Home Recipes Cooking Style Quick
Alyssa AsaroUpdated: Feb. 01, 2024
With a little multitasking (and some help in the kitchen), you can create a quick holiday dinner. These easy Thanksgiving recipes—apps, sides and desserts—can each be made in 30 minutes or less!
With the Thanksgiving turkey taking hours to prepare and other dishes to juggle, you might be in the market for some quick and easy fixings that can be on the table in under an hour. But just because a dish doesn’t take hours to make doesn’t mean it’s any less flavorful or festive. You can take a different route and make some uniqueno-bake Thanksgiving dessertsthis year!
The sweet and spiced flavors of pumpkin and cranberry can be found in an assortment of ready-to-make cookies, muffins and spreads. Make elevated mashed potatoes in no time, as well as other Thanksgiving veggie sides. Who knows? You might be able to plan your whole holiday around these 30-minute dishes.
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Quick Green Beans with Bacon
These green beans make for such an easy side dish. They’re light and smoky, which sets you up perfectly for the main event. Fresh beans lend a crisp, bright flavor to your Thanksgiving meal.
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Chive Smashed Potatoes
No need to peel the potatoes in these chunky mashed potatoes. Chive and onion cream cheese is an easy way to get in more of that rich flavor.
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Sweet Potato Biscuits with Honey Butter
Served with cinnamon-honey butter, these sweet biscuits can fit into any part of your day. Looking for a light breakfast? How about a sweet treat after dinner? These airy and fluffy biscuits will warm your heart.
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Special Creamed Corn
This special creamed corn is just that. It’s rich, dense and creamy, making it the perfect accompaniment to any meat you might have on the table.
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Sweet ‘n’ Tangy Carrots
Sweet potatoes usually steal the show for their savory but dessert-like role. But with an irresistible brown sugar-mustard sauce, these simple carrots will grab people’s attention.
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Moist Pumpkin Scones
For a nice breakfast, dessert or even a sweet appetizer, these cozy pumpkin scones go great with your coffee. They taste like fall with a delectable sugar glaze on top.
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Maple-Glazed Green Beans
This savory side dish is packed with fall flavors. With dried cranberries, bacon and a bourbon-maple glaze, these green beans are sweet, tangy and savory.
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Pumpkin Cheese Ball
Even though it looks like a pumpkin, you might not be able to tell that the secret ingredient actually is pumpkin! This lends a sweet flavor to the cream cheese and cheddar mixture, while also giving it a nice harvest color.
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Garlic-Ginger Turkey Tenderloins
If you’re in the market for a quickly thrown together entree that is still just as moist as a whole baked turkey, boy do I have the dinner for you. Ginger and brown sugar flavor the sauce that spices up the turkey as it bakes.
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Cranberry Fluff
This fluffy fruit salad gets its sweet-tart flavor from cranberries and whipped cream. It’s not as sweet as other fluffs, which makes it a lighter side dish option.
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Hurry-Up Biscuits
The name doesn’t lie, these hurry-up biscuits are done is just half and hour. They are soft, are quick to prep and only have five ingredients.
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Apple Maple Pecan Salad
A well-made salad has a good taste and a pleasing crunch. This one with cabbage, apples and pecans gets high marks in both, with extra points for color contrast.
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Skillet Sausage Stuffing
To make this quick and moist stuffing, dress up a package of stuffing mix with pork sausage, mushrooms, celery and onion. You can even use breakfast sausage!
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German-Style Cabbage and Beans
This pretty cabbage dish is prefect for a potluck. Just double the recipe and everyone will fawn over the savory and smoky side dish.
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Did you know you could make mashed potatoes out of pumpkin and cauliflower? It’s still just as creamy as traditional mashed potatoes, but with a bit of sweetness from the pumpkin that makes it memorable.
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When you don’t have your usual salad fixings on hand, give this light and tangy salad a try. With cranberries and bacon, it has the smoky sweetness of a Thanksgiving dinner without any of the heaviness, making it a great starter dish.
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Triple Mash with Horseradish Bread Crumbs
These triple mashed potatoes have rutabaga and parsnips, along with the zip of horseradish. Topped with breadcrumbs, they go great with any meat.
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These buttery, savory biscuits go with just about anything. They resemble Red Lobster’s Cheddar Bay Biscuits but are made at home instead of at the restaurant.
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Festive Cranberry Fruit Salad
A fruit salad is a nice light option to offer guests. It comes together quickly, so whip it up in the morning and store in the fridge until dinner.
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The walnuts in this dish make them more fall-centric than your usual roasted green beans. With a hint of lemon zest, they’re bright with a delightful crunch.
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Merry Berry Salad
Dried cranberries, crunchy apple chunks and toasted almonds dress up this crisp green salad. It’s drizzled with a sweet-tart dressing that’s a snap to blend.
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Simple Lemon Parsley Potatoes
Thanksgiving dinner usually includes mashed potatoes, but why not give these chopped and roasted potatoes a try? With only four ingredients, they take to any other flavors on the table.
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Taste-of-Fall Salad
This sweet and savory salad has pears, pecans and cinnamon to really capture the feeling of fall. With a mustard and cheese dressing, the flavors meld in an artful way.
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Dill, chives and lemon-pepper seasoning make these peas pop. This combination of seasonings gives a nice tanginess that you don’t normally find with peas.
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Garlic-Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Mustard Sauce
This creamy mustard sauce really makes these Brussels sprouts stand apart from the rest. Did you know that Brussels sprouts are part of the mustard family? So it only makes sense that this combination works so well!
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Creamy Cranberry Salad
You can’t go wrong with a cranberry salad on Thanksgiving. This one has a fun assortment of fruits like pineapple and apple. With a creamy marshmallow coating and some crunchy almonds, it’s the perfect sweet side.
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Bacon-Stuffed Mushrooms
These bubbly treats use only five ingredients. The tender mushroom caps have a smooth cream cheese filling that’s offset by some smoky bacon and green onion.
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Triple Cranberry Sauce
Orange juice, marmalade and zest make this cranberry sauce a triple threat. Allspice adds just the right amount of spice to this sweet and tart dish.
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Delicious Apple Salad
A little bit sweet, a little bit savory, this apple fluff salad is a fun side for your Thanksgiving menu. Toss everything together and refrigerate until ready to serve.
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Green Beans Amandine
Crunchy almonds, butter and lemon juice really work together to bring out the natural earthiness of green beans. It’s an easy recipe to throw together.
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Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies
Dotted with cranberries, orange zest and vanilla chips, these cookies are colorful and tasty. You can use flavored cranberries if you’re looking to give them an extra boost.
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Green Bean Bundles
These aesthetically-pleasing bean bundles are a sight to behold. Who could resist one of these elegant packages?
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Perfect Winter Salad
This salad is colorful and textured with a nice creamy dressing to tie it all together. Dried cherries give it a nice pop of winter.
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Grandma’s Cranberry Stuff
With oranges and walnuts, this cranberry stuff is sweet and crunchy. This simple recipe is a great complement to any roast pork, ham, turkey or chicken.
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Mushroom and Spinach Saute
Mushrooms and spinach come together for a super fast side. Double or triple this recipe if you’re serving a crowd for Thanksgiving.
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Gruyere Mashed Potatoes
Gruyere cheese and chives take mashed potatoes to a new level. They’re rich and cheesy but not too heavy.
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No-Fuss Rolls
With only four ingredients, these rolls are ready in no time. They’re great with herb butter or jam.
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Chive Buttered Carrots
This reliable side dish pairs well with any entree, especially turkey. With just five ingredients, the chive butter really complements the carrots’ natural sweetness.
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Marinated Olives
For a simple Thanksgiving appetizer you can make in advance, it doesn’t get any easier than these marinated olives. Whip ’em up in five minutes and store in the fridge for up to two weeks.
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Hot Spinach Apple Salad
With a light sweet-tangy dressing, the spinach doesn’t wilt and the apples retain their crunch. This balanced salad is served hot.
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Caramel Pumpkin Dip
Need a sweet snack for guests to nibble on as they wait for the turkey to finish cooking? This easy pumpkin dip will certainly do. Serve with vanilla wafers, graham crackers or apple slices.
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Easy Onion Crescent Rolls
Here’s an easy way to dress up a tube of crescent roll dough. These golden bites are topped with french fried onions for some crunch and flavor.
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Sausage-Stuffed Acorn Squash
Acorn squash gets the sweet and savory treatment when stuffed with sausage, onion, spinach and cranberries to make this cozy side dish fit for a Thanksgiving feast. Cooking the squash in the microwave is an easy solution to speed up the process.
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Best Curried Pumpkin Soup
A quick pumpkin soup will be a welcome addition to your Thanksgiving table. Serve it before or with the main course.
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Harvard Beets
Add a pop of color to your Thanksgiving meal with these pretty beets. They come together in just 15 minutes.
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Mashed Cauliflower
If you’re looking for a break from your usual mashed potatoes, this mashed cauliflower is just as flavorful and satisfying. It’s a great way to incorporate veggies for kids and adults.
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Originally Published: November 21, 2022
Alyssa Asaro
Alyssa has been with Taste of Home for just over a year, but has been in food and lifestyle publishing since 2018. As an associate editor, she writes and edits recipe collections and runs several newsletters, including Top 10, Slow Cooker & Casseroles, Quick Dinners and Balanced Plate.When she's not planning her next trip overseas, you can find Alyssa trying out new Chicago restaurants or watching a movie.
