Barbecue Sauce, Hot Dogs, Grilled Chicken and More: 13 Easy Ways to Level Up Summer Favorites

It’s practically impossible to turn up your nose at boiled sweet corn, juicy tomato slices and salted, grilled chicken slathered in barbecue sauce. These are all pure, fleeting pleasures to soak up, fully, while they’re here.

To squeeze even more joy from these summertime treats, consider these small, simple switch-ups — unexpected pairings or preparations can recapture some of that initial giddiness. Here are 13 suggestions to make every bite feel like the first all summer long.

Barbecue Sauce

Use It for Salad Dressing

Barbecue sauce’s smoke, spice and sweetness can take a leaf from simple to deeply satisfying. Thin and brighten any barbecue sauce with lime juice, and then use it to dress a salad of sturdy and crunchy greens like kale and romaine, grilled vegetables, roasted potatoes, beans and more. If your sauce is particularly vinegary, use less lime juice; if it’s particularly sweet or thick, adjust with more.

Recipe: Barbecue Vegetable Salad | Roasted Potato Salad With BBQ Sauce

Peaches

Add Fish Sauce

If an ingredient’s sweetness is cranked to eight, nine or 10, the same can be done to its savory side. Peaches are assertively sweet, and fish sauce is assertively savory. Eat them together by dressing the cut fruit in a fish sauce dressing, and then enjoy the ride. (It’s also fun with watermelon and mangoes.)

Recipe: Pork Tenderloin With Corn, Peaches and Lime

Ice Cream

Drizzle Olive Oil

A thin drizzle of olive oil (the more flavorful, the better) on a few scoops adds a sheen and silkiness — a little luxury. While vanilla is a natural choice, olive oil is also delicious on coffee, hazelnut or strawberry ice cream or gelato. Crunchy flaky salt isn’t a bad idea, either.

Recipe: Ice Cream With Olive Oil and Dates

Zucchini

Cook It Way Past Done

Zucchini isn’t fussy. It can be sliced, diced, grated, seasoned boldly, eaten raw — it’s easy. A prime example of its laid-back nature is how you can (and should) overcook it. With high heat and copious olive oil, on the stovetop or in the oven, zucchini will release its flavorless water, sizzle and caramelize. Not only can it take the heat, zucchini also improves because of it, growing sweet and silky. Head here for more ways to upgrade zucchini.

Recipe: Caramelized Zucchini Pasta | Roast Chicken With Caramelized Zucchini and Leeks

Tomato

Add Tinned Fish

A tomato salad and a piece of grilled fish: Now that’s warm-weather eating. But tinned fish brings something else to the equation. Not only is it a pantry staple, ready to bulk up tomatoes, but its concentrated flavor is also a more forceful foil to the sweet tomatoes. Because tinned sardines, tuna, anchovies and other fishes are preserved, they have a more salty, briny, rich quality that fresh fish just can’t deliver. (And here are even more ways to upgrade tomatoes.)

Recipe: Tuna and Tomato Salad | Greek Salad With Sardines and Beans

Hot Dogs

Grill Parallel to the Grates

The default is to arrange hot dogs perpendicular to the grates, yielding stubby grill marks that carry less flavor (browning is flavor!) and leave much of the dog pale — not to mention letting them roll around. Avoid those problems by rotating the dogs 90 degrees and arranging them parallel to the grates. The grates make long grill marks down the whole length of the dog and act like a sling to keep it in place. Rotate every so often until the whole thing is sizzled crisp. (The same logic applies to grilled corn.)

Recipe: Grilled Hot Dogs

Watermelon

Pair It With Whipped Feta

Any longstanding relationship benefits from switching up routine. In the case of the Mediterranean pairing of watermelon and feta, that could mean whipping the feta with yogurt in a blender or food processor until it resembles whipped cream. Swoosh the fluffy mixture on a platter, and then arrange watermelon chunks on top. The partnership of sweet melon and salty cheese is still solid, just now in a silkier, visually striking form.

Recipe: Watermelon With Whipped Feta

Corn

Add Rosemary

You already know that corn goes well with bright, fresh ingredients like cilantro, basil, tomatoes or lime, but woodsy, earthy seasonings, like rosemary, can bring out corn’s warmth and nuttiness. It takes only a small quantity: Slather corn on the cob with rosemary butter, or add a sprig or two to cooking kernels.

Recipe: Skillet Pork Chops With Buttered Corn | Skillet Tortellini With Corn and Crispy Rosemary

Hot Dogs

Crush Potato Chips on Top

It’s common (and inspired!) to put potato chips on sandwiches and burgers. They add a salty crispness to the rich and juicy fillings, so why not let them do the same for hot dogs? The real question, then, is what kind of potato chip. A ruffled chip provides an audible and awesome crunch. Barbecue is logical. Sour cream and onion? You know you want to.

Strawberries

Sprinkle With Black Pepper

Corn with rosemary, peaches with fish sauce, watermelon with feta and now strawberries with black pepper. You may have caught onto a central theme to making the most of the season: Push sweet produce savory.

A few grinds of black pepper can electrify sliced strawberries without overwhelming them. The hit of spice is not unlike adding Tajín to mango — the fruit’s sweetness comes alive. It jumps and bounces.

Recipe: Strawberry-Basil Cottage Cheese Bowls

Grilled Chicken

Coat With Mayonnaise

You won’t taste it, but a coating of mayonnaise, instead of oil, on chicken before it hits the grill will do wonders, giving it a golden crust, keeping it from sticking and insulating it from burning. Consider pairing with a flavorful sauce, like Dijon mustard, or herbs and spices, like ginger. Mayonnaise can also help other ingredients that are prone to sticking, overcooking or burning on the grill, such as salmon, shrimp, turkey burgers and bread.

Recipe: Dijonnaise Grilled Chicken Breasts | Ginger-Lime Chicken

Ice Cream Sandwiches

Use Them to Build a Cake

Any time I make this ice cream cake, I cannot believe how fast it disappears — almost as fast as it takes to make it. Its timesaving hack is also what makes it irresistible: the layer of classic ice cream sandwiches between two layers of ice cream. Store-bought sandwiches give you three layers in one: two layers of chocolaty, caky cookies — which you didn’t have to bake yourself and are soft enough to slice through with your fork — along with a layer of fudgy vanilla ice cream. The other ice cream flavor is up to you. Mint is my favorite, though it’d also be great with coffee, chocolate, cookies and cream or peanut butter ice creams.

Recipe: Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Cake

S’mores

Turn Them Into Lemon Meringue Pie

When we have a toasted marshmallow on our hands, we’re programmed to look for the chocolate and graham crackers, but toasted marshmallow also reminds me of the torched meringue on a lemon meringue pie. So sometimes (only sometimes), I set aside the bittersweet accompaniments to a typical s’more and pick up the citrusy, creamy components to a lemon meringue pie.

This s’more starts with a Ritz cracker; its butteriness is reminiscent of pie crust. Spread the cracker with a little lemon curd, and then sprinkle it with flaky salt. Because lemon curd and marshmallows are both quite sweet, the salt helps keep the combination from cloying. Add your toasted marshmallow (don’t be shy on toasting it to well-done), and then smush it all together with another cracker. It’s a two-bite, fireside lemon meringue pie.

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