Holiday Side Dishes

By Food & Wine
Updated October 08, 2018
From buttery mashed potatoes to creamy casseroles and roasted vegetables, here are fantastic holiday side dishes.
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Roasted Beets with Beet Green Salsa Verde

© John Kernick
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Tyler Florence uses beets and their greens to make this fresh and vibrant side dish for Thanksgiving. If you can’t find beets with beautiful greens, Swiss chard or curly spinach leaves can be used instead.

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Forbidden Black Rice with Ginger and Cardamom

© John Kernick
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This rich-tasting black rice from chef Akasha Richmond is fragrant with cardamom.

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Caramelized Vegetables with Dijon Butter

© Con Poulos
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This simple roasted vegetable side dish tastes rich and complex thanks to mustard-spiced butter.

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Roasted Squash with Crispy Bulgur Crumbs

© Christina Holmes
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F&W’s Kay Chun tops sweet roasted winter squash with crispy pan-fried bulgur seasoned with coriander seeds.

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Creamed Kale


© John Kernick
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This rich and delicious creamed kale from star chef Tyler Florence is an excellent swap for more traditional creamed spinach.

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Creamed Collard Greens with Parmesan Crumbs

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Bake the greens in individual dishes for a more sophisticated presentation.

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Baked Acorn Squash with Chestnuts, Apples and Leeks

Alexandra Rowley
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Halved acorn squash make perfect single-serving bowls. These make a great vegetarian main course for any winter holiday, but they’re also a festive accompaniment to turkey, ham or roast goose.

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Asiago and Sage Scalloped Potatoes

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Thanksgiving Make-Ahead Tip: The potatoes can be baked up to 5 hours ahead; let stand at room temperature. Rewarm in the oven before serving.

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Haricots Verts and White Beans with Shallot Vinaigrette

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At Thanksgiving, it’s always great to have a couple of dishes that don’t have to go in the oven. This combination of creamy white beans and slightly crunchy haricots verts makes an interesting textural mix, and it’s sturdy enough to stand at room temperature for several hours.

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Fall Corn Pudding with White Cheddar and Thyme

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Corn pudding is often a summer staple when corn is widely available and plentiful at farmer’s markets. Here we use frozen kernels and coarsely ground cornmeal to boost the flavor of this fluffy pudding.

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Broccoli and Cheddar Casserole with Leeks

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This Thanksgiving classic is updated with deep-flavored cheddar and a crunchy topping of crumbled crackers and toasted almonds.

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Roasted Beets with Pistachios, Herbs and Orange

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Beets are a no-brainer for healthy meals since they taste great even when they’re simply roasted with a little oil. Naomi Pomeroy goes beyond that, topping red and golden beet slices with a lively mixed-herb dressing, pistachios and celery leaves.

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Mashed Potatoes with Manchego and Olive Oil

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Instead of using butter, chef José Andrés prefers to add richness with olive oil and Manchego cheese. His tip: “Add the olive oil slowly to the potatoes because if you dump it in all at once, you'll get streaks of oil.”

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Butternut Squash with Homemade Harissa

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Harissa, a garlicky North African chile sauce, is usually served with couscous and stews. The homemade harissa featured here is supersimple to prepare, and any extra will keep in the refrigerator for up to a week, but jarred versions available at specialty markets make a fine substitute.

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Candied Cranberry Sauce

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Cooked with less water and in a wide skillet, tart cranberries get candied in the sugar syrup and remain almost whole.

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Sourdough Rye Stuffing with Ham and Cheese

Lucy Schaeffer
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The stuffing can be assembled and refrigerated overnight. Bring to room temperature before baking.

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Glazed Carrots with Cardamom and Ginger

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Most people cook carrots in water, Shawn McClain says, which dulls their flavor. His secret to keeping them supertasty is to cook them in carrot juice and orange juice until glazed.

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Spicy Scalloped Rutabagas with Parsley

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Chipotles in adobo have a rich and toasty heat that flavors the creamy sauce for this luscious gratin.

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Farro Salad with Winter Fruit, Pistachios and Ginger

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“When I make the dressing for the farro salad, I like to use young ginger, which is tender and easy to grate. And it's just so juicy,” says chef Annie Somerville of this healthy side dish.

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Lemony Brussels Sprout Slaw

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To make this refreshingly lemony slaw, start with firm brussels sprouts and shred them in a food processor. Roasted sunflower seeds are the perfect finish.

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Baked Polenta with Mushrooms

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A delicious alternative to traditional mashed potatoes.

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Root Vegetable Pan Roast with Chestnuts and Apples

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Seasoned with thyme and sweetened with syrup, this complexly favorful side dish may just steal the show from the main course.

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Roasted Carrot and Red Quinoa Salad

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Cumin, coriander and cardamom punch up this salad, inspired by a favorite dish at Chloé’s French Café in Santa Rosa, California.

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Vidalia Onion Soufflés

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Vidalia onion soufflé was a fixture at Thanksgiving and Christmas meals when City Grit’s Sarah Simmons was growing up in Fayetteville, North Carolina. This version—lighter and airier than the one her mother makes—can be prepared in individual gratin dishes or in one big baking dish. Feel free to use any sweet onion you can get, such as Vidalia, Walla Walla or Oso Sweet.

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Creamed Spinach and Parsnips

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This luscious side dish can be prepared up to three days ahead. The duo of sweet parsnip and creamy spinach is unbeatable.

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Corn Bread Stuffing with Bacon and Greens

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Chef David Tanis grew up in the Midwest, with rich corn bread stuffing for Thanksgiving. He tweaks his mother’s recipe by adding a smoky element. “She’d roll over if she saw the bacon,” he says. But it’s not critical to the stuffing, which also gets savory flavor from hearty kale, so you can leave it out.

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Five-Spice Glazed Sweet Potatoes with Walnut Toffee

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Crunchy toffee stands in for the usual marshmallow topping on these potatoes, which Shawn McClain glazes with brown sugar and spice-scented butter.

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Vegetable Ragout with Fresh Herbs

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This recipe was inspired by the time chef Jeremiah Tower spent cooking with culinary genius Richard Olney in France. The vegetable combination here is only one of many, though Tower never uses more than seven vegetables and never uses tomatoes unless they are sweet cherry tomatoes.

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Sautéed Parsnips with Dates and Spiced Yogurt

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To get the parsnips nicely browned, Jeff Cerciello cooks them on the stovetop in batches before roasting them with the dates, which caramelize in the oven.

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Vanilla Bean-Whipped Sweet Potatoes

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Everybody will fall for the combination of creamy pureed potato and fragrant vanilla.

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Crunchy Baked Fennel

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Thanksgiving Make-Ahead Tip: Sweet roasted slices of fennel topped with herbed bread crumbs make for a fabulous freezer-to-oven side dish.

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Butternut Squash Basmati Rice

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Adding butternut squash and spices is a lovely way to jazz up rice.

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Jellied Cranberry Sauce with Fuji Apple

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Cranberries only need to be cooked for a few minutes before they burst and form a sauce. To mold the sauce so it’s sliceable, Melissa Rubel Jacobson adds an apple, which is loaded with pectin, a natural gelling agent.

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Roasted Sweet Potato and Okra Salad

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A completely original recipe from Marcus Samuelsson of roasted sweet potatoes tossed with red potatoes, wilted spinach and sautéed okra.

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Mashed Winter Squash with Indian Spices

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Fragrant Indian spices—coriander, turmeric and black mustard seeds—are a wonderful accent for creamy mashed butternut squash. The squash can be roughly smashed until chunky, or thoroughly mashed until smooth.

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