Vegetable Side Dishes for Your Thanksgiving Meal
Your turkey has been purchased and is cooking in the oven until it is tender and moist but you have a refrigerator full of vegetables but you haven’t any ideas how to use them as a garnish for the turkey. Traditional vegetables such as squash, string beans, and zucchini are mentioned below, but so are a few non-traditional vegetables that also share the colors of the seasons. Below are seven suggestions for vegetable garnishes for your Thanksgiving Day meal:
1. Corn on the cob can be split up in half and cooked in a big soup pot with a pat of butter and some salt. Remove the husks, silk threads, use a big knife to cut down the center. Figure on one cob per person at your meal. Or, you can grill the corn on the cob in your oven, leaving part of the husk on, then add a seasoning such as Italian salad dressing, allowing it to cook until ready for serving.
2. Zucchini, tomatoes and yellow squash cut in slices and cooked in olive oil in a frying pan are another great garnish idea. Add an herb like rosemary or basil to add flavor to this attractive trio as a holiday vegetable dish.
3. Eggplant cooked with mushrooms is delicious and as with the garnish idea above, bears the colors of the season. The first link in sources gives a great recipe idea for this combination of vegetables.
4. Bell peppers in all of their different colors can be combined together in a side dish. Use green, yellow, orange, and red bell peppers, remove the top core, then cutting into squares and frying them in a little bit of olive oil with some pepper makes a nice color contrast next to that turkey on the plate.
5. Sliced carrots combined with cauliflower, cooked in boiling water in a pot with a dash of blended herbs and pat of butter is another great side dish for Thanksgiving. I don’t know what it is about cauliflower on the Thanksgiving table, but the white vegetable reminds me of the upcoming winter season. At any rate, cauliflower has always been a favorite vegetable of mine, especially when mixed with carrots.
6. Instead of plain old Russet or Idaho baking potatoes, try something different, like red potatoes. Red potatoes match the color of the season, and while they are smaller than baking potatoes, can be cooked in a number of ways, but I recommend washing the skins really well before cooking them, so that the skin can be eaten as well.
7. String beans and sliced yellow squash cooked together can also be a delightful vegetable garnish for your Thanksgiving meal. You can cook both together in a frying pan with some pepper and sage to add flavor to your dish. String beans are common in many fall recipes, and their color complements the yellow squash perfectly for a fall holiday meal.
Image Credit: Jebulon, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
