16 Summer Squash Recipes for Easy Dinners

Food & Wine's Laura Rege puts abundant summer squash and zucchini to good use in this beautiful and very simple gratin, which gets fantastic flavor from white wine, leeks and Gruyère cheese.

Both crunchy raw squash and tender grilled squash feature in this summer salad. With plenty of fresh herbs, tangy goat cheese melted into rich heavy cream, and nutty toasted seeds to balance the bright lemon juice on the squash, it's a complex-tasting but easy-to-prepare dish.

Summer squash is a bright addition to these quick and flavorful chicken fajitas. Any variety you have on hand—zucchini, crookneck, pattypan—would work well here.

Amanda Cohen loves to toss herb fettuccine with pickled squash blossoms and grilled zucchini. This simplified recipe features squash that's pickled and then grilled, plus freshly sautéed squash.

Traditionally called malaiwala, "the one with cream," this casserole is a Punjabi twist on a ratatouille-style summer side. Chef Cheetie Kumar suggests making this a main dish by adding cubed paneer, a firm Indian cheese.

Bagna cauda, the simple Italian sauce of olive oil, anchovies and garlic, flavors strips of grilled zucchini and yellow squash. The excellent topping: crispy fried capers.

Sun-dried tomatoes add lots of flavor to the sauce. If you prefer zucchini, you can use it in place of the summer squash.

Recipe developer Kay Chun makes her delicate, lightly spicy latkes with grated summer squash instead of potatoes.

This fast and easy side combines sautéed baby squash with scallions, shallots and parsley. It's a great way to showcase the vegetable's summer-fresh flavor.

Take a trip to the local farmers market and grab some yellow squash. Sweet dates, fresh mint, and toasted pepitas spiced with Tajín seasoning take this thinly sliced summer squash dish to the next level.

Match the earthy tastes here with an herbal Australian Cabernet Sauvignon.

This dish is chef Mathieu Perez's take on the classic Italian mozzarella-tomato-basil Caprese salad. It depends on young, very fresh zucchini and summer squash. To prepare the recipe like Perez does, grate the olives finely with a Microplane grater instead of pureeing them.

Epazote is a leafy herb with a pungent, bright flavor, with notes of citrus, mint, and oregano. It lends a savory depth to the summer squash, and pairs particularly well with dairy. Leaving the queso fresco in larger chunks allows it to soften slightly, but not completely melt into the dish.

While chef Sheamus Feeley likes to add pequin peppers, any chile flakes work well.

This gorgeous summer squash salad is tossed with a bright, lemony dressing.

The key, according to South American chef Francis Mallmann, is to be generous with all of the components. "Everything you see on a plate, you have to taste it. If you have mint, you have to have a lot of it so that you can taste it," he says