The Best One-Platter Meals for Easy Summer Dinners

My favorite summer meal is one that can be served on a single platter. It make clean-up easy…just one serving dish. And I especially love the communal feel of everyone helping themselves to one big platter of food. A couple of summers ago, I did a blog series on our one-platter meals, and this post condenses all those recipes into one, easy to find post. Enjoy!

FRESHEST SUMMER SALAD

This is absolutely my favorite summer salad! I love its freshness. And I love watching people pick and choose their favorite toppings as the platter is passed. Instead of creating a salad bar for our family, with lots of little bowls that all need to be washed afterwards, just placing it all on one platter creates an instant salad bar. Dinner is easy. Clean up is easy.

SUMMER HUMMUS PLATTER

This one-platter dinner is a vegetarian option. Serving it with a crusty bread, focaccia, or a baguette and some good butter is all you need for a great, simple, summer meal. I love the mix of the freshness of the uncooked vegetables and the smokiness of the grilled vegetables and the spiciness of the hummus.

SMASHBURGERS AND OVEN BAKED FRIES

Sometimes I want a fat, juicy, steakhouse burger. And other times, especially because I’m a transplanted California native who misses In-n-Out burger, I want a thin burger where all the flavors meld in every bite and it’s dripping in cheesy goodness. So, when our son and daughter-in-law asked me, “Have you ever had a smashburger?”, I replied, “No. Tell me more!” And they went on to describe the most mouth-watering tale of sizzling skillets and smashing meat and double-stacked meatiness. So, we experimented, and there’s no going back! Smashburgers for the win!

These fries don’t skimp and will please even your heartiest eater. We loved how the whole feast was just piled high on one platter!

VERDE TACOS

Even though we live on the east coast now, I am a southern California native. And sometimes, I’ve just got to have good Mexican food, which can be difficult to find in this northeast corner of the United States. When I want a really tasty taco, this is my go-to recipe, Verde Tacos. Verde means “green” in Spanish, and this taco recipe calls for both green chilies and green salsa. One of the best parts of this one-platter meal is that you don’t have to heat up your kitchen to make it. The chicken goes in the crockpot! And you don’t even need to set the table with any silverware, because this is a super casual, hands-only meal. Summer at it’s best!

DECONSTRUCTED CHICKEN CAESAR SALAD

The one-platter dinner inspiration this week is a deconstructed Caesar Salad. I love serving salads on the Classic White Platter for a couple of reasons. It saves me the time of making individual salads for everyone at the table. And I love it because, unlike a salad bowl, it’s easier for everyone to see the ingredients to pick and choose what they want to add to their own salad.

CHARCUTERIE DINNER FOR FOUR

For my full blog post on the questions I ask myself when assembling a charcuterie board, click here. To build the one just as pictured, click on the button below for my full list of ingredients.

CHICKEN LETTUCE WRAPS

Our family is wild about this Chicken Lettuce Wrap! It is sweet and spicy and cool and crisp. And there’s something so refreshing about a lettuce wrap. I used the Condiment Bowls on each person’s plate to hold a bit of store-bought dipping sauce, sprinkled with some chives from our garden. The platter held everything else we needed, and we each just helped ourselves.

PROSCIUTTO CANTALOUPE DINNER

The Prosciutto Cantaloupe Summer Dinner is about as easy as it comes. No heating up anything in the kitchen to enjoy this meal. Everything is fresh, except the asparagus and bread, and those simply go on the grill for a few moments. A real taste treat is to take a forkful of the Burratini cheese with a forkful of prosciutto…the creaminess and smoky flavors are fabulous together! This recipe will serve 3-4 people, but you can easily increase the quantities of everything to serve more people.

SUMMER STEAK SALAD

You can, of course, grill a steak specifically for this Summer Steak Salad. But really, the easiest way to have a steak salad is to just grill an extra steak a couple of days before this meal, and then slice up the leftover steak the day you make the salad. I love that, because the salad can really be thrown together in just a matter of minutes. No grilling. No cooking. Just eating!

BRUSCHETTA PLATTER

Bruschetta is one of our favorite summer meals! It is summer in a bite. It’s proof that the simple things in life really are the best. The Bruschetta Platter is just a few ingredients, and is perfect for those hot summer nights.

SUMMER RICE BOWL

This week’s Summer Rice Bowl recipe has been my favorite of the summer. It fed the three of us (all adults) with abundant leftovers. Possibly, the only thing better than eating it hot for dinner, is eating the leftovers cold as a salad, the next day. After dinner, I stirred all the ingredients together and refrigerated them overnight. The next day, for lunch, I simply mixed in some of Trader Joe’s Green Goddess Salad Dressing (refrigerated section of the store), and it was fabulous! Don’t be daunted by the long ingredient list, or the little extra prep work to make this. Your taste buds will thank you in the end. And it just feels right to be cooking with so much flavor and freshness during the summer months.

I hope having all these recipes in one, easy-to-find place will make summer menu planning a breeze for you! For the Classic White Platter, which perfectly holds all these meals, shop here.