How to Be Cool During Summer Cooking

Welcome to summer, my friends! The season of sunshine, outdoor dining, lake days, and SIMPLE summer cooking!

In case you don’t know this about me, I live in an 1880 Victorian home in Minnesota that is without central air conditioning. Since it is winter about 6 months out of the year, and less than 80 degrees for another 4-5 months out of the year, the days where we really wish we had it are held to a minimum.

But, in the past week, we have had four days that were almost 100 degrees, and on those days it gets HOT inside!  On those days, we try really hard not to use our oven or stove. This gets a bit more tricky when peak food preservation time starts in August. I can assure you the hottest I have ever been was while canning something or other in my kitchen. But, the garden harvest doesn’t wait, so we do what we have to do.

Anyway – when we CAN get by without heating up the kitchen in those hot summer days, we do!  I thought I’d share a few tips about it with you today.

Grilling and Smoking

This one is kind of a no-brainer of course. When most of us think about summer meals, we think about hamburgers, hot dogs, grilled chicken, vegetable kebabs, baked potatoes, and more. We often use our charcoal grill and/or electric smoker. It’s a bonus when you can cook the whole meal on it!

Cooking with an Electric Griddle

Cooking outside with an electric griddle also can save some heat in the kitchen. You can make grilled sandwiches, fry bacon, make eggplant Parmesan, vegetable cakes, burgers, or hot dogs if you don’t want to fire up the grill, and more. I regularly make sourdough English muffins on my griddle too!

Cooking with an Electric Roaster

One of my favorite summer cooking tips is to take our electric roaster outside and cook things like whole turkey breast, whole chicken, pork loin, ham, etc. We often do this and use the meat for easy lunches and dinners.

Though all of these things make great sandwiches, you can also use the meat for a variety of easy dinners, too.

Cooking with a Slow Cooker or Multi-Cooker

We don’t often use our slow cooker or multi-cooker, but if you do – there are lots of things you can make in them that don’t add much heat to your kitchen. The Skinnytaste One and Done cookbook is filled with amazing recipes you can make in your slow cooker, multi-cooker, or air fryer. I also like the Not Your Mother’s Slow Cooker Cookbook.

Cooking with an Air Fryer

You can make the very best homemade french fries and other types of potatoes in the air fryer. To be honest, this is primarily what we cook in our air fryer. But, you can cook steak, hot dogs, fried chicken, vegetables, and more in this thing!

When You Just Have to Bake

Sometimes, you will just have to use your oven and that’s all there is to it. For this, I suggest trying to combine your efforts and bake several things at once if possible.

Sourdough bread is one thing I still bake in the summertime, though I do have an electric breadmaker  that I use for the kneading process and sometimes I bake Bread Machine Sourdough Bread in it with decent results.

So, next time I bake bread, I will try to also throw in some potatoes or sweet potatoes, and maybe have some cake or muffins or something ready to bake when my bread is done. You do want to be careful with mixing these things, so you don’t affect rise/bake time of your bread – but basically I’m saying don’t turn your oven on just to bake one thing if you can help it.

Batch Cooking and Freezing

Regardless of which cooking device or method you use, one of my best tips is to do batch cooking and freezing to get you through the hot summer months. For example, we bought a HUGE package of chicken thighs yesterday and smoked them all last night.

We will eat a few of them, but most of them will get frozen. When we need some chicken for a pasta dinner or chicken salad or whatever, we can just grab a couple out of the freezer.  They will also be great for making my BBQ Chicken Salad recipe.

This is also what we do with the meat I mentioned cooking in the electric roaster.  You can also fry a bunch of bacon and freeze it cooked and ready to go. One of my favorite make-ahead meals is freezer breakfast burritos for quick and easy breakfasts. When our eggplant is ready in the garden, we always make large batches of eggplant Parmesan and freeze them in dinner-for-two portions to enjoy throughout the year. We also like to smoke pork shoulder and freeze pulled pork for sandwiches, pizza, and more.

We also like to make several varieties of homemade pizza, but it’s not like you really want to turn the oven to 425 during these months. On a cooler day, you could make a few pizza crusts, prebake them a bit and freeze them that way. Pull them out and you can easily make a grilled pizza!

So, think about the things your family enjoys, and what you might be able to batch cook and freeze ahead to save time. On the next cool morning or evening, you’ll be surprised what you can knock out in just a few hours to save loads of time later!

Simple Summer Cooking Ideas

Do I have your ideas flowing yet?  A few more simple ideas for summer meals (that can be combined with the cooking methods above and/or my suggestion to batch cook and freeze):

• BLT sandwiches
• Veggie/pasta salads – potato salad is great but keep going! Coleslaw, kale salad, broccoli salad, Italian pasta salad, macaroni salad, and more! Fruit salad is also an option.
• Chicken salad for sandwiches (or tuna salad, egg salad, etc.)
• Chef’s salad with garden veggies and some type of meat from your cook-and-freeze day
• Loaded veggie and meat pasta
• Pizza (again, use those fresh veggies from your garden or farmer’s market!)
• Tacos (cook and freeze the meat ahead, chop up your fresh veggies and you’re done!)

My Latest Live Video

I went live on social media this week about all of the summer cooking tips I shared in this post. Check it out below!

What’s YOUR favorite summer meal?

Tell us what it is and how you cook it in the comments!