A clean, facile and catalyst-free four-component domino reaction of aromatic aldehyde, ethyl cyanoacetate, acetoacetanilide and ammonium acetate in ethanol under microwave irradiation (MWI) conditions is described. Eleven novel and diverse tetrahydropyridine-3-carboxamide derivatives were synthesized in excellent yields (91–97%) using this green protocol. The significant benefits of this method are simple handling, ethanol as solvent, catalyst-free reaction under mild conditions, short reaction times ( less than 10 min) and excellent product yields. Easy workup procedure and simple purification technique of the target molecules evade column chromatography.