"Sad Girl" Sushi Boards, Green Goddess Pasta Salad, And 12 Other Really Good Low-Cook Meals We Rely On In Hotter-Than-Hell Weather
Figuring out what to eat for dinner in the summer months can be really tricky. Many of our usual go-to recipes are simply too hot and heavy to think about eating on a blazing hot day; plus, who wants to turn on the oven in the midst of a heatwave???
But even in the dog days of summer, we've still gotta eat, so we asked BuzzFeed writers and editors to share their favorite summer recipes that they rely on when it's waaay too hot to cook. Here's what they had to say:
1.Lazy Nicoise Salad
This low-effort version of the French classic is one of my favorite hot-weather go-tos. To keep my home as cool as possible, I prep the eggs and potatoes in the morning before it's too hot and keep them in the fridge until ready to serve.
When I'm ready to eat, I throw some greens in a bowl and top them with diced and salted boiled eggs and potatoes, tomato wedges, quick-blanched green beans from the microwave, canned tuna, capers, and chopped kalamata olives. Then I toss it in a nice vinaigrette (I'm a fan of Newman's Own Oil and Vinegar because who can resist those handsome eyes?) and call it dinner.
2.Chopped "Any Salad" Wraps
On hot days when I'm in desperate need of a meal at lunchtime, I'll often cobble together a goblin meal of various odds and ends that don't exactly feel the most nourishing — so lately, I've been keeping all the ingredients I need for chopped salad wraps on hand for a portable and satisfying meal that I can feel really good about.
TBH, you can stuff these "any salad" wraps with literally anything type of chopped salad you feel like assembling, as the name suggests; like, I don't even remember what I stuffed in the wrap shown above, but I know it was dynamite. Lately, however, my favorite variation includes the following ingredients:
• Chopped or shredded rotisserie chicken
• Your favorite lettuce or spring mix
• Shredded carrots
• Sesame dressing (TJ's Organic Toasted Sesame Dressing is god-tier)
• A sprinkle of panko breadcrumbs for crunch
Mix all the salad ingredients above in a large bowl, then chop into small-ish pieces using a pair of kitchen shears. Gently warm the largest wrap-sized tortilla you can get your hands on, then do your best to roll everything together. IDK, y'all, but the crunch of the panko breadcrumbs just...does something to me.
3.Spicy Tuna Rice Bowl
I'm a sucker for Spam musubi, but when it's hot out, I don't feel like frying up Spam. So instead, I go for this spicy tuna rice bowl, which has some of the same flavors and takes a LOT less work. Of course, this is only truly low-cook when you have a rice cooker.
All you need is rice (any kind you want, but I usually go with jasmine), canned tuna, a spicy mayo of your choosing, furikake rice seasoning, and optional soy sauce. Make your rice (preferably in a rice cooker to avoid using the hot stove). Separately, mix your tuna with the spicy mayo and soy sauce...add as much or as little of each as you want. If you can't find a pre-made spicy mayo that you like, I recommend using Kewpie mayo and mixing in sriracha and a little sesame oil. When the rice is done, season it with the furikake rice seasoning, spoon on your tuna, and you're done! If you want to jazz it up, you can add some green onion, and if you're feeling REALLY adventurous, you could crack a raw egg into your hot rice and mix it up before adding the tuna to make a sort of spicy tuna tamago gohan.
If you want to make it even easier and TRULY no-cook, you can get microwaveable rice and a pouch of Thai chili-flavored tuna from Starkist. Then all you have to do is microwave, add the seasoning, and mix!
4.Cool Beans Quinoa Salad
I recently visited my family in Boston, and my stepmom served a delicious cold quinoa salad for dinner on the first night. It consisted of cooked quinoa, black beans, halved fresh and juicy cherry tomatoes, roasted zucchini, fresh basil, and feta cheese, topped with homemade balsamic vinaigrette.
It's full of great summer flavors and super satisfying. Plus, it's easy to throw together in the morning before my apartment turns into a sauna. I'm definitely planning to make my own version all season long, adding different veggies depending on what looks best when I go to the market.
My stepmom couldn't remember where she found the recipe she used, but I found this one that looks very similar, so I'm using it as a jumping-off point for my explorations.
5.Tofu with Spicy Soy Garlic Sauce
IMO, there is nothing better (or more refreshing!) than the contrasting temperatures and textures of soft, cold tofu and warm rice; use leftover rice if possible (reheated in the microwave) to keep your already-hot home from getting even warmer. Based on liangban tofu, a popular Chinese dish of saucy, cold tofu, this recipe is my holy grail hyper-fixation meal as soon as warmer days roll in.
Of course, you can make it the real way, but for the "oh lord, I only have ten minutes until my next meeting" method, just drain and cube some soft tofu and gently toss with a mixture of soy sauce, rice vinegar, scallions, sriracha, and a few zips of grated garlic for some oomph. Spoon the saucy tofu mixture over warm rice, and devour without adding a single extra degree of heat to your kitchen.
6.Sad Girl Sushi Boards
This meal is very, very, very roughly inspired by a Philidelphia roll, but is definitely not traditional by any means. It's kinda like a sushi charcuterie board, except it's not quite sushi and technically isn't charcuterie either, but it DOES take less than 10 minutes to make and tastes pretty good, so there's that! In my home, we like to call this "sad girl sushi."
All you need is cucumber, avocado, cream cheese, smoked salmon, rice (I like the Trader Joe's frozen brown rice that you can pop in the microwave), rice vinegar, a tiny bit of sugar, and those little snack-size packs of roasted seaweed.
Microwave one packet of brown rice. Mix the teeniest bit of sugar into about two tablespoons of rice vinegar until it's dissolved and fold it into the rice. Leave that to cool and chop the cucumber, avocado, and 1/3 of a block of cream cheese into thin, inch-long pieces. Then, cut the salmon pieces so they're roughly bite-sized. Plate it up kinda like a charcuterie board, with the rice in a bowl on the side, as well as a couple of packs of the seaweed snacks. Soy sauce and chili oil are optional, but very much recommended.
When I make this for my partner and me, I like to make us each individual little "boards" so we can portion things how we like. To eat it, I make little bite-sized "sushi tacos" — the seaweed, in this case, being the tortilla — and layer a little bit of rice, my toppings, and the smoked salmon on top. That's it! This is totally customizable, too, so add or exclude whatever toppings you like! For instance, if you like California rolls, try imitation crab! If you wanna spice it up a bit, add a sriracha mayo or some mango.
7.Classic Fruit Salad
I live in Austin, so it's basically 100 degrees or more all summer. When it's so hot that walking outside immediately feels sticky and gross, I love to cool down with a fruit salad. I've read that fruit is really hydrating, so it just makes sense in my head!
For this one, I cut up strawberries, a white peach, a yellow peach, and golden kiwi fruit. Then, I tossed in some blueberries, red grapes, and green grapes. Just leave the fruit salad in the fridge, and it's a refreshing meal that lasts for days!
8.Smoked Trout Dip
Whenever the weather gets uncomfortably hot and humid, that's usually my cue to have what I like to call an "appetizer dinner," i.e., my own version of "girl dinner," where I pretty much just consume apps and snacks. And because tinned fish forever has my heart as a cheap and easy meal option, I often find myself making this trout dip with a ton of fresh herbs and pairing it with toasty bread or super salty kettle-cooked chips (bonus points if they have ridges!).
I pretty much eyeball everything when I make this, but my rough measurements are about two cans of smoked trout (or another smoked fish of your choice!), 1/2 cup crème fraîche, 1/2 cup sour cream, the juice of half a lemon, 1/4 cup fresh herbs like dill and chives, and salt and pepper to taste. You can also use cream cheese or mayo if that's your thing. All you have to do is mix everything in a bowl, put it on a cute plate, add some optional garnishes, and maybe pair it with an Aperol spritz or two.
9.Green Goddess Pasta Salad
When I went to my sister's for dinner recently, I was pretty dismayed to learn she had made pasta salad (I'm not a pasta salad girlie). But it was incredible and perfect for a hot day. It's not no-cook — you do have to make pasta and sauté asparagus, but you could also blanch the asparagus or substitute bagged asparagus spears that you steam in the microwave. The rest of the ingredients are cold, and you serve the dish cold, which, to me, is the most important part. Plus, I love how you can easily personalize this. You can choose any pasta type you want, and you can sub in different veggies and cheese. This is also a fantastic recipe for meal prep. You can make a huge amount and keep it in the fridge all week to pull out for ready-to-eat dinners — no heating required!
My sister said she found the recipe on TikTok and thinks it's from this video by @babytamago.
10.Tomato Toast
I can already see the "high-protein" crowd tearing me apart for this one in the comments section, but the fact is: You'll need to rip tomato toast out of my cold, dead hands. Have your protein-heavy meal later!
When summer rolls around and tomatoes are at their juiciest, I enjoy some tomato toast at least once per week. It couldn't be simpler, either—just toast up your favorite bread, slice up some tomatoes (regular or cherry both work well), smear the toast with a thick swoosh of mayo (Kewpie is best!), and top with the tomatoes. Once you've seasoned with plenty of salt and pepper, you're ready to ascend into peak summer produce bliss.
11.Gazpacho
I am a soup gal through and through, but obviously, hot soup isn't really possible or enjoyable in 90-degree weather, so gazpacho is usually my solution. It essentially tastes like a pureed salad in a bowl, and all comes together in a blender in just 15 minutes.
It does need a few hours to chill, so just keep that in mind before you think you've found the ultimate last-minute dinner. Alternatively, I have seen it served over ice in a glass and sipped through a straw before, which sounds so bizarrely fun to do.
You can definitely go the crouton route for toppings, but I also like to finely chop the veggies that are already going into the gazpacho (tomatoes, onions, and bell pepper) and top it with those along with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. Castelvetrano olives are also having a moment right now, so even a little olive chimichurri or pesto would be amazing on top!
12.Mandarin Orange Spinach Pasta Salad with Teriyaki Dressing
My mom has been making this pasta salad every summer for as long as I can remember. It's one of my favorite summer dishes and always a hit at barbeques. The combo of the cold pasta with the mandarin oranges, pine nuts, cranberries, spinach, and teriyaki dressing is chef's kiss. It's one of the most low-effort dishes one can make, and I usually make a big batch of it and have it as a side dish, or I'll add some protein to it and have it for lunch or dinner.
If I'm making this salad for myself, I boil an entire box of bow-tie pasta (I'm Italian, so it's hard not to make the entire box) but will eyeball the rest of the ingredients: several teaspoons of pine nuts (these are pricey, so use them at your discretion), a few handfuls of dried craisins, spinach, and a can of mandarin oranges (I love my salad to have a lot of oranges in it, so I throw an entire can in) and some cilantro.
For the dressing, combine 1/3 cup teriyaki sauce, 1/3 rice wine vinegar, some garlic powder, onion powder, one tablespoon of sugar, 1/2 cup of oil (I like to use olive oil), salt, and pepper to taste. Mix everything in a bowl and chill it for a few hours — it's best cold! Enjoy!
13.Burger Bowl
This burger bowl is flavorful and filling and comes together so effortlessly that I swear I ate this for lunch every day for a week at one point. This recipe requires ground beef (ground turkey works, too!), but if you prep it the night before or just have some cooked leftovers lying around, you're golden for a no-cook, assembly-only lunch. (But even if I do cook the ground beef then and there, it takes, like, eight minutes.)
You can tailor this recipe to include or exclude whatever you like, but here's what I use to make this burger bowl:
• Ground beef (season with salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder)
• Shredded cheese
• Shredded lettuce as the base
• Cherry tomatoes
• Relish
• Fries (I use frozen ones and leave them alone in the air fryer)
• Salt and pepper
If I have time to spare, I'll typically make my own burger sauce as the dressing, using this Big Mac sauce dupe recipe. However, any store-bought burger sauce is just fine!
Toss everything together in a nice big bowl, add a pinch of salt and pepper to taste, and enjoy!
14.Fancy Grilled Cheese
A grilled cheese sandwich is one of my favorite comfort foods, and this fancy version has sustained me through many a hot day. I like to use sourdough bread and spread a thin layer of pesto on the inside of the sandwich with butter on the outside. Then, I fill it with shredded mozzarella and sliced tomatoes and bake it in my toaster oven until the bread looks golden (rather than frying it on the hot stove). I serve it with a side of green salad and some big chunks of watermelon and eat with my face in the AC vent.
What's your favorite no- or low-cook meal that saves you every time a heat wave rolls around? Tell us all about it in the comments below, and I can nearly guarantee you that at least one of us will try out your creation for ourselves.
