Fourth of July
815 recipes found
Broccoli Salad With Peanuts and Tahini-Lime Dressing
Broccoli stalks, often overlooked or tossed in favor of the florets, take center-stage in this summer picnic salad. While many broccoli slaws are made with mayonnaise-based dressings, this one is inspired by the bright flavors of Thai cuisine, and uses sesame oil, lime juice, salted peanuts, scallions and a dash of hot sauce for heat. (Garnish the slaw with fresh Thai basil, if you like.) Tossed with a creamy vegan tahini-lime dressing, the broccoli softens just enough to lose that raw broccoli flavor without giving up any of its satisfying crunch. A food processor or Mandoline makes quick work of the stems, but with a little bit of patience, a good knife does the trick, too. Finally, this salad is best the day it’s made, though its components can be prepared in advance to save time.
Blueberry Cream Popsicles
These naturally purple pops are made with a combination of simmered blueberries puréed into an easy no-churn ice cream base. You can substitute yogurt or crème fraîche for the sour cream; either will give the popsicles a subtle tang. You can use fresh or frozen berries. (Frozen berries can be thawed and used as directed in the method below. Or use them straight from the freezer, but add 2 to 4 minutes to the cook time.) The number of pops this recipe makes depends on the size and shape of the molds used. The base can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 24 hours if you need to freeze in batches; just give the mixture a stir before using.
Mango Slaw
There is absolutely nothing new about coleslaw, but there is something slightly intriguing about coleslaw with mangos. Often, when we think of coleslaw, we think of it as a side for fish and chips, barbecue or heavy, mayonnaise-drenched cabbage. But just think about the cool, crunchy sweetness of the cabbage, carrots and mango, paired with the spicy kick of jerk chicken. What’s a better combination? You also don’t have to serve it as a side: It can be tucked into a sandwich or wrap. One of the best things about this recipe is that all the ingredients are readily available, and there are many shortcuts you can take, like using a bagged mix. Who wants to ruin their knuckles on a box grater, or break out the food processor?
Sheet-Pan Roasted Salmon Niçoise Salad
Here, the classic French salad becomes an elegant dinner, with mustard-glazed salmon in place of tuna, roasted vegetables and jammy eggs served over a jumble of salad greens tossed with a red-wine vinaigrette. Roasting the vegetables, rather than serving some steamed and some raw as you would for a traditional Niçoise, gives this dish great texture and a delicious contrast of temperatures. The vegetables and salmon are roasted on a single sheet pan, making this an elevated take on the one-dish dinner — fit for company and easy enough for a weeknight.
Grilled Summer Vegetables With Tahini Dressing
Start up the grill for a crowd-pleasing platter of vegetables from the garden or farm stand. Take care to keep the fire medium-hot, so you can cook the vegetables without letting them become scorched or blackened. A bit of char is nice, of course, but don’t try for perfect grill marks. Remove vegetables from the grill when they are just done. They’re topped with a garlicky, lemony tahini dressing that serves as a perfect accompaniment.
Tomato and Peach Salad With Whipped Goat Cheese
Whizzed in the food processor with some heavy cream and lemon zest, earthy goat cheese becomes rich and creamy, the perfect complement to juicy peaches and tomatoes. Fresh purslane, if you can find it, provides a slight crunch to the salad, but mâche or watercress would also work well. You could also tear up some basil, parsley or other tender herbs you have lying around and toss those in just before serving. Colorful, fresh and easy, this salad works as a starter, a side or a summery supper, piled on top of grilled bread.
Chocolate Zucchini Loaf Cake
This simple, one-bowl loaf cake is a sweet way to make the most of zucchini season. Chocolate cake batter is flecked with shreds of raw zucchini and studded with bittersweet chocolate chips for a summertime cake that’s fit for either breakfast or dessert. While some recipes call for squeezing the excess water out of the shredded zucchini, this loaf cake takes full advantage of the summer vegetable: The zucchini is taken directly from the grater to the bowl for additional moisture. The resulting cake strikes the perfect balance; it's rich and fudgy, but still maintains a tender crumb. The cake will keep on the counter for 4 to 5 days, loosely covered, and only gets better with age.
Vegan Frozen Coconut Lime Bars
Inspired by frozen Key lime pie, this simple summertime treat is for vegans and dairy-lovers alike. The no-bake graham cracker crust gets topped with softened store-bought, dairy-free ice cream mixed with shredded coconut and fresh lime juice for a dessert that’s as easy to put together as it is delicious. Be sure to use unsweetened, finely shredded (also called desiccated) coconut for this recipe; regular shredded or flaked coconut will be too coarse.
Pressure Cooker Classic Beef Chili
Chili in the electric pressure cooker is super fast and extremely convenient. This version is on the gently spiced side, so if you're looking for more heat, feel free to increase the chili powder or add a big pinch of cayenne – or throw a couple of extra jalapeños into the pot. Keep in mind that the leaner the beef, the less flavorful the chili. Eighty percent is a good bet here. You can also substitute ground pork or dark meat turkey. Leftover chili freezes like a dream.
Italian Subs With Sausage and Peppers
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. For these subs, you'll start with the onions, slicing two big sweet ones and setting them in a hot pan with a couple of gurgles of olive oil. Season with salt, black pepper and a shake of red-pepper flakes, then cook over medium heat, stirring and tossing occasionally so that they go golden and soft. This’ll take a while. Add a couple of sliced bell peppers to the pan, and continue cooking, still stirring and tossing, until they begin to wilt. Set the vegetables aside. About halfway through, set some sweet Italian sausages in another hot, oil-slicked pan, and cook them through until crisp and brown on the exterior, turning often. Split your sub rolls (I like the sesame-seeded variety here) and scrape out a little of the interior from each. Load one side of each roll with some of the onions and peppers, the other with a sausage. Top with mozzarella, put the open sandwiches on a sheet pan and slide them all into a hot oven for five minutes or so, until the cheese is melted and the bread is lightly toasted. Fold together and serve. Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to receive it. You can find more no-recipe recipes here.
Chickpea Salad With Fresh Herbs and Scallions
A lighter, easier take on classic American potato salad, this version uses canned chickpeas in place of potatoes and favors Greek yogurt over mayonnaise. The trick to achieving the creamy texture of traditional potato salad is to mash some of the chickpeas lightly with a fork. It travels well, so it deserves a spot at your next picnic or desk lunch.
Strawberry Gingersnap Icebox Cake
Fluffy swirls of strawberry cream are layered with spicy gingersnaps in this summery, no-bake confection. The deep strawberry flavor comes through twice here: once in the mascarpone cream, which is whipped with berry purée, and in a scarlet topping spiked with lime zest and grated fresh ginger. We used Nabisco gingersnaps, but any brand should work, as could vanilla wafers. This cake is best made the day before you want to serve it, giving the gingersnaps a chance to soften into a luscious, soft cake.
Mississippi Mud Pie
Mississippi mud pies come in all shapes and sizes: No two are exactly alike. They can have one layer, or five, and include ice cream or meringue, a flourless cake, nuts, fudge sauce and even brownie. This version, inspired by the towering beauty made by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito of Baked in Brooklyn and written about in their book, "Baked Explorations," features a graham cracker base, a dense brownie, chocolate custard and whipped cream. Needless to say, a little goes a long way. Share it with 16 to 32 of your closest friends. And a tip for serving: To ensure a clean release, give the underside and sides of the cake pan a 10-second blast with a hairdryer.
Classic Potato Salad
The recipe for this Southern classic came from the chef Millie Peartree’s mother, Millie Bell. The sweet relish melds with the creamy potatoes for a deep, balanced flavor. Onion powder adds savory notes without the texture of diced onion, which could overpower the dish. Make sure that your eggs are rinsed thoroughly, so no pieces of shell remain, and that your potatoes are uniformly cut in roughly 1-inch cubes so they all finish cooking at the same time. (Millie Bell used her thumb as a measure.) And, most important of all, don’t overcook the potatoes — they take only 15 to 20 minutes to boil. You want potato salad, not mashed potatoes. You can prepare potato salad ahead of time and refrigerate it for up to 4 days.
Vegan Potato Salad With Tahini
This robustly seasoned vegan potato salad is lively and earthy from a dressing of cumin, charred scallion and loads of tahini, which gives it a rich and creamy texture. This is a good one to make a day before you want to serve it as the flavors get better as they sit. Just be sure to let it come to room temperature so everything is at its brightest and most supple.
Watermelon Margarita
Mixing cocktails may seem intimidating, but it’s actually quite intuitive once you understand how to balance the alcohol, sweetness and acidity. In “3-Ingredient Cocktails” (Ten Speed Press, 2017), Robert Simonson presents the formula for a perfect margarita: 1½ ounces tequila, 1 ounce Cointreau and 3/4 ounce lime juice, shaken and served. Even easier to memorize, this version uses 6 ounces fresh watermelon juice — a sweet but subtle nod to summer — and 2 ounces each tequila, Cointreau and lime juice. Be sure to taste and add more watermelon juice if your margarita is too boozy, and extra lime juice or even a pinch of salt if it’s too sweet.
Vegan Cheeseburgers
The new generation of vegan meat alternatives, such as Impossible and Beyond, are at their best when still medium-rare and juicy. Flipping the patties frequently as they cook ensures an evenly cooked interior and good flavor development on the exterior. To make the burgers vegetarian, feel free to use any good melting cheese, such as American, Cheddar or Swiss, but to make them strictly vegan, be sure to look for vegan burger buns, as standard supermarket burger buns frequently contain milk or other dairy products.
Black Bean Burger With an Egg on Top
This is a vegetarian burger that does not mimic the texture or look of ground meat, but it isn’t meant to. It’s more like the most excellent refried beans. Though you can serve this well-seasoned patty like a traditional burger, on a bun with the usual condiments, it is at its best topped with a fried egg. Dusted with fine cornmeal, the burgers are pan-fried as the mixture is too soft to grill. After frying, they are baked until crisp. For convenience, they may be fried in advance and reheated.
Vegan Roasted Banana Ice Cream
A combination of coconut milk, homemade cashew milk and cocoa butter gives this dairy-free ice cream its particularly luscious, creamy texture. Ripe bananas, roasted with brown sugar and coconut oil until caramelized and golden, add a deep butterscotch-like note. You’ll need to start this at least one day before you plan to serve it. Or make it up to a week ahead. Chopped bittersweet chocolate makes a fine substitute for the walnuts, or use 1/3 cup of each.
BBQ Pulled Chicken
Almost nothing beats a barbecue pulled pork sandwich, but this faster and leaner spin, which is made with roasted chicken thighs and breasts and a quick barbecue sauce, is a delicious alternative that only tastes like it took all day to cook. Serve on buns with a vinegary slaw and ranch or buttermilk dressing, if you like. For a smokier flavor, use a combination of sweet and smoked paprika. Like most barbecue recipes, this is even better reheated the next day.
Pressure Cooker BBQ Pulled Pork
A pressure cooker provides a nifty shortcut to perfect pulled pork. This recipe calls for braising the meat in a dark soda like Dr Pepper or Coca-Cola, and the results are lush and tender — savory, slightly sweet and tangy. Once the pork is done, you can customize it to your taste using your favorite barbecue and hot sauces. Adding lots of black pepper and a few dashes of Southern-style hot sauce, like Crystal, Louisiana or Tabasco, is a very good idea. Like many braises, the pork improves overnight and can be cooked up to three days in advance; shred and warm it gently on the stovetop before tossing it with sauce and serving. The pork makes satisfying sandwiches on soft rolls (try coleslaw as a topping), but it could also be used in tacos or served over grits. (You can find the slow-cooker version of this recipe here.)
Slow Cooker Chili
A great chili should be richly spiced, with layers of deep, savory flavor. Here, that big flavor comes from the usual contenders, but also from the unexpected additions of unsweetened cocoa, soy sauce and Worcestershire, which provide complexity. This recipe makes a thick, comforting chili that can be prepared in a slow cooker or in a Dutch oven on the stovetop. Chili is perhaps the ideal slow-cooker dish because its flavor improves with a long, slow simmer. This makes a big batch, perfect for a cold-weather get-together, but if you’re making it for a smaller group, the leftovers freeze well.
Elotes (Grilled Corn With Cheese, Lime and Chile)
Whole ears of corn are a classic street food in Mexico, where they are either grilled or boiled, then often dressed with some combination of lime, chile, mayonnaise and grated cheese. This grilled version calls for all of the above, which get mixed together into a creamy, bracing topping, and slathered all over the hot, sweet ears. It's not strictly traditional, but it does make it easier to assemble the corn and its dressing before serving. Or place the various topping in small bowls and let guests have the fun of garnishing their own. And if you don’t have a grill, the broiler works too though watch the ears carefully so they don’t burn.
Guacamole With Grilled Corn
This simple summer dip combines guacamole with sweet grilled corn and tangy Cotija cheese. The key to great guacamole is to pound the aromatics in a mortar and pestle or molcajete with salt, producing a guacamole with deep flavor from minimal ingredients.