Create Amazing Side Dishes With Little Effort
Side dishes add a little something extra to any meal you’re making. They can be great for helping a meal to stretch further, meaning you don’t need to cook as much for your main dish or you can have plenty of leftovers. You might think that making extra side dishes takes a lot of time or effort, or could be hard to juggle with making your main dish at the same time. However, it really doesn’t have to be difficult, and you can easily throw together some amazing side dishes. Whether you want to make just one side dish or have a few options, here are some ways to do it without much effort. And apart from great cook results, you can also focus on health benefits of creativity.
Throw a Salad Together
Salads can be all kinds of ingredients mixed together. They don’t just have to be lettuce or everyday vegetables if that’s not what you’re looking for. You can mix all kinds of ingredients, including salad leaves, vegetables, and even fruit. Grains are also great for including in salads, and you could make a pasta, rice, or noodle salad too. Most salads don’t require a huge amount of preparation. If everything is raw, all you need to do is chop up your ingredients and throw them together. Then you can add a dressing or sauce if you want.
Roast Up a Side Dish
Roasting a side dish is often a super easy way to cook something to go with your meal. When you roast something, you can usually just toss it on a tray and put it in the oven for the required cooking time. You can roast all kinds of great side dishes too, from potatoes and parsnips to cauliflower and broccoli. There are lots of ways to add extra flavor, including using oil (which also helps with cooking and prevents sticking), herbs and spices, garlic, or anything else you feel like including.
Use a Pressure Cooker or Slow Cooker
If you’d like to get your side dish cooking and then forget about it until it’s ready, a pressure cooker or slow cooker is ideal. You can just throw your ingredients in, program it, and then come back when it’s done. In addition, you can make some amazing side dishes this way, like Instant Pot refried beans. You might need to prepare some of your ingredients before putting them in the pot, but there are often ways around this if you just want to throw everything in without any preparation. If you time everything correctly, your side dish will be ready at just the right time.
Highlight One Ingredient
To make a simple side dish, pick just one ingredient to highlight. This is easy to do with things like corn, which is fantastic on its own with whatever flavors you want to add to it. Cauliflower is another ingredient that will absorb just about any flavor you want to throw at it, or broccoli can make a nice sauteed or roasted side dish too. Of course, there are so many things you can do with potatoes as well.
It doesn’t have to take long to whip up a delicious side dish. You can quickly put something together to go with any main dish.
