Quick and easy Thanksgiving side dishes

For these and other similar Thanksgiving scenarios, there’s no need to panic. Quick and easy side dishes may be as close as your freezer or produce drawer. Turning a bag of frozen vegetables into a Thanksgiving-worthy side dish isn’t that difficult.

If there’s a bag of frozen corn handy and a few strips of bacon available, a Southern-accented side can come together in a matter of minutes. If there’s an onion or shallot handy, even better, but if not, Corn with Bacon and Honey is just as good without. The recipe calls for a sprinkling of thyme, but that’s optional, too.

Roasted carrots also look like a carefully planned side dish, belying the ease of their quick preparation time. Because the carrots mellow as they roast at high heat, even the peels are sweet, so there’s no need to spend time peeling the carrots. Just remove any hairy-looking fibers on the outside, and cut off the top.

The key to roasting carrots is to use high heat for a short time rather than a long, low-temperature bake. At high heat, the carrots get nicely browned in spots in just 20 minutes, making it the perfect last-minute side dish to fill an empty spot of the table.

If a search of the produce drawer doesn’t turn up a bag of carrots, baby carrots can be used, though they won’t caramelize as well since they cook through much faster. Full-size carrots should be cut in fairly large pieces, because they will shrink during cooking, and the larger pieces will look better.

When the freezer and produce drawer don’t yield any ingredients, there is still time to grab a few things at the store. Almost all groceries are open on Thanksgiving morning, closing around noon to give their employees the opportunity to observe the day, but recognizing that many cooks will need to make a last-minute run for something. If a store run is necessary, putting together a simple cranberry sauce will make the shopping trip worthwhile.

Making a cranberry sauce is as simple as mixing a bag of fresh cranberries with some sugar and fruit. Some purists prefer just the cranberries and sugar, cooked with a splash of water, but adding an orange or grapefruit adds a brighter note to the tartness of the cranberries.

Any leftover cranberry sauce also makes the classic last-minute appetizer: a block of cream cheese covered in cranberry sauce is one of the easiest, yet most welcome, ways to avoid showing up empty-handed.