Today we’re going to be talking about some of my favorite side dishes to cook with a meal. We’ll look at some examples of side dishes, mainly from a few English countries, and maybe a couple of others. Generally they’ll be ones that are familiar, and you just need to be reminded of.
My favorite kind of side dish is steamed vegetables. These are very simple to make. There are green beans, chopped butternut squash or sweet potato, long stem broccoli, and Brussels sprouts. All of those work so well simply being steamed. The cheapest way to do this is to use a steamer tray that’s like an insert. It’s made from stainless steel, and it has holes in it.
Put it into a pot of boiling water – you need to have boiling water up to the base of the steamer tray, probably between a quarter and a third of the pot. Then you can turn it on, put the vegetables on top of the steamer tray, put the lid on, and it will steam.
The only difficult thing with this is that it can burn if it runs out of water, so you have to watch it carefully after about 10 or 15 minutes. Check if the vegetables are done, and add more water if you need to. I like to keep a kettle of boiled water nearby to add if necessary. Also, the steam can be very hot, so be very careful when you’re opening it. I use oven gloves to protect my wrists where the steam might touch me.
Steaming vegetables is one of the healthiest ways to eat them. That way, they retain the most nutrients, and they retain the most flavor because it’s not boiled away. Steam them until they’re however you like them. When you steam broccoli, it turns bright green when it’s ready.
Brussels sprouts are so much nicer steamed than roasted in the oven. I find them hard and strange when they’re roasted, but steamed vegetables are always tender and flavorful. You can always add a little butter and salt when you take them out of the steamer. I usually steam them for fifteen to twenty minutes, and then turn the stove off and leave them for a little longer. Then when I open the pot, they’re pretty much soft.
I also like to do fresh artichokes like this. Those are a fabulous side dish. You just have to cut off a bit of the stem, and cut off the tips of the leaves. Steam them with the stem side down so that they get lovely and soft. Then you can eat your artichokes one leaf at a time, and they taste fabulous.
Some vegetables take longer than others. Corn on the cob is another great item to steam. You can steam however many fit in the pot at a time. Steaming is very simple – you just need a pot, a little bit of water, and a steamer tray. Let your vegetables steam for fifteen to twenty minutes, and then add salt and butter to them. This is the cooking method that we use most often. It’s really so delicious, and so easy.
You also get electric steamers that you can leave and not have to worry about the water running out because they’ll shut off automatically before that happens. The problem with most of these is that the steamer trays are made of plastic, and it’s not great for food to be cooked in plastic. We had an electronic steamer that was made of stainless steel and it was fabulous. It lasted about ten years, but then it died, and I can’t find another one, but using the pot works well.
There are also bamboo steamers, like the ones the Chinese use. You place them on top of your boiling water, and again, put a lid on the pot. They work very similar to steamer trays. So, steaming side dishes is great.
You can also use a lot of these side dishes as an appetizer if you’re going to have courses in your meal. We sometimes like to do this for a celebration meal, or just to make it a little fancier. We’ll start with a dinner dish on the table, and put a side dish on top of that with an elegant table setting. Then you have the side as your appetizer on the smaller plate. Try some steamed broccoli with butter and salt, some corn on the carb, et cetera.
When you have that first, there’s less chance that it’s going to be ignored by children. When they’re hungry, they’ll eat their vegetables, and then you can do the main course on the next plate. That’ll probably be the meat part – the meat and potatoes, or whatever part of your meal. You can eat that after the vegetables, but perhaps you prefer to have them as a side dish.
Sometimes you can choose one or two sides. When I was growing up, we always had meat, potatoes, and two vegetables; maybe cauliflower with cheese sauce and peas, or spinach and mushrooms.
So, let’s talk about some other side dishes. Here are some that are from Britain. We get to be inspired by different cultures and what they do as side dishes. Bubble and squeak is a good British side dish. It’s made of leftover cabbage, Brussels sprouts, or other vegetables, and mashed potato. Basically, you add the seasoning and the vegetables to the mashed potato, you put it in a pan, and you brown and crisp it. Then turn it over and crisp it on the other side. It makes an amazing side dish of mashed potato and vegetables.
Then there’s cauliflower with cheese sauce. This is a British specialty, and it goes well with a Sunday roast beef. You need cauliflower, either steamed or baked. Either you can pour the cheese sauce on afterwards, just before you eat it, or you can put it on before and bake it like that. Cheddary, mustardy cheese sauce is great for this.
You can do roasted root vegetables. This can have carrots, parsnips, turnips, beetroot, and even butternut – any vegetables that are hard and that work well together. They should take about the same amount of time to cook. You could also use something like zucchini and red peppers – both of those take a shorter time to cook. Add some salt and oil and roast it in the oven. You can put a bit of a few onion slices on top with the salt and oil. The caramelized onion flavour is very nice on top.
Now let’s look at a couple of Canadian sides. There’s maple roasted root vegetables. These are carrots or parsnips roasted with butter and maple syrup. Maple syrup is the iconic Canadian ingredient. Roasting your root vegetables makes them sweet and caramelized, and that maple syrup flavor is delicious. This goes well with roast meats or baked salmon.
There’s also Caesar salad. This is popular in the United States as well. It’s made up of lettuce with a creamy Caesar dressing, which is a little garlicky, as well as bacon, and bits of croutons. It makes an amazing salad.
I mentioned steamed corn on the cob, buttered corn on the cob is amazing. Whether you steam it, boil it, or grill it, it’s lovely to brush with butter and salt afterwards when you’re eating it. It works great with barbecues and things like cottage pie and shepherd’s pie. It’s a great side dish.
There’s coleslaw, of course – cabbage and carrot salad, grated or shredded, with a creamy dressing, a vinegar based dressing, or simply just mayonnaise on it. It works great with shredded meat in a pita bread, or just as a side with any meat, like sliced roast beef.
Roasted Brussels sprouts with bacon is also a Canadian favorite. You would add oil and salt to the Brussels sprouts, perhaps cut them in half so that they cook faster, then sprinkle them with bacon, and roast that on a tray.
Let’s talk about some well-loved South African sides. There’s butternut squash or even pumpkin with cinnamon and honey. Toss it in the cinnamon and honey, put on a bit of butter, and then roast it in the oven, perhaps in a glass dish. It’s caramelized, sweet, and soft. That goes great with many meals; almost any main.
You could do a beetroot salad. Take sliced or grated beetroot, cook or steam it, and dress it with a sweet and sour vinaigrette. That can go well with a barbecue or braai, or with a Sunday lunch of roast chicken.
Then there’s mieliepap, which is ground maize. It’s similar to polenta, but not as fine. It’s cooked into a porridge – almost the consistency of mashed potato, but thicker. It can be soft or crumbly. It’s often served with a tomato and onion sauce on top; cooked down tomato and onion, poured over the mieliepap. Maybe it’ll be served with some sausage.
Chakalaka is a spicy relish that’s made with onions, tomatoes, carrots, red peppers, and sometimes beans. It came from the mining camps where the workers mixed whatever vegetables and spices they had to make something flavorful. Then they’d eat it with pap or with bread, or even with barbecued meat.
Another great British side, which is quite unusual, is Yorkshire puddings. They go great with roast beef and gravy. They’re not actually a dessert – they’re made from flour, milk, and eggs. Then they’re baked at a very hot temperature in muffin trays. The dough puffs up, and you can eat them with the gravy and meat. They’re really delicious and unusual, so look up a recipe for those if you’d like to.
I’m going to talk more about ideas for sides in a future episode, so I don’t want to put too much in this one. I’ll leave it there for today. I hope you’ve got a few ideas of new sides you can try.
