15 Make-Ahead Recipes for Summer Cookouts - MyRecipes (2024)

Credit: Caitlin Bensel

Sure, the warm weather is nice and we love the gorgeous seasonal produce—but summer entertaining ain't no picnic. Next time you're headed to a cookout or a potluck, make your day much easier by preparing a dish ahead of time. From easy pasta salads to slow cooker recipes to delectable desserts, we've got your summer party covered.

Mexican Corn Salad

Mexican Corn Salad Recipe

Mexican street corn morphs into an epic salad in this dish. Beautiful to behold, this salad shines thanks to the combination of colors and textures. This potluck-perfect side is easy to make ahead of time, and it gets even more flavorful when it sits overnight.

Three-Bean Pasta Salad

Three-Bean Pasta Salad Recipe

We combined two potluck classics—pasta salad and three-bean salad—to make one tasty new side dish. Blanched celery is the unexpected star in this side dish; it has a tender-crisp texture and bright green color. Swap out the canned beans for your favorite cooked field peas.

Easy BBQ Ribs

Slow Cooker Baby Back Ribs Recipe

Barbecue season is here, but we'll let you in on a secret: All you really need for crowd-pleasing baby back ribs is the right recipe and a slow cooker. Savory, tender, juicy, and slow-cooked to perfection, this recipe for Slow Cooker Baby Back Ribs is our newest and best.

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Puff Pastry Summer Fruit Slab Pie Recipe

This show-stopper is easy to assemble, but so impressive. The only component of this effortlessly elegant tart that needs to bake is the puff pastry base itself. Once it's baked and cooled, you'll top it with a creamy, fluffy spread of sweetened mascarpone cheese mixed with marzipan (i.e. almond paste), vanilla, freshly whipped cream.

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Credit: Photo courtesy of The Food Gays

Grilled Corn Pasta Salad Recipe

This vibrant, flavor-packed summer side dish combines a bounty of favorite seasonal flavors into a single, epic pasta salad. The recipe comes from our friends The Food Gays, and they developed this colorful grilled corn dish as a fresher, brighter alternative to the typical mayo-based pasta salads that often show up a summer parties.

Perfectly Easy Blackberry Pie

Perfectly Easy Blackberry Pie Recipe

If you haven't eaten any blackberry pie yet, is it really summer? This perfectly easy blackberry pie comes together in a little more than an hour and highlights one of summer's best fruits. This recipe works with either fresh or frozen blackberries (or a mixture of the two), but fresh blackberries have more flavor and won't take as long to cook. Serve with vanilla ice cream or lemon sorbet.

The Quintessential Chicken Salad

Easy Chicken Salad Recipe

This 20-minute chicken salad recipe is creamy, flavorful, and packed full of healthy veggies and protein-rich meat. To make our easy chicken salad recipe, we lightened up the typical mayonnaise base by adding in 1/2 cup of low-fat, plain Greek yogurt, but you can use one full cup of mayonnaise if you'd like.

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Everything Bagel Salad Recipe

Your favorite brunch special just took on a new, heartier format. Everything here comes through: The bagels, capers, lox, raw onions, and cream cheese are all balanced out by spinach's natural mild sweetness.

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Easy Slow-Cooker Jambalaya Recipe

Have dinner ready when you come home with this ultimate, slow-cooker Jambalaya. Featuring chicken, shrimp and smoked sausage, this classic Creole rice dish is perfect for the slow-cooker as all the flavors blend together over time in a marvelous way.

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Crock-Pot BBQ Ribs Recipe

If you're skeptical about ribs in a slow cooker, prepare to be amazed by the tender and delicious results. Cooking ribs doesn't get easier than this two-step method, and while they serve as the perfect summer entrée, you can make these ribs just as easily at any time of year.

Chicken Enchilada Casserole

Chicken Enchilada Casserole Recipe

Tex-Mex chicken enchilada casserole is a delicious dinner main when you are craving Southwestern-style comfort food without the notorious gut-busting casserole calories. Scoring in at under 375 calories, this lightened up enchilada bake is a win-win for your taste buds and keeping your diet in check.

Watermelon and Feta Salad

Watermelon Salad with Feta and Mint Recipe

There's more than one way to enjoy the classic sweet flavor of fresh watermelon besides eating it right off the rind. This watermelon feta salad is a light and refreshing complement to any summer meal, no matter if it's for a cookout, potluck, or regular weeknight dinner.

Green Bean Casserole

Green Bean Casserole Recipe

We've given the classic casserole an upgrade by swapping sodium-heavy canned soup for a rich and chunky homemade mushroom sauce. For bean blanching instructions, see the note on the recipe at left.

Easy Margaritas for a Crowd

Easy Margaritas for a Crowd Recipe

Look no further than these large-batch margaritas when you're hosting your next big fiesta and can't spend hours juicing limes. This margarita recipe is a revelation--the secret ingredient is a can of frozen limeade concentrate which, once emptied, doubles as a measuring cup for the remaining ingredients.

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Oreo Cookie Pie Recipe

Oreos on Oreos on Oreos. This Oreo pie recipe is super easy and a must-make for any fan of Milk's Favorite Cookie.