20 chill summer side dishes to beat the heat

Caprese salad is weird in that it’s almost a normal salad for one person—it has a leafy green, a fruit, some cheese—but it’s almost always shared. You don’t normally see someone order a big plate of tomato, basil, and mozzarella and just go to town on it themselves, you know? Anyway, if you need a recipe for this sharable salad, The Kitchn can help.

We have a soft spot for the classic macaroni salad, a summer side staple. Despite coming from Love from the Oven, there’s no cooking necessary in this recipe—just mix elbow macaroni, red and green peppers, red onion, dill pickles, and hard-boiled eggs with a creamy mayo sauce.

Short on time? This coleslaw from Cooking Classy can be put together in five minutes with just four ingredients. It also requires no heating and can be served immediately!

You can toss this entire side together in just 10 minutes. As the name suggests, this salad from Fifteen Spatulas contains corn, avocado, and both black and garbanzo beans, as well as tomatoes and an olive oil lemon juice dressing.

If you’ve never tried it, corn pudding is basically cornbread with creamed corn baked into it, and it’s a Southern classic. Although this version from Barefeet in the Kitchen is cooked for 50 minutes at 350 F, it’s served chilled—or even cold, right out of the fridge.

This one’s a real crowd-pleaser, and no, you don’t need to like caviar (or cowboys). Combine beans (black or whatever you have handy), tomatoes, black-eyed peas, corn, red onion, cilantro, and both green and red peppers with olive oil and vinegar-based dressing. Culinary Hill has the recipe, but feel free to tweak it to your liking and purpose—be it a salad, a side, or a salsa with chips.

We recently brought this creamy broccoli slaw from Spend with Pennies to a barbecue, and it received rave reviews. (True story!) It looks like a lot of work, but it’s really just adding diced green apples, cranberries, sunflower seeds, and a vinegar-mayo dressing to broccoli slaw mix.

Step up plain old sliced cucumber with a few extra ingredients, and your guests will think this side dish is a big dill. (Sorry.) But dill is, in fact, the special ingredient in this easy recipe from Taste of Home.

Deviled eggs are the perfect chilled appetizer or side dish to bring to your next potluck. You may have made them before, but try this recipe from Sugar Spun Run that includes a couple of special ingredients: pickle juice and butter!

The more beans the merrier, in our humble opinions, which is why we’re fans of this five bean salad from Foolproof Living. This particular recipe calls for black, kidney, Cannelloni, garbanzo, and green beans, but feel free to swap them with your favorites (or whatever’s available).

It’s a bunch of fruit, chopped up, in a bowl. We don’t think you need a recipe for fruit salad, just use your imagination—or the photo—and get choppin’. 

Two types of grapes, two types of sugar, two types of dairy, some pecans, and no vegetables whatsoever go into this delicious grape salad from Taste of Home. On a hot day, this juicy, refreshing side will hit the spot—and it makes a great snack, too!

Cheese-filled tortellini is the centerpieces of this simple pasta salad from Baker by Nature with mozzarella balls, cherry tomatoes, red onion, and pesto added to the mix. If you have a food processor, then making the pesto from scratch is just as easy; Damn Delicious has that recipe.

Add a summertime twist to your typical salsa with this pineapple-centric dip from The Gunny Sack. In addition to citrus, the recipe also calls for red pepper, red onion, jalapeño, cilantro, lime juice, and sea salt.

There are a few ways to make potato salad, but we agree with this version from Inspired Taste, which calls for the addition of egg, celery, pickles, and red onion. Potato salad is a cool and refreshing option on a hot day...unless you leave it sitting in your car all day with the sun beating down on the mayonnaise a la Michael Scott on “The Office.”

Just six ingredients go into this strawberry shortcake dessert salad from Inside Bru Crew Life. Or maybe it’s a breakfast salad? I mean, how is this any less breakfast-y than waffles topped with fruit and whipped cream? Let’s just call it an “anytime salad.”

A different spin on pasta salad, this recipe from Renee Nicole’s Kitchen uses rice-like orzo pasta, zucchini, and cherry tomatoes covered in a homemade honey-dijon vinaigrette. It’s the light side you’ve been looking for!

Chopped parsley, bulgur wheat, tomatoes, and green onions go into this traditional Lebanese side dish that’s served cold or at room temperature topped with a dressing made from olive oil and lemon juice. Feel Good Foodie has the rest of the recipe.

We can’t only have one type of potato salad on this list, especially when we haven’t gotten to German potato salad yet. Unlike the previous recipe, this one from The Pioneer Woman calls for the addition of mustard, onion, parsley, and BACON!

This salty-sweet summer side is so simple yet so satisfying. As Curry Trail will tell you, it’s just watermelon, feta cheese, basil, and a simple lime juice and olive oil dressing—but the flavor it packs is impressive!