Thanksgiving
2220 recipes found
Creamed Corn Without Cream
When you grate corn on the large holes of a box grater, you get a lot of creamy milk from the corn, so no dairy cream is necessary for this version of what is usually a very rich dish. If the corn is sweet, as corn should be, I prefer to let the dish stand alone with no additional flavorings; that’s why I’ve made the shallot or onion and the herbs optional.
Vegan Mashed Potatoes
If you think cream and butter are required to make amazing mashed potatoes, then this recipe might surprise you. It calls for Yukon Gold potatoes, which are naturally creamier than russets and need only to be mashed with a little of their cooking water to become rich and fluffy. Sizzling shallots in a generous amount of olive oil infuses the oil with flavor before it’s swirled into the potatoes. The finished mash is topped with the crispy shallots for a delightful, savory crunch. You could also fry a rosemary sprig in the same oil, or skip it and just add several pats of vegan butter. Whatever you do, remember to season the mashed potatoes generously. Mashed potatoes need lots of salt, especially those without dairy.
Cheesy Pizza Stuffing
Imagine Thanksgiving stuffing, but with the red-sauce flavors of cheese pizza. Tomato paste and dried oregano, bloomed in buttery onions, do the heavy lifting in this comforting dish, as does an ivory shower of shredded mozzarella, which melts and gets gooey in spots. Stale bread works best, so dry out the bread the night before you plan to make this, or bake the torn pieces in a 250-degree oven until they’re brittle. You can also assemble the stuffing the night before Thanksgiving; just keep it covered in the refrigerator and bake it the next day while the turkey is resting. Serve this warm, while the cheese is still molten.
Farro and Green Bean Salad With Walnuts and Dill
Farro is a perfect vehicle to showcase summer produce. With its nutty flavor and toothsome texture, the whole grain is a great counterbalance to snappy, sweet green beans. The farro cooks while you prepare the rest of the salad, allowing for an easy-to-assemble meal. Dill and walnuts, a nod to Middle Eastern flavors, are used in the gremolata, but pistachios and mint or hazelnuts and parsley would also work. Feta cheese or ricotta salata tossed in at the end would also be a nice addition. This hearty salad works well on its own, but would also be a fine companion to grilled fish or any other protein. Add the acid just before serving; it makes every ingredient sing.
Tuna With Capers, Olives and Lemon
This is not your mother's mayonnaise-laden tuna salad, but it's just as easy to prepare. Here's what you do: stir together some canned tuna, garlic, lemon juice, red onion, black olives, capers and fresh parsley, then spread it on buttered toast. Top it off with a round of ripe tomato or slivers of avocado and another slice of toast. That's it. If you want to make it into a dip, toss the mixture into a food processor with a few tablespoons of softened butter and a bit more olive oil. Purée until smooth and creamy and serve with carrots, fennel, bell pepper and seeded crackers. If you have a tin of sardines taunting you from inside your cabinet, we bet this recipe would work equally well with those.
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.
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.
Chopped Salad With Apples, Walnuts and Bitter Lettuces
The best place for a salad on the Thanksgiving menu is at the beginning of the meal, before everybody fills up. We often pass around plates of this vegetarian chopped salad (no bacon) to accompany the drinks before we sit down at the table. The salad is a great mix of bitter and sweet flavors, juicy and crunchy, and comforting, too. Sweet/tart, crisp juicy apples like Braeburns, Jonagolds, Honey Crisp and Granny Smith work well here.
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).
Caramel Apple Pudding
Whipped cream desserts are a light and lovely affair, especially at the end of a big meal like Thanksgiving. Some people love crunch, but the particular joy of this pudding lies in its voluptuous softness, as it needs to sit in the fridge overnight for the layers to cohere: vanilla cookies, caramel-fried apples and salted cinnamon whipped cream. It’s an airy fall dream in dessert form.
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.
Mini Oatmeal-Cranberry Whoopie Pies
These whoopie pies may be small, but they are packed with flavor. Chewy oatmeal cookies are spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger, and studded with dried cranberries. After baking, they’re sandwiched around a tangy, fluffy cream cheese and cranberry filling. Make them up to three days ahead and store them in the refrigerator, stacked between pieces of parchment paper in an airtight container, or freeze them for up to 1 month. Feel free to add chopped pecans or walnuts for crunch, and substitute other dried fruit (raisins, chopped apricots, diced apple) for the cranberries. These are as adaptable as they are adorable.
Mojo Turkey
This recipe nods to what happened when Cuban culture drifted onto the Thanksgiving tables of South Florida, with a bird dressed in a marinade of sour oranges (a mixture of orange and lime juice works as well) mixed with a lot of garlic and oregano. Serve the bird with black beans and white rice on the side — and a Key lime pie for dessert.
Butternut Squash and Fondue Pie With Pickled Red Chiles
Cheese lovers unite: This pie is seriously, intensely cheesy. Raclette is a semihard cheese from the Swiss and French Alps that eats well when melted. If you can’t get your hands on some, replace it with equal amounts of Gruyère. The heat and acidity of the pickled chiles help cut through the richness, but a zingy green salad would also pair well here. You can serve this pie warm, but it tastes just as good at room temperature, so it's a perfect bake-ahead option.
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.
Smoky Red Devil Eggs
Standard deviled eggs are undeniably good, but adding a touch of tomato paste and a generous pinch of smoked paprika makes them a bit more sophisticated. The flavor is gently sweet, forcefully spicy and perfectly smoky.
Vegan Pumpkin Soup
Straight from the rum bottle … I mean, pumpkin patch, this curried soup is autumn in a bowl.
Salt-and-Pepper Roast Turkey Breast
A bone-in turkey breast is significantly easier to cook than a whole bird, it takes a fraction of the time, and it still feeds a group comfortably. To ensure succulence, you could apply a dry brine the night before, but when you’re cooking just a breast, the greatest insurance against dryness is pulling it out of the oven the moment it’s done, and no later. (For that, rely on an electric instant-read meat thermometer; it’s the only way to get a truly accurate read on the internal temperature of your meat.) I like to roast turkey the way I roast chicken: unbrined but slathered in butter, showered with salt and pepper and popped into a moderately hot oven to get crispy skin. Once the slices are fanned out on a platter tumbled with lemon wedges, it looks like a veritable feast.
Potatoes au Gratin
The humble potato gets the red carpet treatment in this easy yet luxurious recipe for potatoes au gratin. Sliced Yukon Gold or russet potatoes (you can use either, but don't use a combination as they cook at different rates) are layered with half-and-half or heavy cream, topped with butter and grated cheese, then baked until golden and bubbly. Feel free to play around: Add leeks, onions, garlic or more cheese between the layers. Experiment with fresh or dried herbs. It's incredibly adaptable and practically foolproof. Just don't forget to season with salt and pepper as you go. Like all potato dishes, it needs plenty of seasoning.
Really Big Beets
Here is a show-stopping main course to please vegans and vegetarians — and one that even meat-eaters will want to eat. Diana Jarvis, a Manhattan resident who submitted this recipe to the Well blog's Vegetarian Thanksgiving feature in 2014, says to roast the beets for a long time, to achieve a giant, steak-like fist of vegetable, rich and salty-sweet. One hour works — two hours is better.
Open-Faced Hot Turkey Sandwiches
Sometimes life requires an open-faced turkey sandwich with gravy and mashed potatoes, alongside a glop of cranberry sauce. It is neither a Thanksgiving meal nor a Christmas one, but simply a low-fi American reminder of diners and TV dinners and blankets and comfort itself: soft meat and rich, salty gravy over tight-crumbed bread, with buttery mash and a tang of cranberry. My recipe calls for roasting buttered turkey thighs in the oven while the potatoes were cooking, skin-side down to crisp the skin and allow the fat to render into the pan, creating sticky bits of fond you’ll use to build a base for gravy. Pile the sliced meat onto lightly toasted bread, drench it with gravy and serve alongside the potatoes and peas. Adding canned cranberry sauce, in this application, is no sin.
Whole Roasted Fish With Wild Mushrooms
A very large whole roasted fish brought to the table with head and tail intact is a visually dramatic and incredibly tasty dinner party main course. Even better is that it's both a breeze to cook (season it up, throw it in the oven and wait), and to serve (big fish have big bones, which makes it easy to scoop the flesh off the skeleton). Do not forget to call your fishmonger ahead to order a large fish. This recipe, with lemons, herbs and crisp wild mushrooms, will work with any 4- to 6-pounder, from delicate black sea bass to salmon-colored arctic char. The variety of fish here is less important than the size. Generally speaking, you'll need about a pound of fish per person, though three-quarters of a pound will do if you're serving it in the context of a multi-course meal. Also, if you can't find one very large fish, you can use two smaller ones, 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 pounds each. In that case, feel free to squeeze them into one roasting pan.
English Muffin Breakfast Casserole
This easy, make-ahead casserole makes creative use of classic breakfast ingredients like eggs, sausage, Cheddar cheese and English muffins. It’s a perfect no-stress centerpiece for a special-occasion breakfast: Simply assemble the casserole the night before and pop it in the oven before breakfast. Just remember to make sure to toast the English muffins until they’ve dried out a bit, which will help them absorb the egg mixture. For a vegetarian version, use vegetarian sausage or omit it altogether.
Sausage Sage Biscuits
For an easy, savory breakfast treat, browned sausage and sage are folded into biscuit dough that’s cut into squares. A generous grinding of black pepper in the mix and on top adds a bit of kick. The flaky biscuits are delicious on their own or stuffed with eggs: Scrambled, fried or poached are all great, but so is egg salad. If you’d like, you can garnish the biscuits with whole sage leaves. Simply brush the unbaked squares with a little melted butter, gently press on a sage leaf, and brush the leaf with a little more butter before baking.