Fridge-Raid Dinners and No-Cook Salads for Hot Weather
When temperatures soar, the last thing you want is to spend hours over a hot stove. Instead, assemblies of raw ingredients offer a terrific choice for lo-fi, hot-weather meals that require minimal cooking. As one food writer notes, these weeks of endless salad-eating are the result of experience, especially during the hottest summer on record. For those seeking more than just a glass of rosé and a bag of crisps for dinner, there are plenty of satisfying options.
Rubrics for a Fridge-Raid Dinner Salad
Tom Hunt's rubric for a fridge-raid dinner salad uses whatever you have on hand, avoiding the need for special ingredients and sweat-inducing shopping trips. Similarly, Meera Sodha's no-cook salad of tomatoes, chickpeas, and rose harissa delivers fibre and flavour without so much as a struck match. The Feast archive by Yotam Ottolenghi offers gems like tomatoes with mango-miso dressing and courgette and cantaloupe salad. His lime and poppyseed slaw with curry leaf oil has accompanied almost every barbecue, with citrus juice softening shredded cabbage, carrot, and onions, topped with maple-turmeric cashews.
Minimal Cooking Options
For those willing to do a little cooking, Margot Henderson gives cauliflower florets a quick roast and leek discs a fleeting blanch to make a resilient salad with chickpeas, herbs, and yoghurt dressing. Fergus Henderson's anchovy and roast tomato salad is salty, sweet, herby, crunchy, and loaded with Dijon mustard. Anna Jones's summer taco salad puts roast tomatoes to work with black beans, smoked tofu, feta, romaine, and tortilla chips, softened under a lime-chilli dressing—perfect for a World Cup final snack.
More Summer Salad Inspirations
Joe Woodhouse's Moroccan carrot salad is ideal alongside grilled halloumi and roast peppers, lasting well into the next day. Georgina Hayden's hot-weather remix of a Greek classic—broad beans in tomato sauce—involves minimal hob time, crowning grated tomatoes with beans and lots of feta. For drinks, lower ABV options are recommended in temperatures above 30°C. Little Pomona in Herefordshire makes ciderkins from already-pressed apple skins, including one with quince (3.8% ABV). Domaine des Grottes in Beaujolais produces Piket-Nat, a fizzy grape juice made from upcycled pressed gamay with a 5% kick.
Embracing the Crisp Meal
Even a crisp meal can be enjoyable. Food writer Ella Risbridger's crisp, feta, and dill arrangement—simply tossed on a plate—offers an absurd but thoroughly delightful dinner option. As one writer puts it, crisp days are a thing too.
