20 Make-Ahead Dishes You Can Bring to Any Cookout

There’s just something sublime and comforting about creamy, tangy mayonnaise dressing stirred into pillowy chunks of potatoes and sprinkled with table salt and black pepper.

If you don’t know about succotash, you should. Like potato salad or coleslaw, it’s a frequent player at summer cookouts. While a classic succotash is all about corn, lima beans, and maybe some tomatoes or red bell peppers, this one, from Jeanine Donofrio of Love & Lemons, eschews the norm. Swap out the limas for chickpeas, add in a mix of tender summer squash, and boost the flavor with smoked paprika.

Cubes of sweet watermelon, chunks of crunchy celery, and savory feta cheese — this hybrid between fruit salad and savory salad has lazy lunch written all over it. Whole wheat couscous provides a nourishing base — it needs no cooking, just a few minutes of steaming.

The coconut rice and curried corn in this recipe could very well be eaten separately, and they would make fine additions to lunch or dinner, but the combination of the two is truly special. I call for my homemade Jamaican curry powder, giving the corn a complex spicy, sweet, and slightly sour flavor profile.

This is one of my favorites: A one-bowl butter cake, baked in a pretty dish, and topped with tangy whipped cream and piles of summer fruit. Easy as one-two-three, and beautiful too.

This icebox cake avoids shredded coconut entirely. The creamy layers come by their coconut richness without it, and the top is sprinkled with toasted flakes, which have more in common with nuts than hay. And then there’s the mango — lots and lots of mango.

It’s indulgent, yet light. It’s casual and simple, yet it doesn’t necessarily come off that way. It fits right in on the dessert table of your backyard barbecue, yet can hold its own at a dinner party.

These decadent pantry cocoa brownies that are so delicious, you may find yourself making them even when you have a kitchen packed with groceries.

If you’ve ever tasted an ice-cold glass of limoncello on a hot summer day, you know how amazing this Italian liqueur can be. Mixed into a sangria with fresh fruit, it’s quite possibly even better. This sangria is all of summer captured in one delicious pitcher.

This classic cocktail always seems to have the right amount of minty sweetness, just enough fizz, and a strong bourbon flavor. It’s a near-perfect sip on a hot porch in summertime.

After sweet tea, a refreshing glass of lemonade is the quintessential summer thirst-quencher in the South. I have memories of gallon-sized pickle jars filled with white sugar-laced lemonade that my maternal grandmother used to make at her home in Memphis.

There are thousands of recipes for sangria, each using a different combination of wine and fruit, so I don’t worry too much about whether this one is “authentic.” For the fruit, I like to use the ample supply of citrus in my local markets and gardens – thin slices of oranges, lemons, limes – plus an apple for crunch.