18 Quick Grilling Recipes to Try This Summer
The best grilling recipes are often easier than you think. Combine the right ingredients for the sauce, seasoning, or marinade and you've got a winning dish you'll be serving during grilling season for years to come. Simple side dishes and vegetable mains can be the star of the show with the perfect sear. We've rounded up plenty of quick and easy recipe options for your grilling pleasure. Read on for some of our favorites.
Grilled Shrimp with Oregano and Lime
The sauce for this shrimp is a simple version of Italy's salmoriglio, typically made with lemon and herbs in a mortar. The sauce is also delicious spooned over grilled swordfish or any other meaty fish.
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Grilled Chicken Breasts with Lemon and Thyme
A bold mixture of red-pepper flakes, garlic, thyme, lemon juice, and olive oil serves as a spicy marinade for bone-in chicken breasts. If you want your chicken spicier still, increase the red pepper or leave the breasts in the marinade for an hour or two.
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Bacon Burgers on Brioche Buns
The burger at Tyler Florence's Wayfare Tavern in San Francisco is called Le Grand with good reason: It's a custom blend of ground prime rib, brisket, skirt steak and tenderloin, topped with Nueske's bacon and Cowgirl Creamery's triple-cream Mt. Tam cheese. The recipe is also delicious with a mix of chuck and sirloin.
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Sausage Mixed Grill
Prick fresh sausages all over before grilling to release the excess fat.
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Grilled Red Curry Chicken
Roasting a whole chicken takes about an hour, but cut out the backbone and flatten the bird and it will grill perfectly in 30 minutes. Melissa Rubel Jacobson rubs the chicken all over with a very simple, Thai-inspired mix of red curry paste, coconut milk and brown sugar.
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Grilled Apricots with Burrata, Country Ham and Arugula
Depending on the season, Travis Lett also makes this salad with plums, peaches and pears.
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Spicy Apricot Wings
An apricot-based sauce brushed on chicken wings before grilling gives them plenty of flavor; extra sauce is good for dipping.
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Chipotle-Marinated Flatiron Steak with Avocado-Corn Relish
The flatiron steak, a.k.a. the top blade steak, is a marbled cut of beef from the shoulder. Uniform in thickness and rectangular in shape (just like an old-fashioned iron), it's easy to butterfly for quick cooking on the grill. Here, Melissa Rubel flavors the meat with a bold Southwestern-style marinade made with smoky chipotle and fresh orange juice.
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Grilled Eggplant Parmesan
This grilled-vegetable version of eggplant Parmesan, like the one Grace Parisi's Calabrian grandmother used to make, is much lighter than the fried kind.
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Celery, Grilled Grape and Mushroom Salad
"Celery is a vegetable people either love or hate, and we try to get people to love all their vegetables," says chef Amanda Cohen. She sets off celery's bitterness and crunch with meaty oyster mushrooms and grapes that have been grilled until almost bursting.
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Grilled Tofu with Asparagus and Nori Vinaigrette
Lee Anne Wong plays with an array of Asian ingredients to create a wonderful marinade for extra-firm tofu or high-fiber tempeh (cakes made from fermented whole soy beans). Tempeh's nutty flavor and grainy texture make it an acquired taste, but Wong loves it here.
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Tuna Tacos with Onions
To accompany fresh tuna tacos, make a quick, vinegary, supercrunchy red-onion pickle. It's lovely with the warm, soft tortillas. To bump up the flavors of the tacos even more, add a dash of hot sauce and a healthy squirt of fresh lime juice.
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Grilled King Salmon with Meyer Lemon Relish
Floral and lightly acidic salsa brings out the buttery, rich flavors of grilled salmon. Salmon is meaty enough to stay intact on a grill and gets meltingly tender as it cooks, and you can save the leftover salsa to serve with grilled lamb, chicken, or pork.
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Grilled Pork Chops with Honey Garlic Glaze
A simple glaze, made of sticky-sweet honey, savory soy sauce, and fresh garlic, drenches each perfectly grilled pork chop in this recipe. For the most evenly cooked pork, with delicious char and grill marks, flip the pork frequently over high heat for the first several minutes of cooking, and then finish the meat on lower heat.
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Skillet Brownies on the Grill
Dessert deserves a place on the grill, too. These brownies take on a deliciously smoky flavor on the grill from "baking" in a skillet set over hot coals. Just remember to butter the skillet generously.
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Grilled Corn on the Cob with Calamansi Mayo
Chef Sheldon Simeon's recipe for a Hawaiian twist on Mexican elote features grilled corn slathered in a creamy, cheesy calamansi mayonnaise, which gets its acidic twang from a sour citrus fruit native to the South Pacific (you can substitute Key Limes in a pinch). Japanese chile flakes (ichimi togarashi) add heat; aonori (dried seaweed) flakes add umami oomph and island style.
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BLT Hot Dogs with Caraway Remoulade
Of course classic hot dogs are never a bad idea on the grill, but if you're looking for an easy upgrade this is it. These "BLT" hot dogs are topped with crispy bacon, fresh tomatoes and crunchy lettuce dressed with a creamy caraway-pickle mayonnaise.
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Grilled Shrimp and Lettuces with Charred Green Goddess Dressing
A salad that's anything but boring, this grilled shrimp gets an extra boost from the green goddess dressing. Charring the dressing ingredients before making it lends a smokey depth to the whole dish.