Packable Beach and Picnic Recipes

New York Times

6 days ago

CHRISTINE: I'm Christine Cyr Clisset.
CAIRA: I'm Caira Blackwell.
ROSIE: I'm Rosie Guerin, and you're listening to The Wirecutter Show .
CHRISTINE: This episode is called: 'Packable Beach and Picnic Recipes.'
ROSIE: Hey there, this is Rosie. Earlier this week, we published an episode all about the gear you might want to consider to help you level up your beach experience. We talked about shades, chairs, coolers, and more. But we didn't talk about one super important thing: food!
Everyone has their own ideas for what makes a great beach snack. Some ice-cold fruit from the cooler? A delectable lunch of salads and dips? Or maybe just a bag of chips? Well, no matter your style, our friends over at New York Times Cooking have some ideas of ways to elevate your beach-snacking game.
And today, we're bringing you a conversation about just that with Tanya Sichynsky. Tanya is an editor at NYT Cooking who writes the weekly newsletter The Veggie, and she recently wrote a piece for The Times that included a bunch of great recipes for a beach day or picnic.
CAIRA: Tanya, welcome to the show.
TANYA: Hi, guys. Thanks so much for having me.
CHRISTINE: We're glad to have you.
ROSIE: Thanks for coming. Well, so obviously anyone can bring anything to a beach, a park, a picnic. We know that. What are your general rules, Tanya, for the kinds of recipes and foods you want to pack for a day at the beach, for a picnic?
TANYA: Obviously, this is all incredibly subjective, but if you're asking me — which you are — I'm going to tell you, it's trying to avoid really soggy food. You don't want something that's going to get real wet in a cooler or in a tote bag. So nothing super mayonnaise-y with soft bread, like that … to me, it's ripe for sogging. You want stuff that's really, I'll say packable and stackable. Whether you're working with a cooler or a big tote bag, you want stuff that will kind of Tetris into your vessel of choice and not get crushed. So if you're talking potato chips, you actually shouldn't decant your potato chips into a Ziploc bag if you can help it, because all the air in the bag will protect it. That kind of stuff. I think part of it is 'cooler versus tote bag' will tell me what kind of recipes I want to pack.
CHRISTINE: So, like, a tote bag, meaning you're not going to keep it cool.
TANYA: Well, I'm so glad you asked. I know that we want to talk about no-cooler recipes, but I will implore anybody, if they plan on being outside for a really long time, a great hack is just a water bottle. Put it in the freezer the night before and put it in the bag, because by the time you get to where you're going, the water will be semi-thawed, mostly thawed. You will have insulated the bag in some way by just packing a bunch of stuff into it, and it will keep some element of your meal cool. So if you're going with a couple people, just throw three frozen water bottles in there, and you'll stay hydrated, and your food will stay semi-cool.
CHRISTINE: Oh, I love that tip. And also, if someone's going to freeze a water bottle, remember to leave an inch —
TANYA: Always.
CHRISTINE: — at the top, right?
TANYA: Always.
CHRISTINE: That is not filled so that the water can expand in the freezer.
TANYA: Yes, it's multi-use in some ways.
CHRISTINE: There we go.
CAIRA: And just throw it in the trash when you're done.
TANYA: And just throw it in the trash. And also, a lot of beaches —
ROSIE: Recycle.
CAIRA: That's what I meant.
ROSIE: What are you, nuts?
CAIRA: Just don't throw it in the ocean. That was my point.
TANYA: No, there, exactly. We're recycling it. And then, really, for me, it's just, like, 'What am I not going to turn my nose up at if it's been outside for two hours?' We are not — at least, I'm not right now — talking about 'Is it adhering to the FDA standards of not outside for more than 90 minutes?' Look, we've all eaten weird stuff off a picnic table that we know that has been there for more than a few hours, more than the window. But won't you feel a little bit icky about eating? So that kind of brings me to the mayonnaise of it all, which is pretty shelf-stable. I don't worry about it too much, but if I'm doing, say, a chickpea salad or a pasta salad, maybe I will cut the mayonnaise down significantly and use more tahini or something like that, something that is okay at room temperature. It's essentially a nut butter. It's a seed butter. So if you're going to lug a peanut butter and jelly, and you feel cool about that, you probably would feel good about tahini or something like that in a chickpea salad.
CHRISTINE: I love that. I never think about swapping tahini for mayonnaise, but I should probably do that more often.
TANYA: We have over at New York Times Cooking a lot of salad recipes that are, like, chickpea-based salads that have some sort of configuration of tahini, mayonnaise, yogurt, more or less of each. And, really, it's completely … most of those recipes are really amenable, so you can just modify them to your tastes. If you're not really a mayonnaise person, you can do half-and-half yogurt/tahini, that rules. If you don't like tahini or you're allergic to sesame, mayonnaise/yogurt. If you are vegan, maybe you're using a combination of vegan mayonnaise or tahini. I've made vegan mayonnaise before, it's actually quite easy.
CHRISTINE: What is it? Just oil?
CAIRA: What is it? Yeah.
TANYA: You use aquafaba, which is all the stuff at the bottom of a can of chickpeas. Yeah. So let's say you're making a chickpea salad. You have regular mayonnaise that makes you feel icky. You don't want to use yogurt. You have tahini. And you obviously have the can of chickpeas, because you're putting it in the salad. You drain the aquafaba, which is the liquid at the bottom of the can. And with an immersion blender, which I'm sure there is a Wirecutter pick for.
CHRISTINE: Oh, we do have a pick.
TANYA: Oh yeah. It's just the juice and the chickpeas, white vinegar, salt, sugar, lemon juice, some dry mustard, and then a really neutral oil, so we used a sunflower oil. And I'm telling you, it was like doing a magic trick when we did it. It immediately emulsifies. It tastes like mayonnaise.
CHRISTINE: And it sounds like the ingredients in vegan mayonnaise, at least that recipe, those are pretty shelf-stable. You could take those out for a day without them turning bad.
TANYA: Absolutely.
CHRISTINE: Right.
TANYA: Absolutely. And, again, if you have a little bit of a — I'm holding up a water bottle, for the folks at home — an insurance policy of semi-frozen water bottles, it will be cool enough, even if you did want to use regular mayonnaise, which tons of people will take to the beach, and it's never an issue.
CAIRA: I'm a salt-and-vinegar-chips girl for life. Is there a salty snack you like to take to the beach?
TANYA: Okay. I'm a sucker for BjornQorn.
CHRISTINE: Oh, you're telling me all of the things that my kids want to eat. You all should go out on a picnic together.
TANYA: I'm taking the kids to the beach.
ROSIE: What is BjornQorn?
CAIRA: Yeah, what are those?
ROSIE: And why do you like it?
TANYA: Okay, BjornQorn is vegan, cheesy popped popcorn. Very, very minimal ingredients. So if you are trying to cut down on super ultra-processed foods, this is a, I think, great alternative to something like a white-cheddar popcorn, Smartfood. So BjornQorn is made with nutritional yeast; nutritional yeast is dried, edible yeast. It usually comes in flakes. So good. I will make, frankly, a version at home of a BjornQorn. We have a recipe also on Cooking that is a vegan cheesy popcorn, same kind of combination of flavors. But, yeah, so BjornQorn. Okay, I always have hot dogs — from the editor of The Veggie.
ROSIE: You always have hot dogs.
TANYA: From the editor of The Veggie.
ROSIE: Can you say more about that?
TANYA: Yeah. Hebrew National, all-beef hot dogs, live and die by them. I love a hot dog, and I am taking hot dogs to the beach.
CHRISTINE: No.
TANYA: Yes. Hear me out. Okay, I did this last summer. So I will split-top a hot dog, so, like, butterfly it. I'll griddle it in my little cast iron skillet or on a griddle-top pan. I'll make two hot dogs a person, and then I will put the hot dogs and the buns in little aluminum foil roll-ups. You don't want to crush them. So I'll put them at the top of the bag with everything. If you will eat a ballpark hot dog some guy has been toting around through the stands of MetLife —
ROSIE: I mean, fair.
TANYA: — you will eat a beach hot dog.
CAIRA: But that's not the same.
TANYA: No, it is the same.
CAIRA: Because a ballpark hot dog is still hot. What are you eating? A cold hot dog on the beach?
TANYA: No, it is a —
CAIRA: You warm it up in the sun?
TANYA: It is room temperature. Sometimes it's still warm. Here's the kicker, though: Because I brought my frozen water bottle in the bag, I am bringing a topping, and the topping is pico de gallo.
CHRISTINE: Oh, this is … you're hitting my heart here. I think this sounds like a delicious beach meal.
TANYA: This is the perfect beach meal, and you've got the crunchy, crisp freshness of tomatoes and jalapeños, onions. Maybe you want to throw some scallions in there, definitely cilantro on top of the hot dog. Because you've butterflied the hot dog, it holds the pico de gallo in the hot dog. It's not going to just roll off.
ROSIE: She's beauty and she's grace.
TANYA: I made us put a recipe for this on New York Times Cooking. It is just a hot dog with pico de gallo, and the two tricks are the butterflying of the hot dog … I also put mayonnaise on the bun when I griddle them, so I will griddle the buns too. So also this helps with … if you're worried about your hot dog getting crushed, the outside might get a little crushed, but the inside, if you grill it on a cast iron skillet or a grill top, the inside of the bun will be a little bit harder, and it will protect the dog.
CAIRA: Oh, you protect those dogs.
ROSIE: Protect the dog.
CAIRA: Well, let's say someone's at the beach all day, and they're packing a lunch, but they don't have a cooler. It might get a little warm in here. So what are some lunch ideas that you'd recommend for that and just generally things that won't go bad in the sun?
TANYA: So I'm saying hot dog. I'm also saying Andy Baraghani has this extra-green pasta salad that I am obsessed with. It is my lunch today. It's downstairs, not in the fridge, just sitting at my desk.
CHRISTINE: What's in this?
TANYA: So you're using some short-cut pasta, whether it's rigatoni or a fusilli, but when I say 'short-cut,' I mean short tubes. You don't want a long noodle here. Snap peas, English peas, are the vegetables that are in here. And then the sauce is really, really easy to make, and it's made mostly of greens, so raw spinach, baby spinach or arugula, or a blend of both. And then basil, similar to how you would make a pesto, this is kind of … the sauce is really kind of like a looser pesto.
ROSIE: Tanya, I'm looking at your article on The Times about easy recipes to take outside this summer, and I see something called a ham and jam sandwich. Talk about it.
TANYA: Oh, absolutely. Okay, ham and jam sandwich, very straightforward. Similar to a French-style ham and butter sandwich that has been beefed up by the addition of some sort of fruit preserve, which is just a nice combination of flavors. It's really, really simple. If you are going to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or, I don't know, a turkey and cheese sandwich, the ham and jam sandwich is just like its kind of sexy, dignified cousin. It just feels like a fancy thing to eat at the beach, when really it's just, like, ham and cherry jam and some butter and a nice baguette.
ROSIE: Let's say people have taken our advice to heart, Kit's advice to heart, and gotten a great cooler. What recipes do you recommend if we're lugging a big old cooler to the beach?
TANYA: Yeah, I think this is where you're going crazy with the pasta salads and the dips. Any sort of dairy-based dips, a yogurt-based dip. We've got this great fresh ranch dip from Naz Deravian, which is really just like zhuzhed-up yogurt. So smart, great use of pantry seasonings, fresh chives. Ali Slagle also has a dill-pickled tzatziki, which is really fun. I don't know, I feel like pickles are so summery.
ROSIE: We are a big pickle family.
TANYA: Yeah, you got to get on the dill-pickled tzatziki train. It's just garlic, Greek yogurt, olive oil, finely chopped dill, and then a ton of grated pickles.
CAIRA: So I know we talked about the popcorn, which is always a good, healthy snack, but what are some other things that you love to bring to the beach that won't get soggy or crunched, but is also still healthy?
TANYA: Okay. Fruit feels like a cop-out answer, but I love a frozen grape.
CAIRA: Oh my God.
TANYA: So a Tupperware of frozen grapes, a little Baggie of frozen grapes. I'm popping them in the freezer. If you put a little lime juice, citric acid —
CAIRA: Citric acid is my go-to.
TANYA: — that is a really great —
CHRISTINE: Wait, you guys, stop. What is citric acid, and why are you putting it on your grapes?
TANYA: Okay, citric acid is a powder that looks just like granulated sugar, but it is a powder version of the naturally occurring acid that exists in citrus fruits. So it is a fine dusting powder that you could cover grapes with. This is what brings pucker to a Sour Patch Kid. So imagine frozen grapes tossed with a little citric acid, maybe a little bit of sugar.
ROSIE: Do you put sugar on yours too?
TANYA: Yes.
ROSIE: You just do sugar?
TANYA: Yeah. Okay.
CHRISTINE: Hardcore.
TANYA: So that is, like … and, I mean, the grapes are already sweet, so they don't really need any extra sugar. But yeah, toss those in citric acid. By the time you get to the beach, the grapes probably won't be frozen grapes anymore. If you are packing them in a cooler with ice, they might stay frozen. But if you're using them as the cooling element by just tossing them into a tote bag, they'll thaw by then. But they'll still be delicious, and they will hold some of their shape because they'd been frozen for most of the time. But that's a really, really easy, simple, healthy snack. I mean, again, fruit, okay. You didn't bring me on here to tell you to eat fruit, but that's a fun —
CAIRA: That's a fruit in a fun way.
CHRISTINE: That is delicious.
TANYA: That's fruit in a fun way.
ROSIE: Tanya Sichynsky, you are a legend. Thank you so much for being on our show.
TANYA: This was so fun.
ROSIE: This was really fun.
TANYA: This ruled.
ROSIE: Have fun at the beach, everybody.
TANYA: Thanks.
ROSIE: If you want to try out any of the recipes Tanya talked about today, you can find them in our show notes, or on the New York Times Cooking website. And if you want more of Tanya's recommendations, you can subscribe to the weekly newsletter The Veggie . That's it for us. Thanks for listening.
The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by Rosie Guerin and produced by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Maddy Masiello and Nick Pitman. Today's episode was mixed by Catherine Anderson. Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Elisheba Ittoop, and Diane Wong. Wirecutter's deputy publisher is Cliff Levy. Ben Frumin is Wirecutter's editor-in-chief.
CAIRA: I'm Caira Blackwell.
CHRISTINE: I'm Christine Cyr Clisset.
ROSIE: And I'm Rosie Guerin. Thanks for listening.