28 Quick Grilling Recipes to Try This Summer

By Megan Soll
Updated May 20, 2020
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, and you’ll never regret finding the perfect grilled fruit method for summer desserts. We’ve rounded up plenty of quick and easy recipe options for your grilling pleasure. Read on for some of our favorites.
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Grilled Shrimp with Oregano and Lime

Credit: © John Kernick
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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

Credit: © Ben Dearnley
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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

Credit: © John Kernick
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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

Credit: © Con Poulos
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Prick fresh sausages all over before grilling to release the excess fat.

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Grilled Red Curry Chicken

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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 Steak with Cucumber-and-Daikon Salad

Credit: © David Malosh
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Home cooks can use a grill pan or any kind of outdoor grill for strip steaks. The topping: lemon zest, chile, daikon and cucumber salad.

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Grilled Apricots with Burrata, Country Ham and Arugula

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Depending on the season, Travis Lett also makes this salad with plums, peaches and pears.

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Spicy Apricot Wings

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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

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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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Corn on the Cob with Seasoned Salts

Credit: © Con Poulos
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“Walk to pick it, run to cook it,” was the mantra back in the days when corn turned starchy within hours of harvesting. New varieties stay sweet and tender longer. Flavoring the ears here is a trio of seasoned salts.

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Grilled Eggplant Parmesan

Credit: JOHN KERNICK
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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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Grilled Oysters with Tabasco-Leek Butter

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“Oysters on the half shell can wobble on the grill,” James Holmes says. “That’s a good thing—some butter will spill onto the coals, which smokes the oysters at the same time.”

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Celery, Grilled Grape and Mushroom Salad

Credit: © Con Poulos
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“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 T-Bone Tostadas with Spicy Radish Salad

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The dish's spicy radish salad perfectly complements the grilled meat at the core of the recipe.

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Grilled Tofu with Asparagus and Nori Vinaigrette

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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

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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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Swordfish Skewers with Salsa Verde

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Chef Chad Colby uses fresh bay leaves on these fresh swordfish skewers, which imparts a lovely fragrance to the dish. Serve them with and Herby, citrusy Vermentino from Italy's Ligurian coast.

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Grilled Strip Steaks with Green Bean Chimichurri

Credit: © Fredrika Stjärne
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The chimichurri in this easy grilled New York strip steak recipe is a condiment and vegetable side all in one. Sliced green beans give the garlicky herb sauce extra crunch.

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Basque Grilled Fish

Credit: Justin Walker
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This recipe for grilled halibut was inspired by a meal Gail Simmons ate on the Bay of Biscay in Spain. The simple preparation lets the flavor of fish shine—if it’s really fresh, it won’t need so much as a slice of lemon to enhance it. Use a grilling basket to prevent flaky fish from falling apart during cooking.

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Barely Grilled Oysters with Sherried Garlic Butter

Credit: Jennifer Causey
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A brief trip to the grill is all these simple roast oysters with sherried garlic butter need for shellfish heaven. Serve with chilled wine and soak in summer at its finest.

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Grilled Garden Vegetable Salad

Credit: Chloe Crespi
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Chef Ludo Lefebvre says the key to perfect vegetable salads is properly cooking each vegetable. Blanching and shocking the green and wax beans before grilling gives them an evenly tender bite with delicious flavor from the grill.

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Grilled King Salmon with Meyer Lemon Relish

Credit: Victor Protasio
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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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Jerk-Grilled Lobster

Credit: Christopher Testani
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Gail Simmons’s lobster recipe takes things up several notches, with jerk paste stirred into the butter and used to baste the crustacean while it cooks over the flames.

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Grilled Pork Chops with Honey Garlic Glaze

Credit: Chloe Crespi
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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

Credit: Victor Protasio
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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 Peach and Pineapple Melba Sundaes

Credit: Victor Protasio
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Justin Chapple’s spin on the classic peach Melba takes advantage of the smoky flavor grilling lends to fruit for these Grilled Peach and Pineapple Melba Sundaes, which layers vanilla ice cream with grilled pineapple and peaches. The fruit in this sundae can be grilled outdoors on a gas or charcoal grill. Alternatively, grill the fruit indoors on a cast-iron grill pan.

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Grilled Corn on the Cob with Calamansi Mayo

Credit: Victor Protasio
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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

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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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By Megan Soll