National BBQ Month: 21 magnificently mouth-watering recipes

Whether you like breasts, drumsticks, thighs, legs, or wings, this grilled BBQ chicken recipe from Plays Well With Butter can’t be beaten. The baste is made of a bottled BBQ sauce, but the brine is made from beer, and the dry rub is a perfect blend of brown sugar and eight spices.

Bratwurst makes us think of baseball games and football parties, but you don’t need sports to sink your teeth into a juicy brat—you don’t even need National BBQ Month! You just need the will to fire up your grill and a good recipe, like this three-ingredient Wisconsin beer brat recipe from Plays Well With Butter.

The absolute best way to cook brisket is not in an oven, not on the grill, and not in a smoker, but in your slow cooker. Brisket can reach perfection when heated low and slow, and Recipe Tin Eats can show you how to make it with a homemade rub and homemade BBQ sauce.

Burnt ends are the trimmings from brisket, which can be just as delicious as the flat of the brisket. Although we recommend slow cooking the flat portion, burnt ends are best prepared in a smoker, like this recipe from Hey Grill, Hey, which braises the brisket in a sweet and tangy Kansas City-style sauce.

As much as we love a grilled steak, pan-searing is the preferred method for many chefs. After trying this garlic butter ribeye from Damn Delicious—which includes both oven-broiling and skillet-cooking—we understand why.

Sorry, no meat here, but you’ll absolutely still need your grill. To be honest, the only way we eat asparagus is after it’s been charred to perfection. You only need a few seasonings to make this side dish, but The Recipe Critic recommends garlic, parmesan cheese, salt, pepper, and a little olive oil.

Air fryer wings and oven-baked wings are great, but if the weather is decent, there’s no reason not to fire up the grill and throw on a whole mess of wings. This recipe from Once Upon a Chef will show you how to get the skin nice and crispy, and instead of bbq sauce, it features a seasoned buffalo marinade that’s a spiced-up version of traditional hot sauce.

Grilled corn isn’t just superior due to the cooking method, but also for the likelihood that seasonings, spices, and other tasty things will be added to this veggie. This recipe from Love & Lemons suggests butter, sea salt, red pepper flakes, and lemon or lime wedges, as well as vegan ranch and cilantro lime butter, both of which they’ll tell you how to make.

What do watermelon and grilling have in common? The answer: Both are much more enjoyable in warmer weather. And since the two have so much in common, it only makes sense that they should combine forces to form a tasty summer treat. Try this grilled watermelon with a chili & honey-lime sauce from The Mediterranean Dish to see how powerful this duo can be.

Cooking a juicy, flavorful burger requires more than slapping a slab of ground beef on a grill. A Spicy Perspective has a recipe (which includes plenty of helpful tips) that they bill as the “best hamburger patty recipe,” and it’s hard to argue with that title. Of course, it’s worth noting that our hamburgers usually end up becoming cheeseburgers. With bacon.

Tossing some dogs on the grill is a staple of every backyard BBQ we have—whether it’s for Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, or just a relaxing Sunday afternoon. You probably don’t need a recipe, but Ready Set Eat has some helpful tips, including cooking times for various differentiations of dogs.

Lobster can sometimes feel like a lot of work, so lighten up your load by sticking with the tails (they’re the best part anyway!) and using your grill. This recipe from Wholesome Yum calls for eight additional ingredients that you probably already have in your kitchen, and it can be ready in about 20 minutes.

We first tried pork belly years ago while traveling through China, and have been delighted to see it gaining popularity back in the States. This fatty, flavorful cut of meat is frequently braised in the Far East, but we love the smoked version, which is why we’re once again enlisting the help of our friends from Hey Grill, Hey.

The star of this recipe from Creme de la Crumb is the homemade BBQ sauce, which combines ketchup, brown sugar, Worcestershire sauce, dijon mustard, apple cider vinegar, and a few spices and seasonings. But the juicy, grilled pork chop aspect isn’t too shabby either.

We’ve made pork tenderloin in the slow cooker, in the oven, and on the stovetop, but for this list, we gotta go with the grilled variety. This recipe from Unsophisticook combines olive oil, your favorite BBQ sauce, and a pork rub that you can make from scratch.

Grilled portobello mushrooms can be a worthy substitute for burgers or just something to eat on their own. This version from Healthy Recipes Blog only requires balsamic vinegar, olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, salt, and a little parsley. 

Like brisket, pulled pork is best prepared in the slow cooker. This recipe from Downshiftology recommends cooking low and slow for 8 hours, and they’ll also tell you how to make a tasty from-scratch spice rub. 

When you see something like “Best Barbecue Ribs Recipe,” you have to give it a whirl. And although it requires your oven, your grill, and about 2.5 hours of cooking time, this Food Network recipe is absolutely worth it.

Shrimp is one of the few things you can’t just throw on the grill. Not because grilled shrimp isn’t tasty—in fact, it’s downright delicious—but because you’ll need to stick the shrimp on some skewers first, lest you be picking shrimp out from in between the grates. We also recommend marinating the shrimp, like in this recipe from Spend with Pennies. The recipe also calls for a garlic butter sauce, because I think it’s clear by now that we need to put garlic on absolutely everything.

A good glaze can make or break your salmon recipe, your meal, and probably your entire day. Don’t make the wrong choice, and go with this grilled teriyaki salmon recipe from Simply Home Cooked.

The best thing about veggie burgers is that there’s an endless combination of vegetables and grains that can be combined to form these delicious, meat-free patties. We recommend this Debra Klein recipe that combines quinoa, kidney beans, flax, parsley, walnuts, tomato paste, miso paste, and a few spices.