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Are you getting to the point where turning on the stove or the oven feels…not all that desirable? Perhaps very unappealing? Me, too! There are many hot summer days (and some serious heat waves) and evenings where cooking just feels downright unreasonable. All we want is fast and easy meals, foods that can be enjoyed chilled or at room temperature, no cooking or heating required. And we’ve got lots to choose from!
Before we dig into our ever-growing list, a few rules of the road. I am assuming that for some of these recipes that you will buy a couple of pre-cooked items, mostly rotisserie chicken and cooked shrimp. Or that you have those leftovers around.
Tips for Easy No-Cook Meals
One thing I cannot say enough during the warmer months — MAKE MORE OF EVERYTHING THAN YOU NEED FOR A MEAL. Especially simple proteins like chicken breasts, salmon, shrimp, and steaks, as well as pasta and grains! You will be able to repurpose them all week long, and not only save yourself time but avoid turning on the oven or the stove. And that, my friends, is the biggest gift you can give to yourself on a sultry summer evening.
Other items to stock up on: canned beans, lentils, and other legumes, hearts of palm, canned or frozen peas, and corn. Frozen shrimp are a staple in my house. And, of course, loads and loads of fresh produce. Which is extra appealing and easy to do from late spring to late fall. And keeping extra hard-cooked eggs around means you can add them to salads, or make a terrific egg salad in about 10 minutes.
And a plug for fresh herbs. Once you start using fresh herbs regularly, you will see how easy it is to add vibrant flavor to the simplest of dishes and kick up your summer cooking (or not-cooking) a whole lot of notches.
And know that there are oodles and oodles more salad recipes on the site on the site. This is the tip of the iceberg (lettuce).
If you start with pre-cooked shrimp, this beautiful and satisfying salad can be on the table in 15 minutes. You can buy already-cooked shrimp at a fish store, in the seafood section of a supermarket, or in the frozen food aisle.
One of the defining no-cook dishes of summer. Have fun trying out different tomatoes in this gorgeous meal: yellow, orange, striped, smooth, lumpy, heirloom…all are fair game. If you live near a farmers market, there is that moment when the tables are piled high with all kinds of crazy looking tomatoes with funny names; Green Zebra, Brandywine, Lillian’s Yellow Heirloom, Mortgage Lifter, Black Crim, Purple Calabash, just to name a few. Grab them all.
Perfect for picnics and potlucks, and warm-weather lunches. Using precooked shrimp makes it ridiculously easy. This light and colorful pasta salad is a great take-to-work lunch as well.
This colorful, healthy vegetarian salad can be served as an entrée or a side dish. Leave out the feta and replace the honey with agave for a vegan version. You can also add this to a wrap.
Fresh shrimp is marinated with lime juice, avocado, bell pepper, onion, and herbs for an easy, light and bright ceviche. The shrimp actually "cook" in the lime juice, so no heat required!
A contemporary version of a classic side dish (thank you canned beans), with the addition of whole grains, jarred hearts of palm, and lots of fresh herbs to liighten it up.
This Southwest Black Bean and Corn Salad (aka Cowboy Caviar) is beautiful, easy, inexpensive, vegetarian, and satisfying. We love this served with tortilla chips for scooping up big bites.
The colorful, classic restaurant salad is yours to make at home. I included honey in the dressing for some sweetness. There are noodles and peanuts for crunch (I have tree nut allergies), not to mention cabbage, carrots, jicama or kohlrabi (optional), cucumber, and onion. The dressing is savory with soy and sesame, and a little spicy from garlic, ginger, and hot sauce. Start with a rotisserie chicken, and you'll have this main dish salad ready to roll without ever turning on the oven.
A few flavorful and crunchy add-ins turn an everyday chicken salad into something you would pay hard-earned cash for at a really nice deli or specialty food counter. You can start with a purchased rotisserie chicken, or simply cooked leftover chicken, whether poached, steamed, or baked.
A crunchy salad studded with chickpeas is tossed with a creamy, lemony savory dressing with a tiny kick of heat. Try this dressing on everything from bean salads to green salads, or simply drizzle it over grilled vegetables.
A creamy avocado spread turns a chicken sandwich into a lunch to remember (the bacon is optional!). Sliced leftover chicken breast is perfect for this.
Another reason to make sure to have a rotisserie chicken in the fridge, or make intentional extra chicken earlier in the week. This, like pretty much all salads, is a super flexible recipe, but you can see as written it's popping with color and texture.
This is probably my favorite no-cook recipe of the summer. Amazingly healthy, flavorful and refreshing. Keep a pitcher of this in the fridge and pour yourself a glass or a bowlful any time of day.
A mayo-free version of one of our favorite foods. Use oil-packed tuna if you can, and look for tunas from Italy and Spain. The fish is very tender and rich, and will result in a very sophisticated salad.
You will want to make extra dressing to use on just about everything all week long – it's great on grilled veggies and chicken breasts. Tina says, "Such a yummy salad! Love the dressing too."
This is one of the most popular grain salads on The Mom 100, and once you make it you'll see why! Says Cynthia: "Delicious, changed up a few ingredients, don’t like radishes. Added some fresh kale. Really good and my husband loved it!
This is the salad for people who might not think a main-course salad is really a thing. The dressing packs so much flavor, a combo of peanut butter, soy sauce, vinegar or citrus juice, ginger, and Sriracha sauce.
The beautiful clean flavor of scallop ceviche is impossible to beat. Scallops are safe to eat raw, as long as you make sure they are very fresh. The lime (or other citrus) juice cooks the scallops making any present bacteria safe to eat. The bright freshness of this dish is so appealing.
Katie Workman is a cook, a writer, a mother of two, an activist in hunger issues, and an enthusiastic advocate for family meals, which is the inspiration behind her two beloved cookbooks, Dinner Solved! and The Mom 100 Cookbook.
