Side dishes of the world
What comes alongside the main dish, and without which it is not properly served at home.
A side dish in a national cuisine is rarely neutral. It either tempers heat, or adds acidity, or gathers the sauce — and swapping it for mashed potato takes apart the balance the meal is built on.
Many of these turn easily into a meal on their own: the yields assume they accompany meat, but the serving count can be recalculated on the recipe page itself.
13 dishes
- ChakalakaSouth Africa
A spicy vegetable relish of carrot, pepper and beans with curry. For a braai, for pap, or on its own.
40 min · Easy
- Coconut ricePanama
Rice cooked in coconut milk with caramelised coconut solids, dark and faintly sweet.
60 min · Medium
- ColcannonIreland
Mashed potato with cabbage and spring onion, a lake of melted butter in the centre.
55 min · Easy
- LlapingachosEcuador
Potato cakes with cheese inside, fried in achiote oil and served with a peanut sauce.
60 min · Easy
- MămăligăRomania
A firm cornmeal porridge, cut with a thread rather than a knife.
45 min · Easy
- MatokeUganda
Green bananas steamed in banana leaves and mashed to a purée. The staple of the Buganda table.
110 min · Medium
- Moros y cristianosCuba
Rice cooked in the liquid from black beans, which darkens it and gives it all their flavour.
110 min · Easy
- Muriwo unedoviZimbabwe
Collard greens stewed in peanut butter with tomato. The side to sadza in every household.
40 min · Easy
- Rice and peasJamaica
Rice cooked with red beans in coconut milk, with thyme and a whole scotch bonnet.
110 min · Easy
- RöstiSwitzerland
A potato cake of coarsely grated potato fried crisp on both sides. The potatoes are boiled the day before.
45 min · Easy
- Sopa paraguayaParaguay
A dense corn and cheese bake with onion which, despite its name, is eaten with a fork.
80 min · Easy
- Sukuma wikiKenya
Collard greens stewed with onion and tomato. The everyday accompaniment to ugali across East Africa.
35 min · Easy
- TahdigIran
Rice with a golden crust on the bottom of the pot, made from rice, potato or flatbread.
150 min · Medium