Labor Day
317 recipes found
Grilled Hot Dogs
A crisp, snappy, juicy hot dog isn’t necessarily difficult to achieve, but two key steps ensure that yours won’t end up wrinkly, burnt or dry. First, let the flame mellow to a moderate heat, which will prevent bursting and provide ample time to pick up smoke from the grill. Second, arrange the hot dogs parallel to the grates. That way, the rods act like a sling, exposing more of the hot dogs for more browning and keeping them from rolling around. With a well-cooked hot dog, toppings can be as minimal or imaginative as you’d like. (For natural-casing hot dogs, see Tip.)
Honey Mustard Potato Salad
There exist entire worlds between a good potato salad and a bad one. The good ones have good potatoes that have been prioritized and not just boiled to death: perfectly steamed, not too wet on the inside or outside. This clever, lazy method — boiling the potatoes for half their cook time, draining them, then using the residual heat of the pot to steam the spuds until tender, like one does with, say, sushi rice — ensures perfectly creamy, pillowy potatoes, whose fluffy edges are excellent at soaking up a curried dressing, dyed golden with mustard, lightly inspired by those delicious honey-mustard pretzel pieces from the snack aisle. If your curry powder isn’t hot enough for you, then add a dash of cayenne pepper or your favorite fresh chile, finely chopped. Some like it sweet; if that’s you, add a pinch of sugar or another dribble of honey; taste and adjust as you go.
Angel Hair Pasta Salad
Light, bouncy angel hair makes for a surprisingly stellar pasta salad. Dressed in a simple mayonnaise and vinegar dressing, a rainbow confetti of raw vegetables shines in this chill, endlessly adaptable recipe. Salting the vegetables in advance, allowing them to sweat their excess moisture and then patting them dry, leads to crunchier, longer-lasting results. This salad keeps for up to 3 days in the refrigerator, covered; as it sits, the vegetables give off their flavor and fragrance to the blank-canvas pasta. Simply stir before serving to redistribute any dressing that has collected on the bottom of the bowl.
Strawberry Pretzel Bars
Old-fashioned strawberry pretzel salad, topped with gelatin, gets a modern makeover. Here, pretzels are tossed with graham cracker crumbs, then topped with a light cream-cheese mixture and finished off with strawberry jam and fresh strawberries, for a delicate sweetness. Cut the bars into bite-size pieces or bigger slabs. Either way, this old-new dish is sure to be a favorite.
Green Bean Salad With Dill Pickles And Feta
Green beans, feta and dill are old friends, but using dill pickles instead of dill contributes acid, crunch and verve to the classic combination. For maximum flavor, use pickles that are brined with fresh dill or dill seeds, and chill the salad for at least 30 minutes for refreshing, snappy bites. Keep in the fridge for up to 2 days to dole out alongside roast chicken or hot dogs, or on top of salad greens or grain bowls.
Chicken Pasta Salad with Grapes & Queso Fresco
This pasta salad feeds a crowd and hits all the flavor notes from sweet grapes to briny cheese and olives. Infinitely customizable, It's also a perfect make-ahead side that just gets better with time in the fridge.
Rotisserie Chicken Caesar Pasta Salad
This easy-prep pasta salad filled with rotisserie chicken, homemade Caesar dressing, ciabatta croutons, fusilli, and Parmesan comes together in one big bowl—perfect for summer BBQs.
Grilled Asparagus
Charred, sweet, crisp and tender, grilled asparagus is a goes-with-everything side dish. The only trick, really, is to buy spears that are at least 1/2-inch thick at the base to ensure they can grill long enough to blister and caramelize without completely turning to mush. While best hot off the grill — perhaps alongside grilled chicken, shrimp or cheese — you can refrigerate grilled asparagus for up to four days; chop the spears up and use them to bolster grain or green salads.
Hard Lemonade
This recipe is far removed from the spiked six packs of yore. The cocktail’s hard lemon base is a combination of fresh lemon juice, vodka or limoncello, simple syrup and a pinch of flaky sea salt. The salt serves to enhance, balance and brighten, while a final topping of bubbly soda water lengthens and elevates. When choosing between vodka or limoncello, follow your palate. Vodka offers a more straightforward flavor. The limoncello variation is sweeter — though nothing approaching cloying — and a bit more complex.
Norwegian Custard Buns (Skolebrød)
These cardamon-infused custard buns are filled with a vanilla bean custard, then dipped in a simple confectioner’s sugar glaze and coated with shredded coconut.
Upside-Down Peach Cobbler
This juicy pastry crosses a peach cobbler with a caramel-coated apple tarte Tatin. To make it, the peaches are caramelized with sugar in a skillet just like apples are in a classic tarte Tatin. But then, instead of being covered with pie dough or puff pastry, the fruit is topped with fluffy biscuit dough. While baking, the biscuits rise and brown, creating a golden, tender pillow on which the jammy fruit lands when it’s all unmolded. The whole thing is a bit more cakey in texture than the usual crisp-crusted Tatin, with the allure of fresh ripe peaches.
Fruit Salad
A bit of sugar and lime makes a standout fruit salad: The duo accentuates fruit’s flavors and sweetness while creating a syrup to gloss the fruit. Massage lime zest into the sugar so its oils release, then stir mixed fruit with the lime sugar and some lime juice. Taste and tweak until the result is electric. You could also add chopped mint or basil, ground cinnamon or coriander, vanilla bean seeds, chile flakes or grated fresh ginger.
Lemon-Blackberry Shortcakes
Berry season is the time for shortcakes, a classic dessert with berries, whipped cream and freshly baked sconelike biscuits. Here, a bit of sweet-tart lemon curd, prepared up to a week in advance and perfect with blackberries, makes these particularly special. Serve these assembled, on individual dessert plates, or, if you prefer, set out all the elements for guests to build their own.
Paprika-Rubbed Pork Chops
A marinade based on salt, sugar, ground coriander and various red-pepper powders infuses these easily pan-cooked chops. Double or triple the marinade for use on any fish, fowl, meat or vegetables (eggplant is especially nice). These chops can also be prepared on the grill. They cook quickly – 2 minutes on each side – over medium-high heat. Take care, though: Loin chops are quite lean and become tough and dry when cooked over high heat.
Turmeric Potato Salad
This French-style vinaigrette potato salad, infused with Indian flavors and finished with a tadka built on cumin and mustard seeds in oil, is a delicious picnic side, with or without the lettuce cups. Choose small, yellow-fleshed potatoes, such as Yukon, and top them with cherry tomatoes, sliced scallions, chiles and cilantro for a bright, perky and robust accompaniment to summer.
7Up Sheet Cake
This old-fashioned Southern dessert, commonly seen at potlucks, church picnics and family barbecues, is a true center-of-the-table cake. Part lemon cake, part sheet cake, it uses 7Up in two ways: first, for moisture and, second, for leavening, replacing traditional leaveners, such as baking soda or baking powder. The carbonation in the soda helps the cake rise and keeps it tender. (If you don’t have 7Up, you can also use Sprite.) While this cake is traditionally made in a Bundt pan, this recipe uses a half sheet tray, which is perfect for feeding a crowd.
Pimento Cheese Dip
This take on pimento cheese dip, a Southern favorite, brings together three cheeses (cream cheese, Cheddar and Colby Jack), mildly sweet pimentos and spicy hot sauce, then goes into the oven until deeply creamy. You could pair it with some crostini, but buttery Ritz crackers are especially good for scooping. They double down on this spread’s richness and make the dip irresistible enough to be a conversation piece for generations to come.
Oven BBQ Ribs
Oven-baked ribs are a great way to enjoy barbecue flavor without stepping outside. This is a foolproof, supersimple recipe, using seasonings you probably already have in your pantry, plus store-bought barbecue sauce that caramelizes into a sticky-sweet, smoky finish. Instead of using traditional pork ribs, this recipe uses beef back ribs, which are juicier. If you can only find them in chunks, rather than a whole rack, that’s more than OK: Wrap the pieces in aluminum foil, which creates a moist environment that yields fall-off-the-bone meat, and start checking them early. When they start to shrink down and the meat pulls away from the bone with the gentlest tug of a fork, they’re ready.
Grilled Chicken Legs
The best grilled chicken smells like summer. To achieve that charred aroma, you want to crisp the skin while cooking the meat through and keeping it juicy. Setting oil-slicked meat over direct, moderate heat and covering the grill prevents flare-ups, which can burn the skin before the meat loses its rawness. Because fire lends its own flavor, the chicken really doesn’t need anything more than salt and pepper, but if you want a little sweetness, savoriness and spice, you can brush on the simple soy glaze toward the end of cooking. As it heats, it caramelizes onto the skin and seeps into the meat. A final swipe of sauce over the chicken after it’s off the grill gives it a sticky shine.
Pulled Pork
This is party eating — and still easy enough to pull off for dinner whenever you want. Saucy and satisfying, it’s the type of dish that feels festive. Pulled pork from the American South ranges in styles, but usually balances the natural sweetness of the meat, slowly cooked until it slouches into tenderness, with tanginess and spice. Here, ground and whole dried chiles season the meat and blend into a sauce with fruity complexity and mild heat. The preparation is as inspired by barbecue pulled pork as it is by carne con chile rojo. That means that the glossy hunks and slivers of meat taste as good piled into buns as they do over rice or stuffed into tortillas.
Salted Margarita Bars
This edible cocktail is an ideal party dessert, mingling all the fun of a margarita — and its salted rim — with the efficiency of a slab pie. Key lime pie’s boozier, saltier cousin, it comes together quickly and maintains its consistency when frozen, making it a great make-ahead treat for a barbecue or a trip to the beach. Any tequila will work, but blanco is preferred for its milder taste. Don’t make the curd more than 10 minutes in advance, as the lime juice will start to thicken it, which could affect the bake.
Speculoos Cookie Butter Pie
Traditionally served on St. Nicholas Day in Belgium and the Netherlands, crisp, gingerbread-like speculoos cookies have risen in popularity after airlines began offering them as mid-flight snacks. Cookie butter, a creamy spread, incorporate that cookie’s flavors. This easy pie uses crumbled speculoos (also known as speculaas) in its crust and the cookie butter in its filling, doubling up on the flavor of warm spices like cinnamon and ginger. The whole thing comes together in about 30 minutes. The pie is perfect all on its own, but if you want to dress it up, add some unsweetened whipped cream and a sprinkle of cookie crumbs. Avoid sweetened whipped cream, which would take this pie from sweet to cloying.
Nigel Slater’s Raspberry Ripple Sandwich
This sandwich is a joyously messy experience and nostalgic even if you didn’t grow up in England eating raspberry ripple ice cream (which is vanilla with a raspberry swirl, for the rest of us). The recipe originally comes from Eat, Slater’s book full of simple, narrative recipe ideas, leaving the amounts to your taste and imagination. This mini recipe is adapted slightly from Genius Desserts (Ten Speed Press, September 2018), one of 7 ways to turn a loaf of bread into dessert.
Chocolate Cream Pie With Oreo Crust
Chocolate wafers may be standard, but a buttery Oreo crumb crust is an even better base for this chocolate cream pie. A store-bought cookie crust filled with from-scratch custard is the perfect combination of simple and sophisticated, with a bit of nostalgia for good measure. Depending on the size of your pie plate, you may have some custard left over after filling the crust: It’s a perfect baker’s treat.