Side-Eyeing Your Stovetop? These Easy Dinners Are How I Stay Cool (Even If It's Hot As Hell Out)

Summer is the season of light bright flavors and minimal cooking, and this chicken pesto pasta is bringing all that—and more—to your weeknight table. Featuring store-bought pesto along with just six other ingredients, this 30-minute, one-pan meal is truly the lazy cook’s dream.

Get the Chicken Pesto Pasta recipe.

If summer had a flavor, it might taste a lot like this soup. Though we love our classic tomato-based gazpacho, the addition of watermelon gives the classic soup a welcome subtle sweetness we can't get enough of. Full of bright fruits and veggies, this no-cook soup is equal parts satisfying and refreshing.

Get the Watermelon Gazpacho recipe.

Also known as "Texas caviar", cowboy caviar combines fresh vegetables, beans, and corn to make a colorful meal that can be enjoyed with chips or as a standalone dish. But once you add some pearl couscous? It becomes the star of any picnic or summer potluck.

Get the Cowboy Caviar Couscous Salad recipe.

In our book, the Cobb salad just might be the perfect dinner salad. This classic recipe creates the perfect balance of textures and flavors, all tied together by the star of the show: our homemade dressing. While you can use store-bought, this homemade vinaigrette is not only easy to make, but truly takes this salad from basic to incredible.

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When we say you won't miss the tuna, we mean it; this creamy, zingy, crunchy "tuna" salad will satisfy all your canned fish cravings. We like to keep a can of chickpeas in our pantry at all times, so this easy lunch sandwich is always only 5 minutes away.

Get the Chickpea "Tuna" Salad recipe.

Chickpeas are our current obsession, so when we set out to create this vegetarian dinner (that's perfect for meal prep), we knew we had to combine them with our other obsession: peanut sauce. Put them together, and you've got paradise for dinner.

Get the Peanut Chickpea Protein Bowls recipe.

This versatile chickpea salad is a great side dish (hello, potlucks!) but can easily be a full meal on its own! Adding a spoonful of Dijon mustard to your red wine vinaigrette makes it creamier in both taste and body—consider it your secret weapon in making a classic dressing just that much better.

Get the Antipasto Chickpea Salad recipe.

This particular wrap is loaded with bright flavors and satisfying ingredients, making it hearty enough to keep you full at lunch time or as an easy, chill dinner. Filled with a zingy arugula-dill salad, sliced turkey, roasted red peppers, and crunchy cucumbers, and sealed with a creamy goat cheese spread, it's exactly the kind of colorful lunch we crave.

Get the Turkey Lavash Wraps recipe.

Love a Vietnamese summer roll but don’t want to fuss with the wrapper? Meet your new favorite summer dinner. Rice noodles, shrimp, avocado, thinly sliced veggies, and a plethora of greens are tossed together in a tangy nước chấm dressing for a refreshing dinner twist.

Get the Summer Roll Bowls recipe.

In restaurants, spicy tuna sushi rolls usually involve raw, sushi-grade fish. But if raw fish is out of reach, this recipe uses humble canned tuna. That’s not to say you can’t use the basic skeleton of this recipe for raw tuna if you can find it—just substitute in sushi-grade fish, finely chopped, and proceed onward!

Get the Spicy Tuna Roll recipe.

After an easy adobo and honey marinade, it only takes the shrimp a fast 4-ish minutes to cook. The rice can be done while the shrimp is marinating, then all that's left is prepping the toppings. It's the perfect quick, easy, and versatile meal that you'll have no problem enjoying all week long.

Get the Chipotle Shrimp Taco Bowls recipe.

This easy tortellini salad is ALWAYS a fave at picnics. Feel free to swap the sun-dried tomatoes here for fresh cherry tomatoes, use kale instead of spinach or bacon instead of salami, or replace the Parmesan with Pecorino or mozzarella. Anything goes!

Get the Tuscan Tortellini Salad recipe.

It wouldn’t be a Mediterranean menu without a Greek salad in some form or another—these cottage cheese bowls fit the bill. Packed with protein, nutrient-rich vegetables, and healthy fats (not to mention a whole lot of flavor), they’re the perfect breakfast, lunch, or satisfying snack.

Get the Greek Salad Cottage Cheese Bowl recipe.

We love this salad served on top of greens as much as we love it between two slices of sourdough bread. If you can't find a good ripe mango, pineapple would be delicious as well!

Get the Avocado Chicken Salad recipe.

A summer salad should be simple with minimal effort, allowing the summer produce to really shine. This couscous salad does just that. The only cooking required is bringing a pot of water to a boil, which is arguably not cooking at all. The rest is chopping up some fresh veggies and calling it a day!

Get the Summer Couscous Salad recipe.

While it may seem fancy, ceviche is actually a fairly simple dish at its core. All it involves is tossing raw seafood in lime juice, then letting the acid in the citrus “cook” the fish. Often bulked up with other mix-ins like tomatoes or cucumber, the result is a light and refreshing dish that’s a perfect summertime dinner or pre-dinner app.

Get the Ceviche recipe.

Creamy burrata on top of a tomato and basil gazpacho is the most refreshing no-cook summer meal we can imagine. Some gazpacho has bread in it for added texture, but for this version, we liked the idea of serving toasted bread alongside to dip into the soup and spread the burrata on.

Get the Gazpacho With Burrata recipe.

A classic French dish, Niçoise salad is a composed salad—similar to the American Cobb—that we can’t help but reach for in the summer months. It’s got everything: briny flavors, hits of umami, jammy eggs, hearty potatoes, and fresh veggies.

Get the Niçoise Salad recipe.

Rainbow rolls include a lot of elements of traditional Japanese sushi, but the composition is definitely Americanized. This inside-out roll (or uramaki) has rice on the outside, while the sheet of nori on the inside holds the avocado, cucumber, and crab in place.

Get the Rainbow Roll recipe.

An exuberant jumble of lettuce, chickpeas, chicken, salami, tomatoes, and cheese, all tossed in a Italian mustard-herb vinaigrette, this is one salad that might actually tempt us to put down the pizza in favor of the greens.

Get the CPK Italian Chopped Salad recipe.