Healthy Christmas Side Dish Recipes

The genius hack in this recipe: topping sweet potatoes with marshmallows while they're still piping hot from the slow cooker yields a baked marshmallow topping that's typical with baked sweet potato casseroles.

Thanks to fresh green beans, an easy homemade cream sauce and crispy onion topping, this green bean casserole recipe is healthier and more delicious than traditional recipes that use canned soup, beans and onions. Plus, the slow cooker saves you time cooking at the stove. Make sure to use fresh green beans, as frozen green beans will become mushy.

This sausage and apple stuffing is extra-moist and full of classic fall flavors. Using a slow cooker makes this side dish even easier and saves on oven space.

This simple slow-cooker mashed potatoes recipe skips tedious peeling and boiling and helps save precious stovetop space by letting the slow cooker do the work. It's a great timesaving set-it-and-forget-it side dish recipe to round out any hearty meal. Buttermilk makes the mashed potatoes creamy while garlic and shallots add flavor.

These hasselback sweet potatoes are like mini marshmallow-topped sweet potato casseroles drizzled with sage-infused butter. The hasselback technique, slicing the potato but leaving it whole, makes for a tender potato with a crispy top--the best of both worlds.

Hasselback potatoes are the perfect side dish for people who love crispy potato-chip-like slices as well as the tender interior of a baked potato. Simple to prepare, these hasselback potatoes look impressive and decadent with melted Cheddar cheese and a spinkle of paprika on top.

Two kinds of cheese combine to make a creamy sauce for this easy cauliflower side dish. Roasting the cauliflower adds an extra layer of savory flavor.

Whir cauliflower into a creamy low-carb substitute for mashed potatoes. This easy recipe gets a kick of flavor from garlic-infused olive oil, making it a dairy-free (and vegan) vegetable side dish.

The lightened-up luscious sauce elevates this easy casserole recipe over standard broccoli and cheese side dishes.

Mushrooms and leeks add savory flavor to sourdough bread in this easy vegan stuffing recipe.

A rustic side dish that is equal parts earthy and sweet. These carrots are great on a salad or paired with grilled pork chops and contain 17% fewer calories and 44% less sugar than the full-sugar version.

A twist on a holiday classic. These sweet potatoes are made with Truvia® Baking Blend and contain 30% fewer calories and 60% less sugar than the full-sugar version.

This simple gluten-free cornbread recipe makes a great side dish for chili night or use it in your favorite cornbread stuffing recipe to easily make it gluten-free-friendly.

Turn a classic holiday side dish gluten-free with a healthy version of cream of mushroom soup and a homemade crispy onion topping. No one will even know it's wheat-free!

Chef Jennifer Jasinski has this healthy recipe for Brussels sprout, cauliflower and radicchio salad on the menu at her restaurant Rioja for fall and winter. The balance of roasted vegetables alongside the tang of the oranges and the chewy sweetness from the apricots is a crowd-pleaser.

The turnip often gets a bad rap as boring, common or bland, but Chef Steven Satterfield is always looking for new ways to make this underappreciated vegetable shine. In this healthy turnip recipe, they're roasted with bright-flavored orange and lemon juice and rich, nutty miso, both of which balance the earthy taste of turnips.

Dried cherries and nuts give this healthy sweet potato side dish recipe a traditional feel. The addition of some bacon for lushness and Aleppo pepper for a little bite really kicks things up.

This healthy stuffing recipe is easy to make and goes with almost anything. If you like, make it vegetarian by substituting a pound of minced shiitake mushrooms for the chorizo and using mushroom or vegetable broth instead of chicken broth.

Some cooks recommend sprinkling sugar on top of carrots to glaze them, so that it will marry with the natural juices in the carrots to create the perfect glaze. But you can't predict how much liquid will come out of a vegetable, so Chef Naomi Pomeroy developed a more controlled technique in this healthy carrot recipe to yield a deeper and richer flavor.

Chef Michael Symon loves Brussels sprouts because they can be cooked so many different ways. In this healthy recipe, the rich flavor of the walnuts, Dijon and capers is perfection with roasted meats.