Home › The Produce Moms® Blog › Holiday › Thanksgiving › Not Your Average Thanksgiving Sweet Potato Side Dish Recipes {Indy Style}

Not Your Average Thanksgiving Sweet Potato Side Dish Recipes {Indy Style}

By Lori Taylor

Nov 08, 2018, Updated May 27, 2021

Save to Favorites

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure policy.

Refined and creative sweet potato side dishes to try this holiday season.

Today on Indy Style, we shared some of our favorite sweet potato side dish recipes perfect for Thanksgiving dinner. Warning: These are not your grandma’s sweet potato side dishes!  There’s nothing wrong with a traditional sweet potato casserole, marshmallows and all, but sweet potatoes have the potential to be so much more!

Smoked Sweet Potatoes

The base for many of today’s recipes is smoked sweet potatoes. If you have a home smoker and plan to smoke your Thanksgiving turkey this year, make a little space in it (you won’t need much) for sweet potatoes. It will add an unexpected yet welcomed new flavor to your Thanksgiving meal.

If you do not own a smoker, roast or grill your sweet potatoes instead. While you won’t obtain a smoked flavor, roasting and grilling will still bring out the sweet potatoes natural sugars. Grilled sweet potatoes have a charred flavor that can’t be beat.

Intimidated by cutting a sweet potato? Watch the Indy Style segment to see how easy it can be!

Ingredients

• Sweet Potatoes
• Smoke rub

Directions

1. 1. Cut sweet potatoes in planks, rounds, or dice depending on the recipe (see video for instructions).
   2. Smoke sweet potatoes for about 2 hours in your smoker. Note: diced sweet potatoes can be smoked in a cast iron skillet.
   3. If you do not have access to a smoker, roast sweet potatoes in the oven on a baking sheet coated in olive oil. Season with salt and pepper.

Roasted Sweet Potato Salad

This sweet potato side dish sings with color! It’s so vibrant and delish, it just might steal the spotlight away from the turkey.

Ingredients

• Smoked Sweet Potatoes Cubes
• 4 tbsp Olive Oil
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 1/2 tsp Pepper
• 2 tbsp Lemon Juice
• 2 tbsp Honey
• 2 tbsp Dijon Mustard
• 1 Bell Pepper, chopped
• Cherry Tomato, halved
• 1 cup Fresh Yellow Corn
• 3 Green Onions, sliced
• 15 oz Black Beans, drained and rinsed
• Cilantro or Flat-Leaf Parsley

Directions

1. 1. In a large bowl, add sweet potato cubes, 2 tbsp olive oil, salt, pepper, and toss.
   2. Coat a baking sheet with olive oil and bake sweet potato cubes in the oven at 400 degrees for 30 minutes.
   3. In another bowl, combine lemon juice, 2 tbsp olive oil, honey, dijon mustard. Whisk together to combine. Then add a pinch of salt and pepper and whisk.
   4. Add black beans, green onions, corn, cherry tomatoes, and bell pepper to lemon juice mixture and toss. Add the sweet potatoes and toss again.
   5. Garnish with cilantro or parsley.

Sweet Potato Noodles Caprese Salad

Caprese Salad is a summertime favorite. By adding spiralized sweet potatoes, you can take this recipe from summer to fall.

Ingredients

• 2 Packages of Sweet Potato Noodles (or make your own using a spiralizer)
• 5 cloves Garlic (minced)
• Olive Oil
• Cherry Tomatoes
• Cubed Fresh Mozzarella
• Green Onions, sliced

Directions

1. In a large skillet, heat olive oil and minced garlic. Add sweet potato noodles.
2. Add cherry tomatoes and fresh mozzarella and cook until tomatoes soften and some have begun to blister.
3. Plate and garnish with green onions.

Sweet Potato Pie Bites

These sweet potato bites taste just like mini sweet potato pies, sans the crust. Serve them as a dessert or a sweet appetizer. Your dinner guests who are limiting their dessert-intake this year will appreciate the bite-sized portions.

Ingredients

• Smoked or Oven-Roasted Sweet Potato Rounds
• 8 oz Cream Cheese, room temperature
• 1/2 cup Brown Sugar
• 2 tsp Cinnamon
• 3 Tbsp Half and Half
• Candied Pecans

Directions

1. Mix together cream cheese, brown sugar, cinnamon, and half and half. Add to piping bag.
2. Pipe cream cheese mixture onto sweet potato rounds and then top with candied pecans.

*Recipe adapted from The Nutritionist Reviews

Fresh-Ingredient Green Bean Casserole

Put down those cans of green beans and cream of mushroom soup! It’s not needed here. Once you try fresh-ingredient green bean casserole, you won’t know why you ever went with the canned stuff. We like making this recipe with sweet potatoes, but you could certainly make it with fresh mushrooms instead.

Ingredients

• Butter
• Half and Half
• 2 Shallots, sliced into half moons
• Smoked Sweet Potatoes (or fresh mushrooms)
• Green Beans

Directions

1. 1. In a cast iron skillet, add butter, half and half, and shallots. Cook over medium-low heat for about 20 minutes, until shallots are translucent. Add smoked sweet potatoes.
   2. While sauce is simmering, trim green beans and blanch.
   3. Add sauce over green beans. Bake in the oven until green beans are tender.

When shopping for your sweet potatoes this holiday season, choose Wada Farms sweet potatoes. They have been growing potatoes since 1943 so it’s safe to say they know what they’re doing! Wada Farms recently announced a partnership with Genesis Organics to provide year-round availability of organic potatoes. We are proud to have Wada Farms in our Family of Partners.

How will you be serving sweet potatoes at your dinners this holiday season? If you make one of these recipes, take a photo and tag us on Instagram @TheProduceMoms.