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It’s not for everyone, but meal planning, sticking to the grocery list and not letting any leftovers go to waste made it possible, but not easy.

By Kevin Pang

Published Aug. 17, 2026 Updated Aug. 17, 2026

I’ve never been one to stick to a grocery list. My primordial brain grabs packaged salads and barbecue chips without a flicker of thought.

But I recently set out to slash $50 from my typical weekly grocery budget, so I had to start paying attention. My goal was to shop and feed my family of three — breakfast, lunch and dinner, no dining out — for one week for about $200. That sounds like a nice, big number, but broken down, that’s less than $10 a day for each of us.

My wife, Anne, and I live in the Chicago suburbs with our picky 10-year-old boy, Liam. Statistically, we are middle class. For the purposes of this experiment, we looked to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Plans, whose “Thrifty” option, the least expensive and used to determine SNAP benefits, meant a weekly budget of $196.25 before tax, not counting the salt, oil, rice and leftover snacks already in our pantry. (While many consider the thrifty plan insufficient and out of date, others do still use it as a starting point, as it was for our purposes.)

It is also somewhat unusual for us to cook every meal at home — we do dine out once or twice a week — but I was hoping to approach it as a creative cooking exercise, to learn lessons and write some recipes I could share.

As always, meal planning started on Sunday. But rather than writing down what sounded good and learning the damage at checkout, I worked backward from the number.

No more impulse buys permitted, we walked the aisles of our favorite grocery store, Fresh Farms in Niles, Ill., with purpose. Liam’s peanut butter sandwich called for strawberry jam, but grape jelly was cheaper, so grape jelly it was.

We could stretch our budget even further if we didn’t insist on buying some things organic. How big of a difference will it make? Questionable. But we feel good doing so. We don’t buy organic everything, but we do often opt for it when it comes to eggs, milk, cream and certain vegetables that are tougher to wash.

At checkout, we nervously watched the total creep toward $196.25. When it went over, we asked the cashier to swap the $4.35 baba ghanoush for the $3.77 hummus still on the belt.

What We Bought

PRODUCE

Fava beans ($6.40), two boxes of cherry tomatoes ($5), two avocados ($5), organic broccoli ($3.41), cauliflower ($2.89), white peaches ($2.15), lacinato kale ($1.99), seedless cucumber ($1.99), organic bananas ($1.90), organic carrots ($1.29), lemons ($1.10), scallions ($1), Idaho potato (92 cents), garlic (88 cents), ginger (67 cents), lime (58 cents), yellow onion (57 cents), jalapeño (15 cents)

MEAT

Pork shoulder ($14.98), ground beef ($8.16), chicken thighs ($7.68), chorizo ($7.29), bacon ($5.49)

DAIRY

Organic 2-percent milk ($6.29), dozen organic eggs ($5.99), organic heavy cream ($5.19), butter ($4.99), ricotta ($4.59), two containers of Greek yogurt ($3.38), shredded cheese ($2.79), sour cream ($1.99), peach kefir ($1.49), mango kefir ($1.49)

BREAD AND PASTA

Granola ($7.99), whole-wheat bread ($4.99), sourdough baguette ($2.99), sesame flatbread ($2.79), noodles ($2.29), flour tortillas ($1.49)

PANTRY AND OTHER ITEMS

Instant coffee ($9.49), mayonnaise ($4.99), Cheddar Sun Chips ($4.99), tomato passata ($4.49), ketchup ($3.99), hummus ($3.77), toasted sesame oil ($3.49), chili powder ($3.45), rice vinegar ($2.99), chunky peanut butter ($2.99), grape jelly ($2.99) soy sauce ($2.29), bucatini ($2.29), canned refried beans ($1.79)

Pretax Total: $196.22
With Sales Tax: $200.63

What We Ate

With our shopping done, we did a little meal prep: We roasted broccoli, tomatoes and cauliflower, blanched some fava beans and made pork carnitas (using just water, salt, pepper, and chili powder from our pantry), setting aside a few pork cutlets to fry later in the week to eat atop rice and Japanese curry.

Day 1

Breakfast: Yogurt and coffee (Kevin); two scrambled eggs, half banana and coffee (Anne); granola, milk and half of a banana (Liam)

Lunch: Hummus, sesame flatbread, cucumber, ricotta, tomatoes and fava beans (Kevin and Anne); peanut butter and jelly sandwich and Sun Chips (Liam)

Dinner: Fava beans on toasted baguette with ricotta, garlic, herbs and lemon zest (Kevin and Anne); sesame flatbread with hummus and cucumber slices (Liam)

Day 2

Breakfast: Poached eggs, wheat toast, peaches and coffee for the grown-ups

Lunch: Flatbread, hummus and roasted broccoli (Kevin and Anne); peanut butter and jelly sandwich and Sun Chips (Liam)

Dinner: Bacon cheeseburger meatballs, burger sauce, oven fries and roasted broccoli

Day 3

Breakfast: Wheat bread, ricotta, roasted cherry tomatoes and fava beans (Kevin and Anne); granola, banana and yogurt (Liam)

Lunch: Grilled cheese with roasted tomatoes (Kevin and Anne); peanut butter and jelly sandwich and potato chips from the pantry (Liam)

Dinner: Chorizo amatriciana

Day 4

Breakfast: Cheese omelet (Kevin and Anne); granola and banana with milk (Liam)

Lunch: Leftover chorizo amatriciana and sautéed kale (Kevin and Anne); grilled cheese sandwich (Liam)

Dinner: Carnitas, flour tacos, guacamole, homemade salsa, pickled onions and shredded Mexican cheese

Day 5

Breakfast: Eggs poached in salsa, guacamole and charred flour tortilla (Kevin and Anne); yogurt and banana (Liam)

Lunch: BLT and chips from the pantry

Dinner: Sesame soy chicken with ginger-scallion noodles

Day 6

Breakfast: Scrambled eggs and wheat toast

Lunch: Flour tortilla, cucumbers, pickled onions and roasted tomatoes (Kevin and Anne); Carnitas tacos (Liam)

Dinner: Cauliflower bacon toast, very similar to this (Liam and Anne. Kevin ate at a work event.)

Day 7

Breakfast: Granola, yogurt and coffee for the grown-ups

Lunch: Cauliflower bacon toast (Liam and Anne); stir-fried noodles with leftover ginger-scallion sauce with a fried egg (Kevin:)

Dinner: Japanese curry, rice and fried pork cutlet

What We Learned

We ate really well all week long, but — and this is a big “but” — it did require a lot more work on the front end. (And I’m a recipe developer by trade who works from home, so I’m ahead of the game.) The additional $50 we’d normally spend is for convenience — a microwavable frozen dinner here, a jar of marinara there — and, for working parents with children, it’s a premium many don’t have a choice but to pay.

In the end, I developed a few money-saving habits that also pushed me to cook more creatively with simple ingredients.

1. Assign a role to everything in your cart.

Instead of buying whatever looks good and figuring out what to do with the leftovers once I had them, I planned for them. I bought a three-pound hunk of pork shoulder with two futures already assigned to it: carnitas and fried cutlets. I sliced several thick cutlets off, and tucked them into the freezer.

2. Give leftovers a new life.

Dinner one night can be transformed to something else entirely the next day with a few additions. We made pasta amatriciana one night, and the following, I added a dollop of ricotta and chili crunch. It tasted like a different dish. Simply changing the texture can make leftovers taste new: Chewy boiled noodles become crispy when stir-fried the next day.

3. Use your sheet pan.

When I took on this challenge, the country was in the throes of a cyclosporiasis outbreak. Lettuce, which would normally fill several lunch and dinner salads, was off the table, so we relied on the Jalen Brunson of kitchen equipment: the sheet pan. We roasted broccoli, cauliflower and tomatoes, then saved them to tuck into grilled cheese, spoon over ricotta toast or pile onto a charred tortilla with cucumbers and pickled onions. We felt so Mediterranean.

4. Buy produce that lasts.

By Day 6, I was running on creative fumes, and it was mainly an inventory problem. Much of the delicate produce — peaches, fava beans — was gone by the third day. Sturdier fruits and vegetables like apples and cabbage, or frozen fruits and vegetables, which often have more nutrients because they are frozen at peak freshness, could have carried us further.

5. Add a twist to traditional dishes to make them exciting.

Try taking a well-known dish and altering one ingredient to make the meal feel novel to get you excited about it. Liam thought of adding bacon and cheese to meatballs, resulting in bacon cheeseburger meatballs, a new family favorite. Instead of guanciale in the pasta amatriciana, I subbed in the less expensive Spanish chorizo, which gave the sauce a lovely smokiness no amatriciana has any business having. It was delicious.

6. Put an egg on it.

There’s nothing more magical than the mighty egg. Now that egg prices have stabilized a bit, we enjoyed them many ways during the week. For breakfast, a soft-boiled egg with one end lopped off and a knob of butter dropped into the yolk became an “egg dipper” to my son. For dinner, I topped ginger-scallion noodles and chicken with a fried sunny-side-up egg.

Sign up for the Cooking newsletter, and in a few weeks, I’ll be in your inbox sharing a few more simple recipes from this meal plan.

If you’d like to share your grocery budget tips and, if you’d like to see this as a series, done in another location or on a different budget, let us know. Drop a line to margaux@nytimes.com.

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A Good Appetite

It’s a light, brothy take that showcases fresh corn and tomatoes.

By Melissa Clark

Melissa Clark loves soup all year long.

Published Aug. 14, 2026 Updated Aug. 14, 2026

Of all the soups in the American canon, chowder is one of the most divisive. Is it even a soup or more of a stew? Are clams or other seafood mandatory? Should it be white, clear or tomato-red? And where do vegetables like corn fit in?

The word “chowder” is most likely borrowed from the French chaudière, meaning cauldron, brought to Newfoundland by Breton fishermen. The earliest recipes date back to the 18th century. These were hearty stews made by layering fish, salt pork, onions and ship’s biscuits into the pot, and then letting it all simmer into something thick and satisfying.

Recipe: Brothy Corn and Salmon Chowder

Over the centuries, distinct regional styles developed, each with its own panache. New England favors seafood and potatoes in a pale, milky base. Manhattan swaps tomatoes for the dairy. Rhode Island makes a clear, brothy soup that highlights the saline flavor of the clams. And at some point in the 19th century, corn made its way into the pot, sometimes edging out the seafood entirely.

Since I have no roots in New England, Rhode Island nor even really Manhattan (I’m a native Brooklynite), I’ve never felt loyalty to a particular style. So, my latest take borrows from all of them. The broth is light and clear, a nod to Rhode Island. Cubed cherry tomatoes lend a colorful Manhattan flair. Corn and potatoes give it the sweetness and heft of a good vegetable chowder. And those looking for New England can stir a spoonful of heavy cream or yogurt into your bowl without having to commit the whole pot.

The biggest chowder outlier in my recipe is salmon, which I season with a large and untraditional dollop of horseradish. But the pink fish works well, adding its sweet flavor and velvety flesh to the mix of potatoes and corn, while the horseradish perks everything up with its inimitable zing.

If you have fresh corn, be sure to throw the naked cobs into the broth with the potatoes as they simmer; the cobs release a subtle earthiness that you won’t get from the kernels alone. But if you’re cob-less, frozen corn also works well, making this is a soup for all seasons.

And this is one of its many charms. In winter, like all soups, it’s warming and restorative. But July and August are when it really shines: a light and summery tribute to fresh corn and tomatoes at their peak.

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When there’s chislic around, a cold beer and saltines must also be on hand.

By Jed Portman

Published Aug. 14, 2026 Updated Aug. 14, 2026

On a recent trip to Denver for a Morgan Wallen concert, Nancy Kreulen was craving chislic.

“Every restaurant I went to, I was looking for it,” said Ms. Kreulen, a retired teacher and an owner of A Homestead Brew, a brewery in Valley Springs, S.D.

“The three girls I was with — one’s from Denver, one’s from Minneapolis, one’s from California — said, ‘Nancy, don’t you know that’s a South Dakota thing?’”

Recipe: Chislic (Seared Steak Bites)

If you live in southeastern South Dakota, like Ms. Kreulen, you might be surprised to learn chislic isn’t as common as chicken wings. Inside the so-called Chislic Circle, a 30-mile radius around the town of Freeman, defined by the writer Rich Preheim in 2005, the meat skewer has been part of the culture for generations. In and around nearby Sioux Falls, the state’s largest city, new takes have popped up on bar and restaurant menus in recent years, encouraged by the South Dakota Legislature’s 2018 decision to name chislic the “state nosh.”

Chislic isn’t a hard sell. “It’s meat nuggets with garlic salt, on a saltine, with a cold Busch Light,” said Jon Lauck, a Midwest-focused historian who lives in Sioux Falls. Historically made from mutton, but now just as often beef, skewered or loose, deep-fried or griddled, it has obvious appeal as a bar snack or appetizer. And yet, it’s hardly crossed state lines.

Its closest relative is on the other side of the world: Shashlik, a meat skewer that’s related in both the linguistic and culinary senses to shish kebab, still sizzles on charcoal grills across the former Soviet bloc.

Shashlik came to southeastern South Dakota in the late 1800s with “Germans from Russia” — ethnic Germans who homesteaded in the Russian Empire, where they presumably learned to make mutton or lamb skewers from their Crimean neighbors, before moving to the Midwest. Over time, they adapted it to the realities of life on the Plains.

Wooden skewers replaced metal shampur

“On a treeless prairie, you don’t have the lumber to grill meat over coals,” said Marnette Hofer, the executive director of the Heritage Hall Museum and Archives in Freeman and an organizer of the town’s popular Chislic Festival.

Settlers had plenty of tallow on hand from farmstead butchering. Heating a kettle of fat, which could be done with cheap fuel like corn cobs or dried grass, was more efficient than building a coal bed from precious hardwoods.

That’s the story behind what Ms. Hofer and others in the Chislic Circle consider real

“To me, it has to be sheep, and it has to be on a stick,” said Abby Streyle, manager at Meridian Corner, a roadhouse outside Freeman, S.D., that still serves the traditional version, along with nearby bars and restaurants, such as Beer Garden in Menno and the Dugout in Tripp. “Otherwise, it’s not chislic.”

Most of the chislic in South Dakota no longer meets that standard.

At the 65-year-old Bud’s Tavern in Marion, less than 20 minutes away from Freeman, Adam Stewart, the owner, explained that he finally took his mutton chislic off the stick because the cost of skewering was too great. “Our chislic was stuck” — meaning skewered — “for many years,” he said, “but I’d have to charge almost twice as much for that.” He doesn’t think an order should cost $30.

In other parts of the state, chislic can look a lot like steak tips: cubed beef, served loose. Beef is easy for restaurants to get, and more familiar in newer markets like Sioux Falls.

“We have a beef culture in South Dakota,” Mr. Lauck said. “People tend to revert to beef.”

Kevin Huber, the chief executive of IT Outlet in Brandon, who has been advertising his firm with rapid-fire chislic tasting videos since 2020, has tried more than 120 versions of chislic, mostly in the Sioux Falls area. “The true

The drift toward beef is just the beginning.

Sheep Flockers, a regional food truck with a cult following, specializes in mutton chislic, as its name suggests, but also sells beef and pork chislic. Red Rock Bar and Grill in Rowena, which topped the Sioux Falls Argus Leader’s local chislic rankings, uses mutton, beef and white-meat chicken. In 2018, a sleek fast-casual concept called Urban Chislic opened in a Sioux Falls strip mall, eventually serving lamb, beef, fish, pork, chicken, bison, pheasant, venison and alligator bites, with 18 sauce and nine dry-rub options. (Its tagline? “Experience the Chislic Revolution.”) Guy Fieri praised the sticky-sweet, cheese-smothered pork chislic barbecue sandwich, before Urban Chislic shut down in 2024.

The steakification of chislic includes a transition from deep-fryer to flattop griddle, which some restaurateurs and diners strongly prefer. “When you fry chislic, it gets tough on the outside, chewy and barely done on the inside,” said Kyle Sturzenbecher of Sheep Flockers, which won Best Traditional Chislic at the Chislic Festival in 2019, 2021 and 2022, adding, “When you cook it on the flattop, it’s like eating a steak.”

Chislic is changing. It’s also thriving. Yes, some restaurants now serve it with sides of barbecue sauce and ranch. But as the dish gains popularity, a new generation of chislic tourists is seeking out the skewered-mutton original. And adaptation has been part of chislic’s story since before it was shashlik, which itself came from a long line of meat skewers cooked over nomads’ ancient campfires.

Even one of the most senior members of chislic’s old guard has warmed to a new approach: “I’ve got customers who air fry it, and that’s the only way they’ll eat it,” said Kenny Konrad of Kaylor Locker in Kaylor, who’s been selling skewers in the Chislic Circle since the 1960s. “They’ll come in: ‘You ever try the air fryer?’ Yeah. ‘You like it, don’t you?’ Well, yeah. You won’t overcook it that way. It’ll stay nice and juicy.”

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Inspired by elotes and tossed with chaat masala, this quick, easy recipe is the perfect summer side (or snack).

By Yotam Ottolenghi

Yotam Ottolenghi is a food columnist for The New York Times Magazine and the author of multiple cookbooks. He is the chef-owner of five Ottolenghi delis in London, as well as the NOPI and ROVI restaurants.

Published Aug. 12, 2026 Updated Aug. 12, 2026

After years of promising my children and myself the trip, we finally made it to Japan in April. It was 12 days of solo ramen booths, onigiri wrestled out of their wrappers (there’s a knack, I never quite got it), and trains that pulled in to the second and were wiped clean at an alarming frequency.

Recipe: Chaat Masala Corn

We spent one of our first mornings in Tokyo, cherry blossoms at their peak, walking around Meiji Jingu, a Shinto temple, the three of us following the crowd in the hopes that it would take us to the right place. I heard a strange song drifting through the trees, tinny and a little mournful, coming from somewhere near the entrance gate.

Upon investigation, it was a smoking, rattling truck, playing its own theme song — in English, for the benefit of tourists like us — as it sold yaki imo, sweet potatoes roasted slowly over charcoal, right in the back of the Nissan van.

I did some digging and learned these trucks route through Japanese neighborhoods, playing the same tune and getting people to run out of their houses to chase a sweet potato. In my childhood and my children’s, the ice cream van had that same effect. (At some point, when things got out of hand, I managed to convince my boys that the van played the music when it ran out of ice cream; not my proudest parenting move.)

I love being handed something that must be eaten immediately. Call it a childlike fascination with mess, or with ingenuity: an oil drum cut in half and propped on two bricks, a bicycle with a griddle welded to the back. Really, though, it’s just how much of the world eats. Follow the sun all the way round, and there are plenty of stalls, carts or renovated Nissan vans, serving one spectacular thing, at any given hour.

In Mexico City, a comal — a flat griddle pan, cast-iron or clay — has been going since 5 this morning. Tortillas turning, one after another, corn masa slapped down and flipped and slapped down again, the line already three deep by the time most of the city’s up.

If it’s 5 in the morning in Mexico City, then it’s already light in Singapore, and the hawker centers never really closed from the night before, soft-boiled eggs and kaya toast going out before most alarms have gone off. Vendors were moved here off the sidewalk in the 1960s, and the recipes have been passed down by hand rather than written down ever since. UNESCO put the whole tradition on its cultural heritage list in 2020.

By midday, the heat’s caught up. In Penang, it turns the Malaysian air faintly hostile and everyone a little less patient, which, if anything, makes the food feel more essential. My favorite stall there cooks char kway teow over a flame too high for comfort, noodles and shrimp and dark soy tossed in short, violent bursts, the wok itself blackened to a color no amount of scrubbing will ever bring back to steel.

On a corner in New York, it’s a hot dog cart: propane tank underneath, a vat of seasoned water doing the real work, an umbrella pulling double duty as shade and signage. In India, lunch is chaat (which means “to lick”), though what that word means in practice seems to change every time you cross a state line. In Delhi, it’s papdi: crisp fried wafers, potato, chickpeas, a tangle of chutneys and yogurt, all eaten in one bite. In Mumbai, it’s more likely bhel puri: puffed rice, sev, raw onion, held together with tamarind and good timing. And over almost all of it, right at the very last second, chaat masala: amchoor and black salt and a little cumin and chile, dry enough to survive a shelf for months, built for one job: to make food taste alive again, right at the point of selling it.

Corn turns up all over the world: balal in Iran; elote, slathered in mayonnaise, Cotija and chile, in Mexico; yaki tomorokoshi, brushed with soy and butter at a festival stall until it’s almost caramelized, in Japan. At an Indian roadside stand, it’s bhutta rubbed with chaat masala, what you eat, apparently, only when it’s raining. There’s an ocean between some of these places, a language, sometimes a few thousand years. And yet they all arrived at more or less the same conclusion: Something sweet and charred needs salt to hold it up, something sour or spiced to cut through it, a little heat or funk to finish the job.

It’s a big delicious world out there, on street corners and inside markets, under a tin roof or no roof at all, in whatever hour of the day the hunger happens to land. Have napkins ready. And if you want to bring a little of that home tonight, no line required, here’s where I’d start.

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They’ll keep you cool, and they’ll keep you going.

By Samantha Cassetty

Samantha Cassetty is a registered dietitian nutritionist.

Published Aug. 11, 2026 Updated Aug. 11, 2026

It’s an unfortunate truth that dinner still has to happen on sweltering summer nights, when turning on the stove is a hard no. So let these 15 recipes, each with more than 10 grams of protein per serving, come to the rescue. They all come together quickly: Every single one can be thrown together in 35 minutes or less, and many in under 15. And they welcome adaptation, so, if there’s a bowl of plums sitting on the counter, cucumbers coming in faster than you can eat them or a little bit of goat cheese you’d like to use up, toss it in. However you build it, you’ll land on something substantial and delicious without having to touch the stove.

1. Tomato-Avocado Salad With Creamy Feta Dressing

Ashley Lonsdale’s salad dressing, which combines walnuts, feta and cilantro, is spooned over vibrant tomatoes and silky avocados for a summer salad that tastes like something you’d get at a nice restaurant. Double the dressing and save leftovers to serve over grain bowls, grilled chicken or whatever else you’d like.

Recipe: Tomato-Avocado Salad With Creamy Feta Dressing

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2. Chicken, Cucumber and Nectarine Salad

One reader called Lidey Heuck’s salad “10 recipes in one” because so much in it is ripe for swapping, and it still works beautifully. It’s easy summer fare with a light, elegant dressing of Champagne vinegar, honey and mustard that ties everything together.

Recipe: Chicken, Cucumber and Nectarine Salad

3. Prosciutto and Melon Salad

Sweet, juicy cantaloupe is a sweet complement to milky mozzarella and salty prosciutto layered over peppery arugula in Ali Slagle’s spectacular salad. It makes a wonderful light dinner, but you can also serve it alongside grilled chicken or tuna if you want something more substantial.

Recipe: Prosciutto and Melon Salad

4. Spicy Tuna and Avocado Tostadas

The lively dressing of garlic, chile, lime juice and mayo is the key to turning canned tuna into Kristina Felix’s five-star tostadas. As one reader put it, it’s “like ceviche without the work and without the wait.”

Recipe: Spicy Tuna and Avocado Tostadas

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5. Chicken Salad Slaw With Peanuts and Nori

A peanutty dressing punches up cabbage, cucumbers and shredded rotisserie chicken in Ali Slagle’s salad. For a vegan variation, swap in frozen edamame for the chicken. Or, toss the whole mixture with cold soba or rice noodles if you have them on hand.

Recipe: Chicken Salad Slaw With Peanuts and Nori

6. Pesto Tuna Salad

Sheela Prakash’s tuna salad skips the typical mayo in favor of Greek yogurt and store-bought or homemade pesto. Serve it atop cucumber-tomato salad or stuffed into a whole-grain pita with crunchy veggies.

Recipe: Pesto Tuna Salad

7. Fresh Corn and Black Bean Salad With Corn Chips

When you want something hearty, Hetty Lui McKinnon’s corn and black bean salad delivers. It calls for fresh corn, but frozen and canned are great backup options. Corn chips bring crunch, avocado adds richness and cumin-lime dressing lends zip to every bite.

Recipe: Fresh Corn and Black Bean Salad With Corn Chips

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8. Plum and Mozzarella Salad With Serrano-Lime Dressing

Ashley Lonsdale’s salad is a toss of sweet plums, spicy serrano and creamy mozzarella. Serve it as your main dish on a lazy night or alongside something grilled, like shrimp or salmon.

Recipe: Plum and Mozzarella Salad With Serrano-Lime Dressing

9. White Bean, Tuna and Kale Salad

This white bean, tuna and kale salad from Ali Slagle is more of a blueprint for an effortless and filling meal than a fixed recipe. Swap in spinach or arugula for kale, try sardines instead of tuna, and opt for chickpeas over white beans. The combination holds up — and is reliably delicious — no matter which way you go.

Recipe: White Bean, Tuna and Kale Salad

10. Kimchi-Pickled Zucchini and Tomatoes

Store-bought kimchi is the trick behind this bold, tangy salad from Hetty Lui McKinnon, which is spooned over silken tofu. Make extra to serve with scrambled eggs in the morning.

Recipe: Kimchi-Pickled Zucchini and Tomatoes

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11. Chickpea Salad With Fresh Herbs and Scallions

Classic potato salad vibes, but with protein and fiber: That’s the idea behind Lidey Heuck’s smart salad, which swaps in canned chickpeas for potatoes and high-protein Greek yogurt for mayo. Add it to a pile of greens, stuff it into a pita or wrap, or pair it with steak if you’re firing up the grill.

Recipe: Chickpea Salad With Fresh Herbs and Scallions

12. Spicy and Creamy Cashew Chicken Salad

Cool cucumber, crisp cabbage and shredded rotisserie chicken are tossed in a creamy cashew butter dressing, instead of a traditional mayo-based one, in Andy Baraghani’s popular dish. For a vegan variation, swap the chicken for a couple cans of chickpeas.

Recipe: Spicy and Creamy Cashew Chicken Salad

13. Greek Salad With Sardines and Beans

Sardines and white beans, straight from the pantry, pack the protein in Ali Slagle’s five-star Greek salad. If you’re not a sardine lover, canned tuna would work just as well. And if you need a little something more, serve it with whole grain pita or pita chips.

Recipe: Greek Salad With Sardines and Beans

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14. Hot Smoked Salmon Couscous Salad

This salad delivers the flaky, smoky healthy-fat payoff of grilled salmon, but no grill required. Sheela Prakash builds it around store-bought hot smoked salmon fillets, and pairs them with crisp cucumber, tangy quick-pickled onion and couscous that fluffs up right in the bowl. Microwave the couscous, or swap in store-bought instant couscous or frozen precooked quinoa.

Recipe: Hot Smoked Salmon Couscous Salad

15. White Bean Caprese Salad

Colu Henry loads white beans into this Caprese, which soak up all the flavor of the tomatoes and mozzarella, while adding enough heft to make it a main course. Pack it for a picnic or potluck, and although it has plenty of protein as it is, you can toss in a can of tuna for even more. A big hunk of bread or focaccia on the side would be a nice touch.

Recipe: White Bean Caprese Salad

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A hyperlocal dish, the stuffed quahog, or “stuffie,” is especially suited to home cooking, and delightfully in reach.

By Sarah Karnasiewicz

Published Aug. 10, 2026 Updated Aug. 10, 2026

Extravagant buttered lobster rolls and briny oysters top the gustatory bucket lists of most summer visitors to New England’s shore. But among many denizens of the sandy precincts stretching from Cape Cod through southern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, a humbler bite is equally beloved: the stuffed quahog — or “stuffie,” in local parlance.

Recipe: Stuffies (New England-Style Stuffed Clams)

A species of hard-shelled Atlantic clams (Mercenaria mercenaria) that can grow as fat as a fist, quahogs prefer the mild estuaries of southern New England to the frigid, saline open waters up north. The tidal shallows around Narragansett Bay are especially hospitable, a quirk of ecology that’s fostered a particular passion for the dish among Rhode Islanders. (In 2023, a cadre of seven-foot-tall stuffie statues were deployed around the country as the centerpiece of a state tourism campaign.)

Though cousins to clams casino and clams oreganata, stuffies reflect a diversity of influences unique to this watery corner of the country. The Wampanoag and other Algonquian peoples had been harvesting quahogs for millenniums before the arrival of Europeans. But modern stuffie recipes are characterized by both a “make-do and use-it-up” spirit of Yankee thrift and ingredients like chouriço and linguiça sausage that arrived in the 1800s with the Portuguese, Azorean and Cape Verdean migrants who built communities around the region’s marine industries and textile mills.

When Marcey Bartnicki was growing up in the South Coast town of Acushnet, Mass., in the 1980s, pit stops at takeout clam shacks were a fundamental part of the rhythm of summer. “Clam cakes, stuffies, I thought everybody knew what those were,” she said. After moving inland to Nashua, N.H., however, she was dismayed to find herself in a stuffie desert. To satisfy cravings, she realized she’d need to make her own.

Happily, stuffies are not only suited to home cooking but, once prepped, freeze exceptionally well, souvenirs of the shore that can be socked away for colder, darker days.

Die-hards may insist on digging their own clams. But should you lack will or proximity, many grocery stores and well-stocked fish markets supply clams year-round, or they can get them for you if you call ahead. (Ms. Bartnicki buys her fixings at Market Basket.) When fresh isn’t an option, seek out containers of chopped raw sea clams, another large species that fishmongers often sell frozen. (Though don’t forget: You’ll need to get your hands on some clamshells, too.)

Quahog clams are sometimes better known by names they are assigned according to size, which include petite littlenecks, midsize topnecks and hefty cherrystones. The largest ones are also called quahogs, or sometimes chowder clams. You want the big boys for this.

Mac Hay, founder of Mac’s Seafood, which operates markets and restaurants across Cape Cod, started making stuffies alongside his grandfather during childhood summers at the family home in Truro, Mass. Back then, Mr. Hay said, they used whatever the tide provided — quahogs or sea clams. After steaming, chopping and reserving the stock, the rest of the formula was elemental: diced onion, celery and a bit of pork fat (usually Portuguese linguiça sausage or bacon), bound with bread crumbs, mounded into a shell and baked until golden.

Mr. Hay’s methods have grown a bit more sophisticated since. Nowadays, he adds white wine, garlic, fresh herbs, crushed crackers (often gluten-free) instead of plain bread crumbs and, to really punch it up, a finishing hit of sherry, a trick from Howard Mitcham, a colorful local artist and chef who was an early guru for Anthony Bourdain. One element that hasn’t altered: Portuguese sausage. “If you tried to make a stuffie without linguiça in Provincetown,” Mr. Hay said, “they’d probably shoot you.”

In her kitchen, Ms. Bartnicki follows a slightly different blueprint, folding in bits of sweet red pepper and forgoing garlic and wine. For a binder, she typically reaches for stale Portuguese rolls or leftover sweet bread — though, on this point, there is abundant flexibility. Other cooks cite crushed Ritz crackers or Pepperidge Farm stuffing mix as go-tos. Toasted cornbread cubes lend an especially appealing edge of sweetness.

But taking a rigid approach to ingredients runs counter to the spirit of the dish. “Stuffies are tavern food,” Mr. Hay said. “They’re easy to prepare, hard to mess up and a good source of protein, too” — ideal fortification alongside a few beers or a bottle of Vinho Verde.

Both agree that, to preserve their tenderness, quahogs ought to be steamed briefly, just until opening and finely chopped. For the fullest flavor of the sea, the stuffing should be deeply moistened with clam cooking broth and then generously scooped (but not tightly packed) into cleaned shells. Topping each one with a knob of butter before baking lends a final layer of richness and crunch. Besides the aforementioned beverages, lemon wedges and a bottle of vinegary hot sauce are all the accompaniments needed.

In other words: Avoid fuss, and feel free to follow the spirit of summer where it moves you. “Stuffies are kind of like grandma’s Sunday gravy,” Mr. Hay said. “Everyone’s got their own angle.”

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