27 Crockpot Side Dishes: Dinner Sides Made Even Easier🍴

Slow cookers have transformed how we prepare meals, making creating flavorful, hands-off dishes easy. But they’re not just for main courses! Crockpot side dishes are just as convenient and can truly elevate any meal. Whether you’re looking for creamy scalloped potatoes, rich mac and cheese, or even a savory cornbread, these slow-cooker sides will easily give your main dishes a boost!

From classic comfort foods to new favorites, these Crock-Pot recipes are a must-try.

1. Crockpot Ranch Potatoes

This easy recipe includes potatoes, ranch dressing, cheese, and all the seasoning bubbling inside your crockpot, resulting in a creamy and savory crockpot side dish that’ll quickly become one of your favorites! 

2. Crockpot Cornbread

A recipe that will get your mouth watering for more is this moist and easy cornbread. Baking cornbread in a slow cooker will take a bit more time than a traditional oven, but it’s a good option when you need space for other recipes. 

3. Slow Cooker Boston Baked Beans

The ideal recipe for how baked beans ought to be: with a thick, savory, and slightly sweet sauce. Slow-cooking these Boston baked beans with lots of bacon will fill your kitchen with a mouthwatering aroma.

4. Crockpot Corn On The Cob

Skip boiling water or heating up the grill. An easy buttery side, this Corn On the Cob recipe is a great side year-round. This corn is already buttered and seasoned from the crock pot, so you can dig into the perfect ear of corn!

5. Slow Cooker Cheesy Broccoli Casserole

A recipe that’s simple to prepare while being pretty huge on flavor. This Cheesy Broccoli Casserole features a twist on the traditional recipe, providing a more saucy take with the added country gravy. Think green bean casserole but with broc.

6. Crockpot Green Bean Casserole

This dish provides all the home-grown comfort that you’d expect from a Green Bean Casserole. 
It’s a great recipe for beginner cooks or those who don’t have much time for prep. Simmers for two to three hours.

7. Slow Cooker Lipton Onion Potatoes

This Lipton Onion Potatoes recipe is a must-try if you love using a slow cooker. It combines Lipton onion soup with thinly sliced potatoes. It takes about 4 hours to make, resulting in caramelized potatoes rich in flavor and aroma.

8. Crockpot Sweet Potato Casserole

This Sweet Potato Casserole is the ideal set-and-forget recipe since you don’t need to boil the potatoes first, as all of the cooking happens within inside the crockpot. 

9. Copycat Cracker Barrel Fried Apples

A simpler variation of these fantastic Fried Apple recipes involves combining all the ingredients in the pot and just letting it cook. Three to four hours later, you’ll find tender and juicy apples with a thick, glistening sauce.

10. Slow Cooker Balsamic Brussels Sprouts

These Balsamic Brussels Sprouts are so easy to make, with only 10 minutes worth of prep time that cook on low for up to 4 hours. 

11. Slow Cooker German Potato Salad

A potato salad variation that is perfectly cooked every time, this German Potato Salad fuses bacon, onion, cider vinegar, and seasoning with flavorful potatoes thickened up with some flour. 

12. Crockpot Mac & Cheese

Everyone loves a super cheesy Macaroni and Cheese recipe slowly cooking inside a crockpot with all the ingredients bubbling. When cooking this dish, you might have to consider scaling the recipe up for extra servings so you can munch on some great mac and cheese for the days to come. 

13. Slow Cooker Red Cabbage

Budget-friendly, vegan, gluten-free, and is ready in five hours in your slow cooker. Plus it’s a colorful side and goes great with Thankgiving everything.

14. Slow Cooker Glazed Carrots

Perfect for casual dinners and special occasions, these Glazed Carrots come out tender and perfect when using a slow cooker. The carrots are coated in butter and brown sugar to achieve a sweet and luscious glaze.

Did you know that you can make glazed carrots in your microwave?

15. Slow Cooker Sweet Potato Wedges

Making a big batch of these tender, moist, sweet potatoes using a crockpot is a great idea. Adding orange juice provides a citrusy finish on these wedges.

16. Crockpot Creamed Spinach

Adding cheese to veggies is a huge favorite that gets people finishing everything on their plates. This Creamed Spinach offers a great mix of cream cheese, stock, Italian dressing, and some mushroom soup that elevates the flavors of spinach.

17. Slow Cooker Green Beans With Bacon

Featuring green beans (fresh, frozen or canned!), potato, and bacon. Could be a full meal if you’re feeling it.

Want more green bean recipe inspirations? Check this epic compilation!

18. Slow Cooker Mashed Potatoes

Since you still need to wash, peel and cut the potatoes, then cook for hours, then remove them to mash/whip them, the crockpot really just offers you a set-it-and-forget-it cooking vessel, but there’s a lot to be said for saving stovetop space during a big feast. 

19. Crockpot Creamed Corn

This recipe adds cream cheese and heavy cream to the sweet, salty, and buttery corn. Hard to beat that ingredient list any day.

20. Crockpot Scalloped Potatoes

Scalloped Potatoes are a creamy and comforting crockpot side dish that complements any main dish. And they can be high maintenance in the oven. I’ve added this to my “I can do this” list.

21. Italian Mushrooms

This 3-ingredient recipe is a great way to cook mushrooms without using a frying pan. Crockpot cooked Italian Mushrooms offer a rich and flavorful side dish that goes great with steak or grilled meat or is an excellent choice to add to layered green salads.

22. Rosemary Honey Beets

A great way to get beets to become deliciously tender and flavorful is to have them slowly cooking in a crockpot. Love this flavor combo, especially as someone who is a true beet lover.

23. Garlic Smashed Potatoes

This recipe involves perfectly cooked potatoes without all the work involved in mashing them thoroughly to provide an easier option with all the great flavors. 

These Garlic Smashed Potatoes use baby potatoes for optimum texture while adding cream cheese and nutmeg for a creamy side dish.

24. Slow-Cooked Vegetables

A convenient process of cooking vegetables without turning on the oven is setting it all in a crockpot to cook over time slowly. Roasting vegetables in a slow cooker ensure that your ingredients won’t burn while maintaining goodness and flavor. 

25. Easy Apple Butter Made From Applesauce

Imagine cooking down apple sauce until it becomes dark brown, creamy, thick, and spreadable. That’s what this recipe is—a homemade apple butter that’s less processed than what you can buy in the store, with lots of fragrant spices cooked right at home.

26. Slow Cooker Zucchini Casserole

Zucchini becomes a star with this dish, with this easy slow-cook recipe providing a convenient way of cooking your fresh vegetable. Bubbly cheddar cheese provides a homestyle flavor to this dish, but parmesan works too.

27. Slow Cooker Cheesy Cauliflower

A creamy and delicious side dish favorite, cooking Cheesy Cauliflower in a slow cooker makes it easy and quick to prepare. It’s also a very affordable side dish that can liven up any of your meals. 

The bottom line

Side Dishes in the Slow Cooker: Easy, Delicious, and Nearly Effortless
The slow cooker’s gentle, steady heat brings out the best in each ingredient, enhancing both taste and texture. Just remember that slow-cooking is not a dry heat, won’t sear, and reduces crisp texture because it cooks by steaming foods.

But it works so well with many of the recipes we’ve listed here. With minimal prep, you can set it, walk away, and let the cooking happen while you go about your day. So, choose a recipe, toss in your ingredients, and let the slow cooker do the rest!

You’re going to love our tried-and-true crockpot sides: Jackpot Biscuit-Cornbread Stuffing, Apple Butter, and Grape Jelly BBQ Meatballs.