Don’t Make BBQ Without These 5 Crispy Salads

Crunch is the common thread in this set. Each of the five salads gets its crisp texture from cooking rather than from raw vegetables: air-fried noodles, crisped gnocchi, crispy rice, and potatoes treated two different ways. All five were cooked and filmed in one video, so you can watch the whole lineup back to back before deciding what belongs next to the grilled meat.

Start with the crispy smashed potato salad; potatoes are forgiving, and it shows the core idea of the set in its simplest form. The warm potato salad heads somewhere richer, pairing bacon with an egg-feta dressing, while the gnocchi Caprese keeps to familiar tomato-and-mozzarella ground with a different texture underneath.

The remaining two lean away from the barbecue itself. Chicken makes the crispy rice bowl substantial enough to anchor a plate on its own, and the noodle salad brings crunch to a night when the grill stays cold. Taken together, the five carry a summer cookout from the first plate to the last.

Recipes in this video

First up in the video and the boldest idea of the five: pasta turned into a crackly salad base. Cook this one when you want a side nobody at the table has met before.

The gateway dish of the set. Caprese flavors most cooks already know, so the only new move is crisping the gnocchi. A good second stop after the potatoes.

Of the two potato salads here, this is the warm, richer one, with bacon in the mix. Choose it for cooler evenings when a cold side feels wrong.

Skip straight here if the grill plan falls through; the chicken and crispy rice make it sturdy enough to serve as the meal itself, not just the side.

The video saves it for last, but start your own cooking here: familiar potatoes, one simple trick, and the clearest proof of why crunch anchors this whole set.

Watch the full video