Green Bean Casserole
Fresh green beans blanched bright, folded into a mushroom cream sauce built in one skillet, and baked under a thick crown of crispy fried onions.
- Total time
- 1 hr 10 min
- Yield
- Serves 8
Side Dishes
The supporting cast, treated properly.
The supporting cast, treated properly. Mostly potato side dishes and vegetable side dishes, and mostly things that can share an oven with whatever else is in it.
Browning is the theme. Most of these are about getting colour on a vegetable, which usually means a hotter oven and more space on the tray than feels necessary.
Scalloped Potatoes
Thin Yukon Gold slices simmered in garlic cream before they go in the dish, so they bake tender all the way through under a browned Gruyère and cheddar top.
- Total time
- 1 hr 50 min
- Yield
- Serves 8
Mexican Rice
Restaurant-style Mexican rice with separate, fluffy grains: long-grain rice rinsed, toasted golden in oil, then simmered in a blended tomato, onion and garlic broth and left covered to steam.
- Total time
- 45 min
- Yield
- Serves 6
Homemade Tater Tots
Crisp, fluffy homemade tater tots: russets parboiled whole, grated, squeezed dry and seasoned, shaped into small logs, chilled, then fried golden. They freeze well for later.
- Total time
- 2 hr
- Yield
- About 50 tots, serves 6
Slow Cooker Baby Potatoes with Garlic and Herbs
Four hours unattended, then five minutes under the broiler for the crust a slow cooker cannot give you.
- Total time
- 4 hr 15 min
- Yield
- Serves 8
Roasted Cabbage Steaks with Yogurt Sauce
Thick wedges roasted until the edges char and the core turns sweet, under a cold garlic yogurt.
- Total time
- 45 min
- Yield
- Serves 4
Grilled Potatoes with Garlic and Herbs
Parboiled first so the grill only has to char them. Twelve minutes over the coals, not forty.
- Total time
- 40 min
- Yield
- Serves 6
Roasted Sweet Potato Bites
Caramelized at the edges, soft inside. High heat, a hot tray, and enough space between the cubes.
- Total time
- 40 min
- Yield
- Serves 6
German Potato Pancakes
Kartoffelpuffer: lacy, deep-golden, crisp to the edge. The trick is wringing the potatoes dry and reclaiming the starch.
- Total time
- 45 min
- Yield
- Makes 12 pancakes
Cornmeal Onion Patties
A thick buttermilk cornmeal batter packed with finely chopped onion, shallow-fried crisp at the edges and tender through the middle.
- Total time
- 27 min
- Yield
- Makes 8 patties
Cranberry Pecan Slaw
Salted, squeezed cabbage in a tangy maple dressing with dried cranberries and toasted pecans — crisp the next day, not soupy.
- Total time
- 50 min
- Yield
- Serves 6