Easy, healthy recipes for your late-summer produce

Looking for ways to work more seasonal produce into your weeknight dinners? Start here with The Healthy Cook Kate Sherwood’s best summer recipes.

Summer produce is notorious for being abundant—especially zucchini, which has a reputation for producing a surplus right around the new school year. If you’ve found yourself with a bevy of vegetables and no ideas for this week’s meals, look no further. We’ve rounded up Kate’s best and brightest recipes, each perfect for bringing the freshest produce of the season to your plate. 

Tomato recipes

Tomatoes can be extremely abundant late in the summer, which is why Labor Day weekend is often tomato-canning weekend for folks who have successful gardens or farms. We won’t make you break out the mason jars, though, unless you really want to. The Healthy Cook’s tomato-forward recipes include Pasta Primavera, with a sauce made of puréed tomatoes; quick and delicious tomatoes stuffed with smoky quinoa, spinach, and  caramelized onions or chicken salad; and knockout Roasted Cherry Tomato Salsa that doubles as a sandwich spread. Stuffed Italian Eggplant pairs fresh tomatoes with herbs and another seasonal veg for an easy dinner with a whopping 30g of protein, thanks to its seasoned ground chicken filling.

For more ideas, check out The Healthy Cook’s Kitchen: Spring & Summer Vegetables 

Summer squash and zucchini recipes

The smaller the vegetable the more flavorful it is–so select smaller green or gold bar zucchini, summer squash, and patty pans. Got a lot? Try the zucchini butter recipe–any combination of this bumper crop of summer will melt down into a luxurious topping for toast or pasta. You can make use of a pile of zucchini by whipping up The Healthy Cook’s Black Bean & Quinoa Salad, Zucchini Scallion Pancakes, Smoky Veggie Paella, or Green Risotto. Try Chicken Tagine, or its vegetarian counterpart, Chickpea Tagine; both are brimming with flavor and seasonal veg.

For even more simple and satisfying dishes, try Veggie Nice! Plant-Based Main Dishes from The Healthy Cook

Bell pepper recipes

Got bell peppers? Lean in and give Pan-Seared Mini Bell Peppers a try. Make a quick and simple stir-fry like Golden Tofu Stir-Fry or Tofu Cashew Stir-Fry, which can be modified to add just about any vegetables you have on hand. Grilled Sesame Chicken & Vegetables can be on the table in 30 minutes and the leftovers are great for a lunchtime salad. If you have chilis on hand, they make the perfect topping for Paprika Chickpeas, which incorporates two colors of bell peppers, too. 

Put a nutritious dinner on the table in no time with The Healthy Cook’s Kitchen: Main Dish Salads 

Corn recipes

If you ask us, corn is the sweet and crunchy star of Fiesta Bowls—a build-your-own family meal that offers endless customization. For a different take, try Fish Taco Bowls, where corn joins beans and rice as the base of a nutritious and flavorful weeknight dinner, or BBQ Tempeh Bowls, where corn gets friendly with poblanos or bell peppers. If you have leftover rice on hand, give Tex-Mex Fried Rice a whirl. 

Get more tasty, quick, and nutritious recipes in the NutritionAction store

Recipes for a little bit of everything

If you’d like an ensemble of veggies in your meal, try Roasted Pepper, Eggplant, Cannellini Beans, & Basil Stuffed Tomatoes or The New Wedge Salad, which takes its cues from Mexican street corn. If you love stir-fries, give Stir-Fried Vegetables in Black Pepper Sauce a go. If you want to fire up the grill, try Levantine Chicken Kofta. Have a bit of everything on hand? Very Veggie Fried Rice or Smoky Veggie Paella might be the ticket. Soup is an excellent option—and Creamy Vegetable Soup is one of the easiest and most flavorful around.

Need more soup ideas? Find them in The Healthy Cook’s Kitchen: Soup

Use it all 

If, after all that cooking, you’ve found yourself with an abundance of vegetable scraps—peels, skins, cores or tops from carrots, mushrooms, onions, celery, or tomatoes, for example—you’ve also got the base for a quart or two of Vegetable Stock for future meals; it makes a perfect start for soup, can give grains of all kinds more flavor when used instead of water, and is easy to freeze for quick and tasty weeknight meals in the future. 

Find more No-Waste Kitchen Tips from The Healthy Cook in NutritionAction.