Succotash is a highly underrated side dish. It’s delicious, flavorful, and easy to make. So I’m not sure why more people don’t take advantage of it. If you are not familiar with succotash, it’s a southern inspired dish consisting of sweet corn and lima beans with a tomato base. In fact, some people add potatoes or pork, even okra makes a regular appearance in recipes. I was introduced to succotash when visiting Charleston, SC several years ago. I grew up in a small southern town and somehow never managed to enjoy this dish until my late 20s. In addition, it was never made in my family. See, underrated. But it’s so different from most southern side dishes and pairs well with any protein so I just had to recreate my own version.

The Easiest Succotash Recipe

What is succotash?

Some succotash contains fresh tomatoes but the kind I enjoyed in Charleston had a canned tomato base and I actually think it’s better this way. It brings more flavor to the dish and it’s also easier to make. Some recipes also call for onion and multiple kinds of fresh herbs but since I have created this recipe to be more of a winter recipe, I did not include fresh herbs. Since the tomato base I use already consists of onion and herbs, I don’t add those separately.

My version is a vegetarian option. With winter fast approaching, I wanted to create a dish that can be made easily, doesn’t take a lot of time, and also doesn’t require many fresh vegetables. Let’s face it, frozen and canned vegetables are more utilized in the winter time. So this succotash recipe only includes one fresh vegetable. The rest are canned or frozen. In fact, this is something you can easily throw together on a busy weeknight. It’s effortless even though it looks super fancy.

Let’s also not forget about a budget. This is a cheap meal even though it looks expensive. So for any holiday parties you have coming up, this is a great dish to take and make it look like you brought an elegant expensive dish when it is in fact the opposite.