Side Dish
4106 recipes found

Pimento Mac and Cheese
This recipe combines two classic Southern dishes to create something special: Pimento cheese, a spread for sandwiches, crackers and vegetables, meets mac and cheese for a peppery and spicier version of the traditional baked casserole. The core ingredients of pimento cheese — sharp yellow Cheddar, pimento peppers and cream cheese — cook into a sauce that’s creamier and tangier than the usual purely cheese base.

Garlic Soup
This superior recipe comes from chef Juanjo López of La Tasquita de Enfrente in Madrid.

Raw Beet Salad
This is a beet recipe for someone who is skeptical of their earthy, rooty flavor. Uncooked beets are less sweet and earthy than they are when boiled or roasted. This is a messy affair, so peel and grate them near the sink.

Farro and Swiss Chard Salad With Grapefruit Vinaigrette
A farmer at my market recently was selling huge, sturdy bunches of Swiss chard, the kind I used to cook with in France, with wide ribs and heavy leaves. One bunch weighed almost 2 pounds; the leaves alone, off the stems, weighed in at about 13 ounces. I used the greens for more than one dish, including this substantial salad, to which I also added diced sautéed chard ribs.

Kasha With Squash and Pomegranate
This salad works equally well with kasha or freekeh, both of which have a nutty-earthy flavor that serves as a great backdrop for sweet roasted butternut squash and sweet-tart, crunchy pomegranate seeds. Lately I have gotten into the habit of roasting diced butternut squash to keep on hand in the refrigerator for a few days; I usually don’t know in advance what I am going to use it for; then one night it finds its way into a salad like this one, the next night into a risotto, and so on until it is time to roast up another one. Four cups diced squash looks like a lot, but it reduces down to about 1 1/2 cups when you roast it, so you will use it up quickly (I use all of it, for example, in this salad).

Brussels Sprouts Salad With Apples and Walnuts
Raw brussels sprouts can stand up to the boldest and most assertive of flavors. Pair the shredded sprouts with a garlicky lemon dressing, plenty of aged Parmesan and crushed toasted walnuts. Toss in something crispy and sweet (apples and pears are ideal) and a bit of something fresh (mint and pomegranate) for a balanced bite.

Japanese-Style Rice Salad
Whether it’s tender and tasty short-grain, astonishingly fragrant basmati or superchewy red, brown and black varieties, rice is one salad ingredient that does not deteriorate when dressed. It absorbs and thrives on the addition of liquids.

Dijon Rice With Broccoli
The vegan chef Lindsay S. Nixon is giving Well readers a sneak peek at her new cookbook, “Everyday Happy Herbivore: Over 175 Quick-and-Easy Fat-Free and Low-Fat Vegan Recipes." Dijon mustard and broccoli complement each other beautifully and come together to jazz up a side of rice. Since all Dijon mustards and hot sauces are a little different, this recipe is very much “to taste.”

Vegan Catalan-Style Radicchio and White Beans

White Bean and Roasted Potato Salad With Rosemary
Freshly cooked white beans hold their shape better than canned ones, so unless you’re really pinched for time, cook the beans yourself for this hearty, lively winter salad. Serve it as a side dish for roasted meats or chicken. If you omit the anchovies in the dressing (use capers instead), it would be an excellent meatless main course. If you have time, it's best to give the beans a proper soak (4 to 12 hours); if not, just tack 30 to 60 minutes onto the cooking time, adding more water as needed to keep them entirely covered.

Salsa Fresca
This quick fresh tomato salsa will always be best when tomatoes are in season. But you can pump up the flavor with a little lime juice if the flavor of your tomatoes is a little dull. Juicy tomatoes will yield a more watery salsa than pulpy roma tomatoes.

Fennel, Beet and Orange Salad With Cumin Vinaigrette
One of the things I love best about this refreshing salad is that it doesn’t wilt, making it a a great choice for a potluck or a buffet. There’s a nice contrast of textures going on, with the crunchy fennel, soft beets and juicy oranges. The dish has Moroccan overtones, with the combination of oranges and beets, and the cumin in the dressing.

Broccoli, Quinoa and Purslane Salad
Slice the raw broccoli very thin for this delicious salad. If you can’t find purslane you can substitute mâche.

Red Cabbage, Cilantro and Walnut Salad
This slaw, a mix of very thinly shredded red cabbage, cilantro, julienned radishes and walnuts, is a perfect sweet-nutty-salty-sour mix. Pair it with dumplings, or other dim sum, and it holds its own.

Potato and Leek Focaccia
Tender Yukon Gold potato slices and crispy leeks top a fluffy slab of long-risen, dimpled focaccia for a substantial vegetarian meal or a side to roast chicken. To ensure that the potatoes cook through in the same amount of time as the leeks and focaccia, they need to be sliced very thinly, so use a mandoline or slice them meticulously using a sharp knife. Like most focaccia, this one is best enjoyed fresh from the oven, but leftovers are great warmed in a toaster oven.

Vegetarian Tortilla Soup
This vegetarian version of tortilla soup is no less complex than its chicken counterpart, thanks to plenty of vegetables, spices and a secret ingredient: canned chipotles in adobo. Smoked and dried jalapeños softened in a vinegar-tomato mixture, these little powerhouses do much of the heavy lifting in this vegetarian soup, offering depth and a certain meatiness to an otherwise light and tangy broth.

Indian-Style Rice Salad
In most cases, rice salads can be dressed not only minutes but hours in advance, making them ideal for entertaining or for just cooking ahead. Cook the rice a bit in advance, and dress it before it gets too cold. (While leftover rice — even from Chinese takeout restaurants — is close to ideal for fried rice, it doesn’t work nearly as well as fresh-cooked rice for salads.)

XO Sauce
In Hong Kong in the 1980s, when expensive Cognac was all the rage, legend has it that some smart cook at the Spring Moon restaurant in the Peninsula Hotel on Kowloon got it into his head to name the funky new condiment he’d come up with after the status mark on the bottle of Remy Martin at the bar: “XO,” extra old, rare, very expensive. The stuff was a hit: dried scallops and dried shrimp, a ton of chiles, a faint pork-smokiness and a whisper of allium, expensive to make and worth it for the flavor-enhancing pop. By the end of the decade, XO sauce was on menus all over Hong Kong and eventually the world. Recipes for XO vary wildly, save for those scallops and shrimp. Mine derives from the teachings of Diana Kuan, who included a formidable XO in her 2019 cookbook, “Red Hot Kitchen.”

Cabbage With Tomatoes, Bulgur and Chickpeas
This recipe is based on a Greek dish made with red cabbage. I’ve used both green and red cabbage, and I like it both ways. It’s a comforting vegan dish that works as an entree or a side.

Five-Spice Roasted Carrots With Toasted Almonds
A complex combination of fennel seeds, anise, clove, cinnamon and Szechuan peppercorns, five-spice powder is a crucial ingredient in the Chinese pantry that also happens to be deeply versatile. It can be used as a dry rub for roast chicken, tossed with sautéed vegetables or sprinkled over toasted nuts. Here, five-spice powder, along with a bright splash of vinegar and ginger, dresses up simple roasted carrots. Preheating your baking sheet in the oven will help caramelize and crisp your vegetables, and will also speed up cooking time.

Smashed Potatoes With Bacon, Cheese and Greens
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. Get some nice baseball-sized, yellow-fleshed potatoes, one per person, and cut them into quarters. Toss them with olive oil, salt and pepper on a sheet pan, and slide them into a hot oven to roast, say 425 degrees. While they’re cooking, make yourself useful: Fry some bacon; grate some Cheddar; toss a few large handfuls of spinach or baby kale with olive oil, just enough to lightly coat the leaves; slice some avocados; and see if you have some sour cream in the refrigerator. When the potatoes are soft, pull them from the oven and smash the pieces down with the bottom of a coffee cup or drinking glass. Arrange the smashed potatoes on the sheet pan, and top each portion with greens, a chopped slice of cooked bacon, and plenty of cheese. Return to the oven to melt the cheese, then garnish with avocado and dots of sour cream. Or yogurt! It’s a no-recipe recipe. There are no rules! Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to receive it. You can find more no-recipe recipes here.

Asparagus Salad, Italian-Style
Here, raw asparagus is simply dressed with lemon juice, olive oil and Parmesan shavings.

Baby Greens With Balsamic-Roasted Turnips and Walnuts
In spring I welcome tender raw turnips into my salads, but I use another approach in the winter. I took some medium-size turnips that had been lingering in my crisper for some weeks, tossed them with balsamic vinegar and olive oil and roasted them. They would make a fine side dish, but I had a salad in mind. I paired the roasted turnips with tender baby greens, walnuts and blue cheese. I have served the turnips warm with the salad and also after they cooled; I liked them best warm.
