A festive dinner devoted to the Thanksgiving Day is something very special and expected. The dinner usually consists of a number of traditional dishes that may be found on the table of almost every family. But there are so many non-traditional and incredibly delicious side dishes, which are either a variety of the traditional ones or completely new and unknown ones.
Take a look at these seven non-traditional Thanksgiving side dishes you should definitely try. I hope these recipes will help you prepare an unforgettable Thanksgiving dinner.
1. Stuffed squash
My family loves stuffed bell peppers so when I found this recipe of stuffed squash, I thought it looked tasty! It’s stuffed with rice, spinach, pine nuts, and ground pork. The meat, veggie and nuts combo make it a wonderful side dish that delicious and healthy.
- Cuisine: Ottoman;
- Category: Side dish;
- Serves: 4;
- Prep Time:25 min;
- Cook time:1 hr 15 min;
- Nutrition Per Serving: 315;
Ingredients:
- 4 small acorn squashes, about 1 pound each
- ½ pound of ground pork
- ¼ cup of chopped onion
- 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter
- 1 tablespoon of olive oil
- ½ cup of chopped celery
- ½ cup of white wine
- 1 ½ cups of cooked rice
- ¼ cup of chopped carrot
- 10 ounce of frozen spinach, drained, chopped
- 1 ½ teaspoons of dried oregano
- ½ cup of toasted pine nuts
- ground black pepper
- salt
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Take the squashes and cut their tops, about 1 inch, and scrape the seeds out. If a squash won`t stand upright cut the bottom a little bit also. Put one piece of butter into each squash and place them all on the sheet covered with parchment paper. Now let’s get down to the stuffing. Brown the pork over a medium heat then remove.
Fry the carrot, celery and onion in olive oil until soft for about 7 minutes and then sprinkle it with the white wine. Return the pork to the pan and add the spinach, cooked rice, salt, pepper, oregano, pine nuts. Put the pan with it onto the medium heat and heat stirring continuously for 2 minutes. After that stuff the squashes with equal amount of the mixture and cover each with its lid. Bake for an hour until the squash gets soft. The dish is ready to serve.
