Easy Side Dishes For a Stress Free Barbecue

If you are like me and you have a big barbecue or cookout for family and friends, I tend to be focused on the meat, I want the best cuts, I want to cook it just right. As long as the beer is cold and the meat is cooked to perfection I’m happy.

But not everyone is like me, many of your guests will expect some tasty side dishes to eat alongside all the grilled food.

The best way is to get up early and prepare a handful of tasty side dishes before the party starts.You could prepare them the night before but to keep them as fresh as possible I like to make them in the morning. Bully your partner into giving you a hand if you think it is too much work!

As I said let’s keep it simple – You’ll have all the grilled meats and vegetables cooking fresh all day so what else do we want….

First of all the really easy stuff; get down to the supermarket and buy some chips and dips ‘nachos’ is always a good bet, as soon as the guests are starting to arrive they can start on the beer and wine and have some nachos and dips to chow down on. You don’t want to put out you side dishes while you just have a few guests. You want to time it that your first grilled meat is ready when the bulk of your guests have arrived and then you can put out the side dishes, nice and fresh.

If it’s a hot day and especially if there are kids at the party you will want a few tubs of different flavored ice cream in the freezer.

You don’t need to serve up anything exotic for you side dishes just the stuff you know people will eat and will complement your grilled food.

These are my Favorites

Coleslaw

A crunchy, tangy coleslaw is expected at a barbecue party and you can use either a vinegar or mayonnaise dressing. You can go traditional or try it with apples for an apple slaw or use red cabbage for a colorful red slaw.

Coleslaw Video Recipe

Here’s a nice Simple to make coleslaw recipe click on the image to activate the video. He does use a food processor which speeds things up but you can make it manually as well.

 

Or you could try this apple slaw video here

As she says in the video this would go really well with a pulled pork sandwich

 

Baked Beans

These are a must have for me, I especially love them when the weather is a bit cooler the recipe below is really simple, tastes great and if you can smoke some bacon to go with this recipe all the better.

 

potato salad

Brit chef Jamie Oliver shows you how to prepare delicious potato salad, three different ways in this video, choose the one you like or make all three

 

Simple salads

A simple tomato and mozzarella salad is easy to make or a pasta salad, while I am not the biggest of salad lovers I know that some of my guests will really appreciate it.

Keep it simple and as any Pit Master knows it’s all about the prep. Yeah, your pulled pork is fantastic but it will be even better when it is combined with your easy apple slaw recipe.