The Best Thanksgiving Side Dishes to Make You Forget About the Turkey

Because we all know the green bean casserole, stuffing and mashed potatoes are the best part of the meal.

Let’s be honest: Turkey’s great, but Thanksgiving is about the side dishes. Some of us wait all year for stuffing and potatoes (sweet and regular), mac and cheese — and even cranberry sauce. To say nothing of rolls.

We’ve assembled some of our finest recipes, new and old, to round out your meal. These supporting players are so good, you’d be forgiven if you forgot about the turkey.

1. Potato Leek Gratin

For Melissa Clark’s gratin, thinly sliced potatoes are layered in a gratin dish, then topped with crisp-edged sautéed leeks. A heady combination of cream, garlic, thyme and nutmeg is poured over top, then baked until bubbly.

Recipe: Potato Leek Gratin

2. Cacio e Pepe Green Beans

This three-ingredient, one-pan side dish from Sheela Prakash provides some much needed color to the table. Freshly ground black pepper adds a little heat, and Parmesan lends umami.

Recipe: Cacio e Pepe Green Beans

3. Fiery Sweet Potatoes

Maybe you think the classic sweet potato casserole is too sweet? Try Julia Moskin’s smoky, spicy, just-sweet-enough dish that gets its heat from Thai curry paste and its nuttiness from coconut milk.

Recipe: Fiery Sweet Potatoes

4. Brussels Sprouts With Pancetta

Salty bits of pancetta pair beautifully with hearty sprouts in this wonderful side dish from Suzanne Goin. Balsamic vinegar and stock, added in the last 10 minutes of cooking time, create a sweet-tart glaze that brings it all together.

Recipe: Brussels Sprouts With Pancetta

5. Gnocchi Gratin

The French know this dish as gnocchi Parisienne, but whatever you call it, this variation from Ali Slagle is an easy and excellent substitute for a traditional potato gratin or casserole. No mashing or slicing required.

Recipe: Gnocchi Gratin

6. Marshmallow Pecan Sweet Potato Casserole

Eric Kim’s riff on the classic Thanksgiving side strikes a nice balance between sweet and savory. The mashed potatoes are infused with bay leaf and black pepper, then topped with halved marshmallows and pecans that crisp in the oven, for a crunchy lid that complements the silky potatoes.

Recipe: Marshmallow Pecan Sweet Potato Casserole

7. Baked Macaroni and Cheese

Crusty-edged and hard to stop eating, this classic baked mac ’n’ cheese from Julia Moskin evokes the boxed sort of your youth, only better. The secret is using a combination of extra-sharp Cheddar and American cheese.

Recipe: Baked Macaroni and Cheese

8. Green Bean Casserole

Eric Kim cooked more than 30 pounds of green beans to come to this recipe — his platonic ideal of the Thanksgiving favorite. To achieve this simple yet delicious version, he prioritizes frozen-cut beans and skips the mushrooms. Nonnegotiable, though, are the French-fried onions in the can. As he puts it, “they cannot be improved.”

Recipe: Green Bean Casserole

9. Braised Mustard Greens

In the same family as collard greens, mustard greens are a little more tender and peppery than their cousins. Here, Vallery Lomas cooks them down simply, with onions, garlic and stock. Liquid smoke, optional here, adds smokiness without the traditional addition of meat. What’s not optional? Savoring the potlikker, the liquid the cooked greens leave behind.

Recipe: Braised Mustard Greens

10. Hashweh (Spiced Rice and Meat With Yogurt)

Hashweh means “stuffing” in Arabic, and this one, a staple of Arab American Thanksgivings, is used to fill just about any poultry that can be stuffed. Built on Calrose, jasmine or basmati rice, it’s studded with tender beef or lamb and fried nuts for contrast. Make it for Thanksgiving, or bookmark it for a weeknight. As the reporter Reem Kassis writes, “it’s a meal in its own right.”

Recipe: Hashweh (Spiced Rice and Meat With Yogurt)

11. Corn Casserole

Yes, corn casserole, beloved in the southeastern United States, is often made with Jiffy cornbread mix, but here, Ali Slagle makes it from scratch for something that’ll have guests clamoring for more. As a reader wrote, “Seconds and thirds were had by all.”

Recipe: Corn Casserole

12. Make-Ahead Mashed Potatoes

A chilled potato is often a bad one, stiff and starchy, but Genevieve Ko cracks the code on how to get your mash extra silky again by topping it with milk and reheating it gently over steaming water.

Recipe: Make-Ahead Mashed Potatoes

13. Thanksgiving Stuffing

Woodsy, aromatic sage joins fennel seeds and poultry seasoning to mimic the flavor of sausage in this simple but rich vegetarian stuffing from Eric Kim.

Recipe: Thanksgiving Stuffing

14. Ombré Gratin

Gorgeous inside and out, this showstopping side dish from Alexa Weibel layers regular and sweet potatoes, squash and beets for their vibrant range of colors. Scrunched phyllo sheets top the whole thing, adding crunch and rustic beauty.

Recipe: Ombré Gratin

15. Stuffing With Mushroom, Leeks and Bacon

Melissa Clark lets the cook choose their fighter — white bread or cornbread — in this lush stuffing, rich with mushrooms and bacon fat. But in case you have vegetarians at the table, or just wish to cut back on the meat this holiday, it’s still full of flavor if you skip the meat.

Recipe: Stuffing With Mushrooms, Leeks and Bacon

16. Creamy Double-Garlic Mashed Potatoes

For many families, a potato dish on the Thanksgiving table is nonnegotiable. You may have a beloved recipe, but if you don’t, may we recommend this one from Alexa Weibel? Roasted garlic gives it deep flavor, while crisp garlic chips provide a little bite.

Recipe: Creamy Double-Garlic Mashed Potatoes

17. Green Beans With Ginger and Garlic

This recipe from Julia Moskin is a welcome spot of green amid the Thanksgiving starches. It comes together quickly, and its bright flavors and bold crunch are just the thing to counter all the mashed potatoes and stuffing.

Recipe: Green Beans With Ginger and Garlic

18. Cornbread

A classic cornbread is central to Thanksgiving. This one, from Yewande Komolafe, is made in a skillet and gorgeously effortless, ready to either stand on its own or be built into a cornbread dressing.

Recipe: Cornbread

19. Hot and Numbing Stir-Fried New Potatoes

Inspired by a snack that Kenji López-Alt had in Xi’an, China, this dish deserves a prominent place on your Thanksgiving table. The potatoes themselves are good. The spice blend, to which Sichuan peppercorns lend their spicy tingle, while anise and fennel add their warmth, is superb.

Recipes: Hot and Numbing Stir-Fried New Potatoes

20. Brioche Chestnut Stuffing

Say what you will. Stuffing may be the pinnacle of Thanksgiving sides, and this one from Melissa Clark uses buttery brioche and equally classic roasted chestnuts. It’s a relatively traditional pairing, and no less delicious for it.

Recipe: Brioche Chestnut Stuffing

21. Yuca con Mojo

This recipe for boiled yuca, doused in mojo, came from the journalist and cookbook author Von Diaz’s grandmother. It’s a glorious vianda, or starchy vegetable, especially popular in Puerto Rican and Cuban homes, and it’s as at home on the weeknight table as it is in the Thanksgiving spread.

Recipe: Yuca con Mojo

22. Roasted Carrots With Yaji Spice Relish

Yewande Komolafe pairs lightly sweet roasted carrots with yaji, a warming spice mix ubiquitous across West Africa. Making your own is easy (requiring just peanuts, paprika, ginger, onion and garlic powders, and salt) and smart, as it’s brilliant applied to all manner of roasted vegetables.

Recipe: Roasted Carrots With Yaji Spice Relish

23. Glazed Sweet Potatoes

This simple sweet potato recipe from Vallery Lomas has an unexpected ingredient: pineapple juice. The juice adds enough acidity to make sure the dish is just right, sweet but not too sweet.

Recipe: Glazed Sweet Potatoes

24. Cranberry-Orange Relish

There’s just one step in this Martha Rose Shulman recipe: Throw everything in a food processor and blitz. That’s it. Save the leftovers to toss into yogurt.

Recipe: Cranberry-Orange Relish

25. Roasted Brussels Sprouts With Garlic

Brussels sprouts have a bad reputation, so often because they’re boiled past recognition. When roasted, they are something else entirely, crisp on the outside, tender on the inside with just enough char. With thousands of five-star ratings, Mark Bittman’s brussels sprouts with garlic couldn’t be any better — or easier.

Recipe: Roasted Brussels Sprouts With Garlic

26. Southern Macaroni and Cheese

Passed down through her family for generations, Millie Peartree’s can’t-miss, extra-cheesy mac and cheese skips the roux and starts with a milk and egg base for extra silkiness. As one commenter put it, “You won’t find a richer, crispier, creamier, cheesier mac & cheese recipe.”

Recipe: Southern Macaroni and Cheese

27. No-Knead Dinner Rolls

No one has to know you didn’t toil over these rolls from Erin Jeanne McDowell. A long, slow rise gives them their strength and structure. Bake them in the half-hour before you’re ready to serve your meal: You’ll want to eat these warm out of the oven.

Recipe: No-Knead Dinner Rolls

28. Roasted Butternut Squash With Brown-Butter Vinaigrette

Brown butter and butternut squash are a match made in side-dish heaven, as this recipe from Ali Slagle proves. Roasted in a hot oven, the squash gets nice and crisp at the edges before being drizzled in a brown butter vinaigrette. Skip peeling the squash here, for a little bit of bite and a lot of ease.

Recipe: Roasted Butternut Squash With Brown Butter Vinaigrette

29. All-Purpose Biscuits

True to their name, these biscuits are the pinch-hitters of the carb world, ready to sop up all those juices on your Thanksgiving plate. Sam Sifton’s are baked hot — at 425 degrees — for a crisp outside and a flaky, tender middle.

Recipe: All-Purpose Biscuits

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