Holiday Side Dishes

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.”

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.

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

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

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.

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

“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.

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.

A delicious alternative to traditional mashed potatoes.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.