Thanksgiving
2220 recipes found
Green Beans With Dill
Steamed green beans served with a button of butter make for a perfectly acceptable side dish, but if you're looking to elevate the green bean to company-worthy status (with almost no more effort), here's your recipe. Just blanch the beans for a few minutes, toss with butter, chopped fresh dill and a grind or two of black pepper.
Sous-Vide Cheesy Mashed Potatoes
Savory Cheddar and Parmesan, along with sour cream for tang, are the keys to this rich, flavorful mash. If you have a vacuum sealer, you can use it to seal the potatoes into their sous-vide bags before cooking; this makes them easier to weigh down so they stay submerged. Once the potatoes are done, you can also keep them warm alongside the sous-vide turkey breast, if you’re making it: 145 degrees, the temperature at which the turkey breast is cooked, is the perfect temperature to hold the potatoes. If you don’t have a sous-vide machine, you can boil the potatoes in salted water until tender, then drain and mash them, and proceed with Step 2. You might not need the milk since boiled potatoes will have a higher moisture content than those cooked by sous vide.
Brussels Sprouts Gratin
The most indulgent way to eat any vegetable is to bathe it in cream and top it with cheese, but few benefit from that treatment as much as brussels sprouts do. Whether or not you decide to top them with crispy bread crumbs (you should), the end result is a decadent, but never too heavy, side dish that could easily become your main course.
Fry Bread With Cornmeal and Coconut Oil
Ingenuity is behind Indigenous fry bread. When the United States government forcibly relocated Navajos (Diné) from ancestral lands in the 19th century, Native American women invented fry bread from government-issued commodities: flour, salt, yeast and water. Today, Native Americans have reclaimed this survival food as a tasty symbol of resilience. Cooks improvise on the basic formula using ingredients based on preference and geography: Styles, sizes and shapes differ by region, tribe and family. Fry bread is comfort food, and variations are shaped by memory and connection, leading to playful jests about the “right” kind. This particular recipe has Afro-Indigenous origins with its use of sugar and cornmeal, which add sweetness and density. But raw sugar replaces white sugar, and coconut oil steps in for lard. When used for frying, the oil’s aroma announces the arrival of something special.
Pommes Anna
It’s a marvel still, every time I make this dish, to recognize how the humble potato — the misshapen, dull brown dirty lump — can become this opulent, glistening, colossally elegant jewel with nothing more than attentive care, a sharp blade and good butter. The potato slices want to bend and be supple but not be so thin as to be papery, else they will cook too quickly.
Two-Ingredient Mashed Potatoes
These weeknight mashed potatoes taste purely like potato. The secret? Starchy water. Save some of it after you boil the potatoes, and after mashing, stir it back in, a tablespoon at a time, until they come together. Then, add with a little sour cream for tang. It's that easy — and creamy and light. Take it from Ma Ingalls of “Little House on the Prairie” fame: “There was no milk, but Ma said, ‘Leave a very little of the boiling water in, and after you mash them beat them extra hard with the big spoon.’ The potatoes turned out white and fluffy.”
Walnut Pie With Molasses and Orange
This pie is fudgy, nutty, salty-sweet and spiked with citrus. It’s a meeting of sorts, between arguably Britain and America’s greatest desserts: the treacle tart and pecan pie. Cut corners by grating the crust instead of rolling it out, but don’t skip making your own bread crumbs and roasted walnuts; the texture and flavor rely on the freshness of both. Once you’ve prebaked the crust to biscuit brown, err on the side of undercooking the molasses-custard filling: It’ll firm up when cooled and stay gooey for days.
Roasted Sweet Potatoes With Hot Honey Browned Butter
Doubling down on sweet potatoes’ sweetness by adding honey is like adding fuel to the fire, but the nuttiness from the browned butter, heat from the crushed red pepper flakes and bright acidity from the vinegar all work together to bring it back from the brink. This hot honey browned butter is also good on roasted winter squash, over plain oatmeal and — if we are being honest —probably over ice cream. But that’s a different conversation. (This recipe is adapted from "Dining In: Highly Cookable Recipes" by Alison Roman.)
Rutabaga-Potato Mash With Bacon
For the food historian Jessica B. Harris, humble rutabagas laced with rich, smoky bacon fat were the highlight of every childhood Thanksgiving. The ones her mother cooked were sharper than the ones we buy today, so she cut them with mild potatoes, but you can adjust the proportions to your liking. If bacon is off the menu for you, add butter or olive oil to the pot instead, and more to taste after mashing.
Sweet Potatoes With Sour Cream and Pecans
Soft at the center, caramelized at the edges and warmly spiced from the garam masala, these roasted sweet potatoes get a tangy bite from lime-spiked sour cream, while toasted pecans add crunch. You can make the lime sour cream up to four hours ahead. Simply pull it out of the fridge 30 minutes before serving, and let it come to room temperature before drizzling it over the potatoes.
Pan-Roasted Green Beans With Golden Almonds
This simple almond-shallot topping goes with just about any simply cooked vegetable, but it tastes best with green beans. Instead of simply blanching the beans, I char them until they develop a smoky richness.
Roasted and Raw Brussels Sprouts Salad
If you like a good kale salad, or any type of crunchy salad, then you will love this one, which combines shredded raw brussels sprouts with roasted brussels sprouts leaves. As with any sturdy greens, the raw sprouts benefit from marinating in the dressing, which uses fresh lemon juice and salt as tenderizers. While the uncooked greens can be prepared in advance, you’ll want to add the warm ingredients just before serving, so you can enjoy the contrast of the crisp leaves and toasted almonds with the tangy shredded sprouts.
Vermouth Spritz
This is as easy at it sounds — almost effortless, really. Just be sure to use a vermouth you really love (I’m a fan of dark, robust, earthy Spanish ones) and keep the bottle in the fridge.
Garlic Mashed Potatoes
These are classic mashed potatoes, brightened up with a substantial amount of garlic. Feel free to adjust the garlic to taste, and to deepen the flavor, try roasting the cloves before mixing them in with the potatoes. (For everything you need to know to make perfect potatoes, visit our potato guide.)
Seared Brussels Sprouts
For delicious brussels sprouts, cook them in very hot oil. The cut side will sear, as will some of the leaves, resulting in a toasty, charred flavor that is irresistible, especially to children. Don’t use an expensive olive oil for this dish. It should not have a strong flavor.
Brussels Sprouts
Many vegan dishes (like fruit salad and peanut butter and jelly) are already beloved, but the problem faced by many of us is in imagining less-traditional dishes that are interesting and not challenging. Here is a creative way to do brussels sprouts with garlic and walnuts.
Sous-Vide Brown Sugar Sweet Potatoes With Pecans
Lightly sweetened with brown sugar and zipped up with bourbon, these sweet potatoes are puréed until velvety smooth, then topped with toasted pecans. Once the sweet potatoes are done, you can also keep them warm alongside the sous-vide turkey breast, if you’re making it: 145 degrees, the temperature at which the turkey breast is cooked, is the perfect temperature to hold the sweet potatoes. Cooking the sweet potatoes with a sous-vide machine is convenient when your oven is otherwise occupied, but you can also bake them. Just wrap them, peeled but whole, in foil; place on a baking pan and bake at 375 degrees for an hour or two depending upon how large the potatoes are, until very tender. Then purée as directed in Step 3.
Cauliflower Gratin With Leeks and White Cheddar
A sort of cheater's gratin, this cauliflower cooked with leeks and cream doesn’t require blanching or a béchamel, making it a low maintenance, deeply comforting side dish. To skirt the blanching, the cauliflower and cream is covered in foil to give the vegetables a chance to get tender without drying out. The foil then comes off so the top can brown and the cream can reduce, creating a thick, velvety sauce. If your heart desires a crunchier texture, add a scattering of bread crumbs tossed in olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper when the aluminum foil comes off.
Mashed Carrots and Potatoes
Cyn-Cyn
I’ll admit it: I have a mild case of Negroni fatigue. It’s a good drink, for sure — and when it’s beautifully made, I readily succumb to its charms — but its ubiquity in recent years has become a tiny bit tiresome. So I welcome its rarer, lighter cocktail cousin, the Cyn Cyn, in which Cynar — the wonderful, mysterious, arguably underappreciated amaro made with artichoke — replaces Campari. It’s a favorite aperitivo of the author Elizabeth Minchilli, whose elegant, straightforward recipe this is.
Vegan Stuffing
The challenge with developing a vegan version of classic Thanksgiving stuffing is figuring out how to achieve that signature texture without the eggs. In this recipe, a few simple steps make it possible: First, vegetable broth is added to the stuffing mixture twice; once while it’s in the skillet, and again just before baking. Finely chopped, toasted pecans add texture, but also act as a sort of flour, absorbing the broth and binding the mixture together. Finally, the stuffing is baked under foil for the first 20 minutes, which ensures that the top doesn’t dry out before the entire dish is finished. The end result is a traditional stuffing that will have everyone — vegans and otherwise — coming back for seconds.
Sweet Potatoes With Yogurt and Cilantro-Chile Sauce
In this luscious vegetable dish, velvety sweet potatoes get a spicy jolt from a chile-spiked cilantro sauce spooned on top. Greek yogurt adds a creamy element and a bit of protein if you’re serving these as a vegetarian main course. As a side dish, they are satisfying yet not the least bit heavy, thanks to the bright flavors of the sauce. You can make the sauce up to 4 hours ahead. Any longer than that and it starts to lose its fresh, tart taste. It’s also very good on roasted carrots.
Honey-Roasted Brussels Sprouts With Harissa and Lemon Relish
Roasting brussels sprouts may be the best and most delicious way to prepare them. Exposed to high heat, they caramelize and become very crispy (even more so when tossed in a sticky and spicy honey-harissa mixture before roasting). Here, they're finished with a slightly bitter and wonderfully tart lemon relish to bring them back from the brink of too much sweetness.
Roasted Cauliflower With Lemon Brown Butter
Roasting vegetables is easy, but this technique elevates the everyday dinner staple. A pan of water in the oven with the cauliflower helps maintain its succulence, while an even temperature browns it and brings out its natural sugars. Brown butter and sage take it over the top.