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Meghan Splawn
Meghan Splawn
Meghan was the Food Editor for Kitchn's Skills content. She's a master of everyday baking, family cooking, and harnessing good light. Meghan approaches food with an eye towards budgeting — both time and money — and having fun. Meghan has a baking and pastry degree, and spent the first 10 years of her career as part of Alton Brown's culinary team. She co-hosts a weekly podcast about food and family called Didn't I Just Feed You.
updated Jun 21, 2021
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Summer BBQs are my favorite way to entertain throughout the season. Adults can mingle, summer drink in hand, while the kids can run around burning off energy before dinner. Plus, barbecuing feels more effortless — no need to stress over a super-clean house or real napkins when you’re grilling out. The menu is also up for grabs, although you can’t go wrong with the classics. Who doesn’t love burgers paired with creamy coleslaw?
Barbecue foods are among my favorite. From sweet and tangy barbecue sauce to buttermilk ranch potato salad to finger-lickin’ grilled chicken, there are a bounty of options when it comes to classic barbecue fare. To help get you ready for a summer of outdoor fun, here are over 35 essential summertime BBQ recipes for all your backyard soirées.
Sauces and Marinades
Whether you use one for marinating a flank steak or you serve it up in squeeze bottles for sandwiches, your BBQ needs at least one sauce.
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Korean BBQ Marinade
This Korean BBQ marinade can be used on beef short ribs, tofu, tempeh, or even vegetables. Once on the grill, the sauce caramelizes and provides an irresistible smoky, savory, sweet flavor.
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This sweet and tangy barbecue sauce is our go to recipe. It's perfect as is, but it's also a great recipe to use as a base for your own tweaks and passing flavor whims. Quick, easy, and darn good.
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Pomegranate-Peach Barbecue Sauce
Although this version is a bit thicker than a typical Memphis barbecue sauce, the important characteristics are all there: tomato-based, tangy, and sweet from rich pomegranate molasses and fresh peaches.
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Drinks
Remember what I said about drink in hand? Pitcher drinks and co*cktails are the easiest way to satiate guests while you grill.
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Classic Sweet Tea
The best sweet tea is the one in the pitcher in your fridge. If you’ve never made sweet tea before, start with this recipe and then adjust it to taste. Steep the tea for longer, add more or less sugar, squeeze a few lemons into the pitcher — you like your sweet tea the way you like it, and that’s just fine.
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Sweet Tea and Bourbon Pitcher co*cktail
Is there anything more Southern than sweet tea and bourbon? Well, what if you were to mix these two together to make the ultimate Southern sipper? Pretty ingenious, right?
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How To Make Lemonade from Scratch
Sipping icy-cold sweet lemonade on a blazing-hot summer day is one of life’s finest pleasures, which is why we think making lemonade from scratch should be the easiest drink you make this summer. After all, it is just three ingredients: lemon juice, sugar, and water.
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Iced Green Tea with Ginger, Mint and Honey
This homemade iced tea steers clear of flavored tea bags and opts for plain green tea sachets instead. Then the tea is infused with fresh, zesty ginger slices, fragrant mint leaves, and lemon juice. This refreshing iced tea is the perfect beverage to guzzle down with your grilled burgers this summer.
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Sparkling Sweet Tea co*cktail
If you're someone who usually finds sweet tea to be a little bit too sweet, this sparkling sweet tea co*cktail will be right up your alley. The addition of club soda and whiskey temper the sweetness of the tea making for the perfect summer co*cktail.
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Classic Side Dishes
All the all-stars are here: baked beans, coleslaw, pasta salad, and potato salad. The best part is that almost all of these can be made ahead!
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Classic Potato Salad
Classically, mayo and mustard are used to bind together the tender potato chunks, while celery and shallots add some crunch. Fresh herbs or diced scallions give the salad fresh flavor. However, all of these ingredients can be tweaked, riffed, or otherwise toyed with to your heart’s content.
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Buttermilk Ranch Potato Salad
This recipe blends the delicious comforts of traditional potato salad with another American favorite: ranch dressing.
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Three Bean Salad
This three bean salad is a pretty straight-forward take on the classic — a mix of fresh and canned beans, a tangy vinaigrette, and red onions for color and crunch.
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Cider Beans
These cidery beans are a match for everything from warm weather barbecues to colder season potlucks. And they make the case for why side dishes are an integral part of a great meal.
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Classic Coleslaw
This coleslaw is a classic. Green cabbage, shredded carrots, creamy dressing. It's the perfect side for burgers and hotdogs at your next backyard party.
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The Best Pasta Salad Without Mayo
This recipe is here to prove that a mayo-free pasta salad can still come with creaminess. In this case it’s by way of an olive oil-rich vinaigrette and a sprinkling of flavorful soft cheese.
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Pesto Tortellini Pasta Salad
Summer just isn’t summer without pasta salad. This recipe takes advantage of flavorful ingredients found at most grocery stores and brings them together in one crowd-pleasing salad.
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Antipasto Pasta Salad
On hot summer days, we want a bright, vibrant pasta salad with a wide variety of flavors and textures. This version takes inspiration from antipasto, the Italian first course that includes all kinds of pickled veggies, cured meats, and of course, cheese.
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Grilled Vegetables
Throwing vegetables on the side doesn’t just need to feel obligatory. These dishes bring a ton of flavor, can help fill up vegetarians, and make for welcome side dishes alongside the classic side salads.
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Grilled Chipotle Lime Cauliflower Steaks
Vegetables get so sexy and glamorous with a good set of grill marks, a little char around the edges, and that outdoorsy smoky flavor. These cauliflower “steaks” demonstrate that more than almost anything else we’ve grilled.
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Grilled Watermelon
Once you’ve had your fill of cold, refreshing watermelon in everything from salads to aguas frescas, it’s time to turn your attention to the grill. Grilled watermelon can sound strange at first, but the grill caramelizes the melon’s sweetness and gives it a subtle, smoky flavor.
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Grilled Okra with Spicy Chipotle Dipping Sauce
We love okra for their earthy and undeniably green flavor. In this recipe, we especially love the charred bits that get crispy on the grill. If you haven't already, be prepared to fall in love with okra.
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Grilled Cabbage Wedges with Spicy Lime Dressing
Got cabbage? Great. Make this recipe. It’s very simple; it won’t take you more than a few minutes. Pour this tangy, spicy, Thai-inspired dressing all over — its garlicky juices soaking into the roasted warmth of the cabbage, smoky burnt edges adding a little crunch.
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Grilled Artichokes
Grilling artichokes is definitely the way to go. It lends a nice crispy texture to the edges (think potato chip!) and a smoky flavor that you just can’t get out of a pot of boiling water.
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Classic Kebabs
Almost anything is more fun to eat from a stick. Let guests build their own kebabs for even more fun.
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Grilled Chicken Kebabs
What’s our idea of the perfect summer dinner? Bite-sized pieces of herby yogurt-marinated chicken threaded onto skewers, then grilled to perfection.
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Grilled Meatball Kebabs
Here’s a dinner you can make with three ingredients (or four ingredients, if you count the smoky hint from the grill). Use your favorite purchased meatballs, your favorite barbecue sauce, and a few sweet bell peppers to make this meal in 15 minutes. You can probably do it in 10 if you really hustle.
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Summer Vegetable and Tofu Kebabs
You can prepare these kebabs in advance, and they’re practically a meal unto themselves when served along with couscous, potato salad, or a grain-based dish. And what a great way to showcase summer’s bounty of vegetables!
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Grilled Potato, Onion, and Bacon Skewers
These skewers bring out our primal love of meat (particularly, bacon) and potatoes together on individual skewers for a satisfying side for pretty much any main dish you choose to serve by the grill.
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Grilled Shrimp Skewers with Chimichurri
An herby, garlicky chimichurri sauce doubles as both the marinade and a dipping sauce for these easy shrimp skewers.
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Finger-Lickin’-Good Chicken
Chicken is one of those iconic BBQ foods. Serve with plenty of sauce and paper towels.
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Grilled Rotisserie Chicken
If you have a rotisserie attachment for your grill hanging around, it’s time to dust it off (and if you don’t have one, now might be the time to finally buy it). Because today, my friends, I’m going to show you how to cook the best darn rotisserie chicken you’ve ever had. Time to quit messing around.
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Spicy Korean Grilled Chicken
Hot off the grill, this spicy Korean chicken will not disappoint. Using chicken drumsticks and chicken thigh meat doused in a spicy, flavorful marinade, this grilled chicken needs to make an appearance on your dinner table soon!
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Juicy, Flavorful Grilled Chicken Breast
This recipe calls for a quick mixture of honey, vinegar, and spices to be added to the brine and used as a glaze. This sort of hybrid marinade-brine adds flavor and color to the breast before grilling, and glazing them before serving makes them finger-licking good.
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Grilled Chicken Breast with Blackberry-Corn Salsa
Cumin's earthy, warm flavor shows off just how well it pairs with a number of ingredients including blackberries, corn, and smoky grilled chicken. When you feel like dinner has lost some of its flair, this is the dish to add to the rotation.
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Grilled BBQ Chicken Wings
BBQ chicken wings are ubiquitous at summertime parties, and for good reason. Typically, wings are fried or baked and tossed in sauce just before serving. With these wings, we flip the procedure and cook the wings long and slow in their sauce, and then crisp them on the grill just before serving.
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Juicy Burgers
BBQ burgers are a really easy way to please a crowd. Don’t be afraid to divert from the beef burger to something juicier or even meat-free.
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The Perfect Grilled Burgers
When it comes to backyard burgers off the grill, we all want the same thing: a tender and juicy burger that we can really sink our teeth into.
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Chicken Guacamole Burgers
This is unimaginably better than a burger merely topped with guacamole. In this love child of a burger and guacamole, the guac is mixed right in with the ground chicken, making its presence felt in every bite.
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Pineapple Burgers with Whiskey Glaze
Pineapple is a perfect topper for burgers — the sliced fruit is just the right circumference to layer onto a bun. While many recipes call for a can of pineapple rings (and that is certainly an easy way to go), the flavor and texture of fresh, grilled pineapple is far superior.
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Juicy Turkey Burgers
We borrowed a technique often found in meatloaf recipes to create the best turkey burgers we've ever tasted.
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Grilled Eggplant Burgers with Halloumi Cheese
With summer in full swing, we’re grilling anything and everything that comes to mind, including seasonal vegetables, fruits, and yes, even cheese! Halloumi is one of the few cheeses that is actually sturdy enough to be grilled, and we like to take full advantage of that property.
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Desserts
My BBQ dessert go-to is ice cream sandwiches or Popsicles — they are fun and easy. But if you’re feeling fancy, these are easy and can be eaten with one hand while chasing down a 5-year-old with a water gun.
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Banana Pudding Bars
A humble ode to its namesake, these bars are the kind of everyday treat you can whip up on a whim. This recipe harnesses banana flavor from banana chips rather than fresh bananas so that you can make this recipe ahead without the vanilla pudding discoloring.
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Better-than-the-Box Rice Krispies Treats
Because Rice Krispies Treats are so simple, any change feels seismic. All the upgrades in this recipe are small and may even feel fussy (toast the cereal, you say?), but their impact is worth the tiny bit of effort.
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S'mores Brownies
S’mores brownies have all the essentials you’d find in your favorite campfire treat. (Well, minus the campfire.) There’s the graham cracker, the chocolate, and of course, the marshmallows.
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Frozen Yogurt Pie with Boozy Blueberries
Summer desserts should feel easy and carefree, but that doesn’t mean they should be thoughtless. This frozen yogurt pie is the answer. Made with a few store-bought ingredients, it comes together fast yet still feels elegant.
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No-Bake Strawberry Icebox Cake
This strawberry icebox cake is such an easy dessert. It looks a little fancy, doesn’t it? Don’t be put off. It only takes a few ingredients, and it doesn’t even involve turning on the oven.
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