Easy No Cook Meals to Make if it’s Too Hot to Turn on the Stove – Spring Rolls, Cold Soups, Salads

This compilation of easy no cook meals to make tonight if it’s too hot to turn on the stove include some of our best no cook recipes – cold summer soups and fresh spring rolls. or summer rolls, if you prefer, to homemade dips to serve with cheeses and charcuterie and fruit, and salads so filling that they’re meals in themselves.

My round-up of easy no cook meals to prepare tonight, if it’s way too warm where you are to even think about cooking on a stove, features some of my favourite no cook recipes. I’ve got everything from homemade dips to form the centrepiece of a charcuterie board and chilled summer soups that only need crusty bread rolls.

We’ve got fresh spring rolls – or summer rolls, if you prefer – which are super-versatile, so replace the cooked elements such as prawns with store-bought cooked prawns and skip the omelette and noodles and add more fresh veggies instead.  

Our archives are bursting with filling salads, especially Southeast Asian salads – the region if one of the best for salad lovers – and all are very versatile. If it’s too hot to poach chicken breasts, buy a cooked rotisserie chicken from your favourite take-away chicken joint or supermarket.

And if you don’t find an easy no cook meal recipe you want to cook tonight, browse our top 31 summer recipes to make in August. You should find something there you like.

Before I share our collection of easy no cook meals to make tonight if it’s too hot to turn on the stove, I have a favour to ask. Grantourismo is reader-funded. If you’ve made any of our recipes and enjoyed them, please consider supporting Grantourismo by supporting our epic Cambodian cuisine history and cookbook on Patreon, which you can do for as little as the price of a coffee. Or you could buy us a coffee and we’ll use our coffee money to buy cooking ingredients for recipe testing.

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Lastly, you could browse our Grantourismo store for gifts for food lovers, including food themed reusable cloth face masks designed with Terence’s images. Now let me tell you all about our easy no cook meals to make tonight.

Easy No Cook Meals to Make Tonight if it’s Too Hot to Turn on the Stove

Spring Rolls, Summer Rolls

One of my favourite easy no cook meals on a stifling hot summer’s night, when nobody wants to be cooking over a hot stove, is a platter of fresh spring rolls – or summer rolls if you like.

Whatever you want to call them, they make for fantastic eating in summer and spring and are one of our go-to no cook meals because they’re just so easy to make, so fresh and light to eat, and they’re fun to prepare with friends.

This Vietnamese fresh prawn and pork spring rolls recipe and pineapple omelette prawn summer rolls recipe, which makes the fresh spring rolls from the Mekong Delta in Southern Vietnam and Southern Cambodia, are some of my favourite Vietnamese spring roll recipes.

Buy some cooked prawns or shrimps so you don’t have to cook them yourself. Skip the noodles, too, and stuff them with batons of cucumber and carrot, and more fresh herbs to make them even more refreshing.

Vietnamese Pineapple Omelette and Prawn Summer Rolls Recipe

 

Cold Summer Soups

When it comes to easy no cook meals it’s hard to beat cold summer soups on a sweltering night. If soup isn’t a meal for you, pair it with fresh slices of crusty bread and a salad.

Try our best gazpacho recipe for an authentic Andalusian style gazpacho from southern Spain of the kind that you’ll find in cities such as Seville, Cordoba and Granada. This is a classic recipe resulting in a vibrant orange gazpacho that tastes like a garden salad in the form of a cold summer soup.

We first fell in love with this mango gazpacho recipe on Mallorca, at Restaurant Marc Fosh in Palma de Mallorca, where we interviewed the chef and did a cooking class with him. He did a delicious mango gazpacho with shrimp, and a wonderful watermelon gazpacho with seared tuna, prosciutto and crispy pancetta.

This Russian okroshka soup made with kefir (Окрошка с кефиром) is another of my favourite chilled soups. Seasonable vegetables such as cucumber and radish can be substituted with whatever’s available that is crisp and crunchy.

Best Gazpacho Recipe for an Authentic Andalusian Style Gazpacho from Southern Spain

 

Tomato Salad Recipes

Tomato salads are some of my most favourite easy no cook meals on a hot summer’s night. Summer is tomato season after all. I can happily tuck into a big bowl of tomato salad and have no need for any sides.

If you’re in the mood for a Southeast Asian salad, make this Shan tomato salad recipe with shallots, sesame and coriander for a sweet tomato salad textured with crunchy purple onions, sesame seeds, crispy fried shallots and garlic, and fragrant fresh coriander.

For a European salad, our easy cherry tomato salad recipe offers a taste of the Mediterranean and is one of our best tomato salad recipes. The key to making this salad taste great is fresh, flavourful produce and top quality ingredients, such as extra virgin olive oil from Valencia, capers from Pantelleria, Ortiz salted anchovies from Spain, the juiciest olives from Kalamata and so on.

This easy Italian panzanella salad recipe makes the delicious Tuscan style bread and tomato salad that tastes of summer in Italy. Consisting of sweet ripe tomatoes, crunchy cucumbers, zingy onions, aromatic basil, extra virgin olive oil and vinegar, and days-old bread, it’s a t traditional recipe, but it’s nevertheless versatile – use your imagination, just don’t tell your  Italian friends.

Easy Cherry Tomato Salad Recipe for a Taste of Summer on the Mediterranean

Please do let us know if you make any of our easy no cook meals as we’d love to know how they turn out for you.