cranberry-mustard vinaigrette, with fried pepitas running throughout for even more crunch. If you use a homemade cranberry sauce for the dressing, you may want to sweeten it with a touch of honey.
Mochi Rice Stuffing
Thanksgiving dinner in Hawaii may start with pineapple-Vienna-sausage skewers and litchis stuffed with cream cheese. Later there is turkey and ham, but also Spam fried rice and Filipino lumpia, maybe poke (sashimi salad), laulau (ti-leaf-wrapped meat or fish) and a Molokai sweet potato pie topped with haupia (coconut pudding). It is the crazy-quilt, all-embracing nature of the feast that makes it local-kine — that is, island-style. Lara Mui Cowell of Honolulu offers this recipe from her popo (maternal grandmother), Jannie Luke Thom, a second-generation Chinese-American who was born in Hawaii before it became a state. The dish is a Chinese take on Western-style sage stuffing, swapping out bread crumbs for mochi rice and adding lap cheong (Chinese sausage) and char siu (Chinese barbecue pork). But in true Hawaiian style, you may substitute Portuguese sausage — or even Spam.
Purê de Mandioca (Creamy Yuca Purée)
For some Brazilians in the United States, yuca purée takes the place of mashed potatoes on the Thanksgiving table. In Brazil, where yuca is indigenous and abundant, the root vegetable is often peeled, boiled and mashed. Milk and butter make the purée rich and creamy. This recipe was provided by Thailine Kolb, who learned the dish from her mother, Liomar dos Santos Paula Araujo. In Brazil, her mother serves the dish at Christmas, but Mrs. Kolb, who lives in New Haven, Conn., has embraced it as a Thanksgiving tradition. You can use fresh or frozen yuca, with similar results. If using fresh, be careful when cutting the firm vegetable and removing the outer bark. When using fresh or frozen yuca, be sure to remove and discard the starchy core before eating.
Hmong Egg Roll Stuffing
One Thanksgiving, the pastry chef Diane Yang’s parents, Hmong refugees from Laos, found that they had filling left over from making egg rolls, and her mother came up with the idea of using it to stuff the turkey. It's lighter than traditional bread stuffing, and yields relatively small servings, but it's a delicious addition to the feast. It is not intended to be baked alongside the turkey. If you'd like, double this recipe and use the remainder to fill egg rolls. Purchase egg roll wrappers (often found in the freezer section at the market), thaw them, and roll them with stuffing. Deep fry in vegetable oil until golden brown, and serve hot.
Soba Noodles With Ginger Broth and Crunchy Ginger
This noodle dish celebrates the pungent, spicy notes of ginger by both infusing it in stock to create a warming broth and frying it with shallots and panko to create crunchy ginger crumbs you’ll want to sprinkle onto everything: eggs, rice or even a savory porridge. Feel free to double the amount of the ginger crumbs, if you like; they’ll keep in an airtight jar at room temperature for up to one week. Serve these noodles with your protein of choice — tofu, fish, leftover roast chicken — or any cooked vegetable for a complete meal.
Five-Spice Butternut Squash in Cheesy Custard
Orange butternut squash, golden custard and fiery-red pepper and sesame topping reflect the colors of fall in this dish. It’s perfect for a festive brunch, as it’s filling enough to keep you going until the big feast, and special enough to really feel like you’re celebrating. Serve this with some lightly cooked greens, if you like.