The Ultimate 4th of July Menu for Your Backyard Barbecue (2024)

Patriotic Party Supplies for Your 4th of July Barbecue

Grilled Cantaloupe and Prosciutto Skewers

Summer melon and prosciutto is a sweet and savory pairing worthy of your July 4th menu. These skewers, which you can pop on the grill, also include halloumi cheese and ciabatta bread. Serve this dish as an appetizer while your guests are mingling and catching up.

Grilled Chicken With Blueberry-Peach Salsa

A fresh fruit salsa made with in-season blueberries and peaches takes an ordinary piece of grilled chicken to the next level in this recipe. But don’t sleep on the chicken either! The juicy thighs are seasoned with a mixture of chili powder, brown sugar, and lime before being grilled to perfection, while chewy farro rounds out the meal.

BBQ Chicken With Slaw

Nothing says summer barbecue like BBQ chicken with a side of crunchy, zesty slaw. In this recipe, split chicken breasts are backed and then finished in the broiler with your favorite barbecue sauce. While the chicken cooks, you’ll make a flavorful coleslaw with shredded carrots and cabbage, sweet mini peppers, and a mustardy dressing.

Everything Salmon Skewers With Sriracha Aïoli

Once you sprinkle everything bagel seasoning on salmon, you won’t want to season the fish with anything else. The blend, which you can make at home in less than five minutes, adds flavor and crunch to the deliciously fatty salmon pieces.

The Meatiest Veggie Burgers

Some veggie burgers can frustratingly fall apart, but not this one! Made with mushrooms, eggs, and panko breadcrumbs, these meatless burgers are sturdy and delicious. Tomato paste, Parmesan cheese, and soy sauce and plenty of umami, while butter lettuce and sliced tomatoes add freshness and crunch.

Garlic-Parmesan Chicken Wings

Who doesn’t love chicken wings? In this recipe, wings are flavored with garlic and Parmesan, which is always an ace duo. After grilling, you’ll toss the wings in the cheese, followed by a garlicky parsley-lemon sauce. If you don’t have a grill, use your broiler instead.

Farro Salad With Brown Butter Vinaigrette

Every BBQ needs a grain salad, and this one doesn’t disappoint. Hearty farro mingles with chopped asparagus, peas, crunchy pistachios, juicy orange segments, and salty feta. A rich brown butter vinaigrette dresses the dish, which goes well with chicken or fish.

Tuna, Chickpea and Cherry Tomato Salad

Chunks of oil-packed canned tuna and tender chickpeas mingle with buttery olives, briny feta, juicy cherry tomatoes, and crunchy pita chips in this 15-minute dish. The best part about this dish is that you don’t even need to go near your oven or stove, which is ideal on those hot summer days.

​​Scorched Sugar Snap Peas and Burrata Salad

Not all salads are a pile of lettuce. Case in point: This dish with scorched sugar snap peas and creamy burrata. Fresh mint, and tangy sumac add freshness and flavor, respectively. We promise, everyone at the barbecue will love this one!

Southwestern Pasta Salad

This pasta salad swaps mayonnaise for an avocado-based dressing, and is loaded with mix-ins including avocado slices, black beans, cherry tomatoes, scallions, and plenty of fresh corn kernels. For some spice, feel free to add thinly sliced fresh jalapeños, or a can of chopped green chilies.

Antipasto Salad

Since you’ll likely be firing up the grill quite a bit, it’s good to have a few dishes on the menu that require no cooking whatsoever. Enter this antipasto salad, which is filled with Little Gem lettuce, creamy burrata, rich prosciutto, buttery Castelvetrano olives, sweet cantaloupe, and crunchy pistachios. Drizzle some olive oil and balsamic vinegar on top and dig in!

Sliced-Tomato Salad With Dill Pickle Relish Vinaigrette

Sure, you can put freshly sliced tomatoes on your burger, or you can enjoy them on the side courtesy of this simple tomato salad. A relish-based dressing provides plenty of flavor, while herbs, sprinkled on top just before serving, add freshness.

Green Goddess Pasta Salad

No barbecue is complete without pasta salad. This version is bathed in green goddess dressing, which is made with parsley, dill, and basil, plus crisp-tender broccoli. In this dish you’ll also find tarragon, mayonnaise, sour cream, and umami-rich anchovies, as well as briny, salty feta, and oniony chives, and a sprinkling of crushed pita chips on top.

Spicy Street Corn Salad

Did you really throw a BBQ if there’s no corn? The summer staple is delicious when cooked, but it’s also quite tasty raw. Case in point? This elote-inspired salad. Here, the street snack is transformed into a meal when raw corn is tossed with pinto beans, herbs, jalapeño, and heaps of arugula.

No-Churn Chocolate-Cherry Ice Cream

This sweet and tart no-churn ice cream is a cheesecake lover’s dream. You’ll start by cooking frozen cherries with sugar to make a simple jam that gets swirled throughout for pockets of deep flavor. Then, make the ice cream base with cream cheese, sweetened condensed milk, and whipped cream. Lastly, go ahead and fold chunks of dark chocolate in before freezing everything, for a culinary decision you will not regret.

Banana Pudding Pie Bars With Meringue

Imagine eating a giant bowl of banana pudding, except it's served atop a Nilla Wafer crust and comes topped with toasty, fluffy, marshmallowy meringue. This dessert will leave you, and your guests, asking for seconds.

Honey Whole Wheat Strawberry Clafoutis

Have you ever roasted or broiled strawberries? We suggest you try it ASAP, because it brings out their natural sweetness and softens them to an almost spoonable consistency. Here, the technique is used to add flavor to our whole wheat clafoutis, which works especially well on July 4th thanks to the bright red berries.

Lemon-Blueberry Cake

Take vanilla sandwich cookies, lemon sorbet, and blueberry jam, and layer them all for a delicious start to a no-bake cake that requires just 25 minutes of hands-on-work. Once you’ve built the layers, simply top the patriotic cake with homemade whipped cream and pop it in the freezer for a few hours. When you’re ready to serve, decorate this dessert with fresh blueberries, lemon slices, and mint, and dig in!

Frozen Strawberry Trifle

If you need a make-ahead dessert, this trifle is it. It's made with only five ingredients—fresh and frozen strawberries, sugar, cream, ladyfingers, and ice cream—and is refreshingly cool since your freezer will do most of the work. While you can serve this dessert at any point, it's especially tasty in the summer when you can top it with freshly harvested strawberries.

Cantaloupe-Coconut Ice Pops

When the temperatures rise, the last thing you want to do is cook something really complicated. Luckily, these vibrant cantaloupe-coconut ice pops require only 20 minutes of hands-on work. You can also make them ahead of time, which is helpful if you're hosting an Independence Day party. Look for top-of-the-season summer cantaloupe, which is deliciously sweet and pairs perfectly with the sweet basil-coconut cream that draws out the floral notes of the fruit. A finishing touch of toasted coconut at the bottom of each pop adds a satisfying crunch.

Glazed Chicken and Pineapple

There are dinners that have you fighting over who gets the last of the seconds, and this amazing 4th of July BBQ idea one of those. It's a boldly flavorful chicken dinner that comes together in just 30 minutes, thanks to a pantry-staple marinade. If you've never made a classic Hawaiian chicken marinade, it might seem weird to stir together pineapple juice, ketchup, honey, and soy sauce, but it turns the chicken thighs into crazy-juicy, tender deliciousness. Fresh pineapple draws out the fruit in the sauce, and steamed rice soaks up every bit of sauciness.

Grilled Cauliflower Steaks With Romesco and Manchego

Cauliflower steaks are potentially one of the greatest vegetarian dinners of all time. They're hearty, fork-and-knife numbers that even any meat-loving person can get behind. The sauce is a Spanish-inspired romesco sauce, made with almonds, roasted red peppers, and sherry vinegar. Here, almond butter is not only a shortcut to flavor but it also makes for a smoother sauce. And the arugula-radish salad is the peppery sidekick that brings it all together.

Steak-and-Potato Skewers With Orange Salsa

File this one under: the recipe that is just as family friendly as it is dinner party-worthy. It turns the classic steak and potatoes dinner into grilled skewers and the result is perfection. The spice rub is just the right amount of heat thanks to chili powder, and the veggies are sweet and charred—an ideal pairing for the steak. Plus, the star of the show might just be the juicy orange relish that brightens up the whole plate. It's a recipe that will be on repeat from here on out. Shopping tip: If you can't find hanger steak, skirt steak will sub in nicely.

Little Gems and Radishes With Ricotta Salata and Seeds

Forget limp mesclun greens, goodbye watery iceberg, no more mouth-drying spinach. This recipe is all about the radishes but Little Gem, tiny heads of snappy lettuce that look like extra-pretty, mini hearts of romaine are the vehicle to enjoy an array of radishes. You'll top the wedges with peppery mixed radishes: go wild and look for black, breakfast, French, Easter, and watermelon radishes. The shaved ricotta salata, a hard and salty cheese, adds a different kind of punch, while a mixture of seeds adds extra crunch. It's gorgeous, restaurant-worthy, and best of all, actually delicious.

Toasted Israeli Couscous With Corn and Herbs

Think of this recipe as a modern take on pasta salad, perfect for summer picnics and potlucks. This fresh salad pairs juicy summer corn kernels with a showering of fresh herbs—basil, chives, and dill—plus some caramelized onions for good measure. There's no need to cook the corn as you can eat it raw, especially when it's in season. If it's not your thing, just blanch the corn in boiling water for a couple of minutes. It's a savory-sweet combo that would be at home alongside grilled fish, rotisserie chicken, or a seared steak.

Vietnamese-Inspired Peach Salad

Peaches are in peak season for 4th of July barbecues—and this flavorful salad shows them off to full advantage, with a sweet, sour and spicy dressing that'll keep everyone coming back for more.

Watermelon Salad With Pickled Rind

Watermelon is a 4th of July party staple—and here it's featured in a sweet-tart salad that includes salty whipped feta and peppery arugula.

Summer Berry Trifle With Elderflower Cream

A great trifle is all about distinct layers. This is no exception. There's a cloud of elderflower-spiked whipped cream to draw out the layers of fresh summer berries, and crushed cookies, which soak up the berry juices until they're perfectly soft. With only five ingredients, the result is a gorgeous sculptural delight. Trifles are a classic English dessert, so put on your best British accent and serve this garden party style.

Nectarine Olive Oil Cake

At first glance, this might seem like a simple cake, but it's so much more than that. The cake batter is made doubly tender with a complex flavor, thanks to olive oil and puréed nectarines. Then you'll double down on that delicious olive oil-nectarine combo with a topping of sea salt-flecked fruit. It's not only pretty, but it draws out the flavors from the cake for an elegant, bakery-worthy treat. If you don't come across nectarines, peaches will do. The flavor of the olive oil comes through, so it's worth splurging on something nice that has grassy or peppery undertones. Offer up some vanilla ice cream to go with, a scoop definitely can't hurt.

Frozen S'mores Cake

Turn the campfire favorite into a frozen dessert treat that will help cool off a hot Fourth of July party. (And bonus: you only need to run the oven for a few minutes to create the toasted marshmallow topping.)

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is a traditional 4th of July menu?

  A traditional 4th of July menu typically includes barbecue classics such as hot dogs, hamburgers, and grilled vegetables. Sides may include pasta or macaroni salads, green salads, potato salads, cornbread, and other corn-centric dishes. For dessert, people often like to lean into the patriotic element and serve sweet treats with a red, white, and blue color scheme. This can include cakes, pies, fresh fruit platters, and more.

• What foods are most commonly consumed on the 4th of July?

  Some of the most commonly consumed foods on the 4th of July include potato salad, baked beans, deviled eggs, macaroni salad, and grilled corn. Other popular dishes are ribs, coleslaw, and fried chicken.

• What is a good side dish or dessert to bring to a 4th of July party?

  A good side dish to bring to a 4th of July party may be pasta or macaroni salad, baked beans, potato salad, grilled corn, or fruit salad. If you need guidance, reach out to the host!

  Learn More:Fourth of July Side Dishes