Thanksgiving
2220 recipes found
Sautéed Greens With Smoked Paprika for Two
Soft slivers of garlic and shallots and a dash of smoked paprika give this verdant side dish its complexity and charm. You can make it with any greens you have on hand. Softer spinach and chard make for a silkier dish, while sturdy kale and collard greens give it more heft. Just adjust the cooking time as needed to make sure your greens are thoroughly tender.
Baked German Potato Salad
While all sorts of products, like oysters, were coming by boat from the East to Michigan and the rest of the Midwest during the pioneer period, the European families who settled there generally liked to stick to their traditions. “In the Upper Peninsula, there were the Finlanders, and they had Cornish hens,” said Priscilla Massie, a co-author of the cookbook “Walnut Pickles and Watermelon Cake: A Century of Michigan Cooking.” Then there were the Germans families, who, Ms. Massie said, tended to adopt Thanksgiving first. Their tangy baked potato salad can be found on many tables around the state to this day, made easy by a crop that’s available statewide.
Fall Salad With Apples, Cheddar and Crispy Sage
Bubbling sage leaves in olive oil until sizzling provides crisp thrills in this simple, flavorful combination of salty cheese and sweet apples, while the resulting sage-scented oil melds with honey and lemon to create a herbaceous dressing. Mild, leafy butter lettuce helps tie it all together, but slightly bitter chicories like frisée, escarole or endive would work well, too. This salad makes a fun sidekick for main proteins like Buttermilk-Brined Roast Chicken, Porchetta Pork Chops or store-bought sausages or rotisserie chicken.
Roasted Butternut Squash Bread Salad
This sheet-pan recipe is an easy way to get a hearty vegetarian meal on the table in under an hour. Inspired by panzanella, which traditionally provides new life for stale bread by tossing it with juicy tomatoes, this bread salad instead gets its moisture from an earthy tahini dressing. The creamy tahini is lightly sweetened with honey, which plays well with the buttery squash, while a flourish of fresh herbs adds a light, springy finish. This makes for a nice supper on its own, but it would also work well as a side to roasted chicken or fish.
Blistered Green Beans and Tomatoes With Honey, Harissa and Mint
It’s worth seeking out a well-seasoned cast-iron pan for this recipe as the heat will evenly distribute throughout the surface area helping to ensure beautifully charred, but tender vegetables. Smoky, earthy harissa is given a lift with the addition of honey and lime juice, which is tossed with the green beans and tomatoes and some butter to melt at the end of cooking. Serve with grilled sausages for a fast and flavorful summer meal.
Classic Cheesecake
If there’s one dessert that would least benefit from innovation, it would have to be New York-style cheesecake. No tricks, no twists; Just a crumbly graham cracker crust and lots of lightly sweetened cream cheese. Baking a cheesecake without a water bath might seem like you're tempting fate, but if you do so at a low enough temperature, it will cook the filling gently and evenly without the risk of curdling or scorching. While cracks on the cheesecake's surface won’t affect the taste, they can be unsightly and are most likely to occur when there’s a sudden temperature change (say, from the oven to the fridge). To reduce the chances of cracking, let the cheesecake rest in the oven a few minutes before transferring to the counter to cool completely.
Walnut Tart
If you seek inspiration for a better pie, you need look no further than a traditional French walnut tart. It is only marginally different, but vive that difference. The reason is butter: butter in the crust and butter in the filling. Oh, and cream in the filling, too. If they had pecans in France I’m sure they would use them, as you could in this recipe.
Wild Rice and Roasted Squash Salad With Cider Vinaigrette
Toothsome wild rice, caramelized roasted veggies and crisp radicchio all shine in this generous salad, which can be served as a hearty side or satisfying lunch. Radicchio adds a pop of color and a punch of bitterness, but a peppery green like arugula would also make a great substitute. This salad is tossed with a generous batch of mustard-cider vinaigrette. If you decide to double the dressing or have any left over, it pairs beautifully with just about any grain or hearty green, and will keep refrigerated for up to three days.
Manhattan With Amaro and Cocoa
A mixture of rye whiskey and amaro, with the addition of bitters, sets this simply made cocktail on the road to a manhattan. But then there are detours: the chocolate liqueur to add a mellow accent, and the cardamom for a hint of spice. I also tried substituting coffee liqueur for the chocolate, with great success. It is from the 18th Room in New York, where it is called Before Night Falls.
Mark Bittman’s Bourbon Apple Cake
Soaking a cake in liquor or syrup is an old concept. Bake a standard cake, like this golden one, and when it's done, pour enough sweetened, butter-laden alcohol over the top to really saturate it. The result is strong and juicy and makes frosting superfluous.
Spiced Cranberry-Orange Relish
Dodo (Fried Plantains)
Fried, grilled, boiled, dehydrated and pulverized, sweet or savory, plantains are a staple of Nigerian cuisine. Dodo, as it is called in Yoruba, refers to fried sweet plantains. For the plantains to caramelize properly, use ripe plantains (the skin should be deep yellow and speckled with large black dots). If you can find only green plantains, you can seal them in a paper bag and let them ripen for 2 to 3 days. Cooking the plantains in hot oil brings out their caramelized sweetness, and a quick toss with pickled onions adds an acidic bite. Enjoy these sweet, tangy morsels on their own, or serve this dish alongside jollof, plain steamed rice, frejon or plain cooked beans.
Blackberry Apple Pie
Packed with spiced fruit, this feels like an old-fashioned apple pie, with a coziness beneath the modern lattice. Juicy blackberries highlight the tanginess of sweet-tart apples and tint the filling a mellow shade of pink. Wide dough strips, tightly woven, leave just enough of a gap in the top to allow a little steam to vent. Keeping the abundance of fruit mostly encased helps it bake through to tenderness and allows their juices to thicken to a jammy syrup. If you don’t want to weave a lattice, you can simply cover the filling with a round of rolled dough and cut vent holes in it.
Turkey Pilaf in a Turban
Flourless Cocoa Cookies
Glossy and near black in color, these intense, easy-to-make chocolate cookies are like a cross between fudge and the deepest of brownies -- and gluten-free to boot. We discovered them in "The Fearless Baker" by Erin Jeanne McDowell. A little cinnamon gives them a spicy complexity, but you can leave it out for a more purely chocolate flavor. Be sure to use bittersweet rather than semisweet chocolate, or they could end up cloying rather than balanced.
Whipped Cream
Desserts are good. Desserts topped with a flourish of whipped cream are better. For the best results, start with cold heavy cream as well as a chilled bowl and whisk (or attachment if you're using an electric mixer). Play around with one or two of the optional flavorings, but don't go overboard: Whipped cream should enhance a dessert, not upstage it.
Mini Apple Tartes Tatin
The pastry chef Claudia Fleming is known for her work with fruit desserts, and this recipe, adapted from her cult-classic cookbook, “The Last Course,” is an easy version of the classic caramelized apple tart. If you have large apples (or like large desserts), make this in a jumbo muffin tin; you’ll need more puff pastry, but everything else remains the same.
Custard Pie
Inspired by dan tat, small egg custard tarts popular in Cantonese dim sum, this pie is also reminiscent of American and European baked custards and flan from around the globe. The slick, jiggly vanilla filling is delicious for its comforting eggy flavor. It’s simple to whisk together, but if that whisking results in bubbles that pop and crater on top, simply cover them up with a dusting of confectioners’ sugar or ground dehydrated berries. The berries add a pop of color and a hint of fruitiness.
Walnut Cake
I have to thank a couple of people for this recipe: first, the chef Stevie Parle, of Dock Kitchen in London, who published the recipe to inspire this one, and second, the aunt of one of my recipe testers, who made such a standout interpretation that we all marveled over the leftovers the next day in the test kitchen. I just had to try my own version, and here it is, made a touch more celebratory with caramelized walnuts and lashings of whipped cream, both of which can be omitted if you prefer keeping it plain and dairy-free (thereby making it suitable for Passover). The cake is moist and delicious enough as it is. If baking for Passover, you should also be sure to use muscovado sugar (or dark brown sugar) and amaretto that are certified kosher for Passover.
Spiced Pumpkin Cheesecake
Fluffier than both cheesecake and pumpkin pie, this dessert combines a silky cream cheese-pumpkin filling and a tangy sour cream topping with a graham cracker crust. The warmth of ginger, ground and candied, ties together the other warming spices: cinnamon, cardamom and turmeric for flavors reminiscent of — and as soothing as — turmeric tea and chai.
Creamy Mashed Potatoes
This very simple recipe for silky mashed potatoes calls for roasting potatoes whole instead of chopping and boiling them, which concentrates their flavor and avoids a watery final product. The riced potatoes are light and fluffy, and just enough milk and butter are added to create rich, velvety potatoes while still allowing pure potato flavor to shine through. The mashed potatoes can be made a few hours ahead and pressed on top with plastic wrap to prevent a skin from forming; rewarm over low heat before serving, adding a touch more milk if necessary.
Vegan Mac and Cheese
Many creamy vegan pasta recipes call for an arsenal of expensive ingredients, but this one relies on more approachable ones, like cashews and almond milk for richness, nutritional yeast for tang and soy sauce for complex saltiness. Sautéed onions do double duty: They serve as a thickener and help offset the sweetness of the cashews. This simple stovetop pasta is wonderful on its own, but feel free to add roasted vegetables, fresh herbs, spices, harissa or hot sauce. For a quick-baked version worthy of Thanksgiving dinner, pile the prepared mac and cheese into a casserole dish, top with panko and more nutritional yeast, and broil for a few minutes until golden brown.
Carrot-Parsnip Soup With Parsnip Chips
Winter root vegetables lend their complementary, slightly sweet flavors to this hearty soup that came to The Times from Cooking Light magazine. Parsnip chips – thinly-sliced parsnips fried for five minutes in olive oil – sprinkled over the top add a delightful crunch. Stir in more water or broth if you prefer a thinner consistency.
Vegan Quick Biscuits
This dead simple recipe is an adaptation of one brought to The Times by Chloe Coscarelli, the vegan chef and cookbook author. These delicious biscuits are easy — no rolling or folding required — and the maple “butter” comes together in a snap.