What a year this has been! We don’t know about you, but we are ready for the holidays!
All this time spent home social distancing and the oppressive summer heat we’ve gotten so far is making us already looking forward to getting to the holidays when it’ll cool off and we can get back together with our families.
We have heard and seen plenty of similar sentiments from our friends and followers, so we thought why not take a little mental vacation from the summer heat and start thinking about the fall and winter holidays?
Even though we are still a little ways away, now is the perfect time to start planning your holiday meals! You’ll want these dishes to impress, so take advantage of some extra time you have at home to start planning your recipes and maybe getting a little bit of practice in now so that when the holidays roll in, you’ll be ready to bring a dish to the table that will WOW your entire family.
Pot Roast with White Beans
Pot roasts are the perfect holiday recipe because they are hearty enough to fill up the stomachs of the whole family, it makes great leftovers, and it is always far more impressive when it gets brought to the table than the time you actually have to put into it. Who doesn’t like to impress at a big family meal, after all? This traditional pot roast recipe does things a little differently by adding Randall Great Northern Beans to the pot. The creamy texture of the beans is perfect alongside the salty and savory chuck roast.
Italian-Style Ham and Beans
October through February is bean soup season! While there are oh-so-many recipes for bean soup out there, our favorite to make for our family around the holidays is ham and beans, hands down. It is just the perfect soup choice considering how much leftover ham usually ends up being left after Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. With all that leftover ham, chopping it up and tossing it in a pot with some Randall Great Northern Beans make too much sense. This is one of our favorite recipes for the holidays because it uses fresh Italian herbs and spices to elevate these ham and beans to another level.
Rustic White Bean and Autumn Vegetable Cassoulet
A cassoulet is somewhere between a stew and a casserole, and it is the perfect kind of recipe to serve during the late fall and winter seasons. This recipe uses amazing seasonal ingredients to give the concoction a savory, full-bodied flavor fall flavors that are perfect for your Thanksgiving spread. Try serving it with some beautifully roasted chicken or double-down on the veggies to make it a little bit healthier of a side dish.
Swiss Chard, Fennel, and White Bean Gratin Recipe
This recipe from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt and Serious Eats is a holiday time recipe unlike any other. The best way we can think to describe it: it is like a green bean casserole without the green beans! Instead, it uses hearty great northern beans, fennel, and swiss chard to give it those big Thanksgiving flavors you come to love from a green bean casserole during the holidays. Give this one a try this holiday season if you want to try bringing something delicious, unique, and impressive to the table.
The holidays will be here soon enough. But until then, stay safe and stay cool!
