Profit from summer season produce with 5 dietitian-approved ideas! Learn to choose, retailer, prep, and prepare dinner seasonal fruits and veggies—with wholesome recipe concepts too.
Summer season Produce Energy: 5 Dietitian-Accredited Suggestions for Fruits, Veggies & Simple Recipes
Summer season is the right time to fill your plate with recent, colourful fruit and veggies—however are you getting essentially the most out of them? Whether or not you’re procuring on the farmers market or grocery retailer, or harvesting out of your backyard, these prime 5 dietitian-approved ideas will assist you profit from seasonal summer season produce. From good procuring and menu planning hacks to meals waste ideas, plus easy, wholesome recipe concepts, this information has every little thing you must flip summer season’s bounty into scrumptious, nourishing meals.

Summer season is right here in all her glory! Apart from seashore journeys, trip locations, and outside grill days, summer season marks the perfect time of the yr to take pleasure in produce in season. In any case, summer season is when nature presents its prodigious bounty of fruit and veggies in each measurement, form, colour, texture and taste. It’s time to pack each meal with summer season vegetarian recipes whereas the produce is at its best. So, in honor of summer season produce, I requested a few of my favourite dietitian consultants for his or her prime tips about how you can profit from the season. Let’s dive right into a season of taste, freshness, and feel-good consuming!
Prime 5 Dietitian Suggestions for Summer season Fruit and Summer season Greens
1. Let the Summer season Veggies Encourage You!
Let the seasonal lineup of greens—eggplants, tomatoes, summer season squash, inexperienced beans, peppers—assist gasoline your creativity within the kitchen. “Most of us plan meals by selecting the animal protein that may headline the meal. As an alternative, problem your self to plan a meal round a vegetable that evokes you. An image on social media, journey to the farmer’s market, peek in your CSA field or a couple of moments within the produce aisle at your grocery retailer are all nice locations to begin. You possibly can even survey your loved ones to seek out out their favourite vegetable, or select a vegetable that’s new and attention-grabbing to you,” says Katie Cavuto, RDN.
Strive These Summer season Veggie-Impressed Recipes:

2. Don’t Waste a Factor!
With a lot summer season produce in your kitchen, don’t overlook artistic methods to make use of the entire fruit or vegetable, together with roots, stems, leaves, and peels. Flip these nutritious choices to gold! “Don’t waste the much less candy a part of melons near the rind as a result of your loved ones received’t eat them/flip up their noses. Minimize the components near the rind and use in juices or smoothies. They’ll even be frozen and used later. Freeze/save your ‘may get overripe earlier than we get round to consuming it’ fruits and veggies as effectively. Freeze on cookie sheet, then put in freezer bag or container. Shake out as addition to juice, smoothies, muffin, pancake, cereal and even soup,” says Jan Patenaude, RD, CLT.

Strive These Meals Waste Pleasant Recipes:
3. Enhance the Variety of Summer season Produce
Go completely loopy with summer season produce! Enhance what number of fruit and veggies you match into your day by day meals, together with breakfast, lunch, and snacks. And push the number of produce you’re choosing, shifting past the essential tomatoes and corn (although we love these too!). Discover intriguing methods to make use of up all that produce in intelligent recipe concepts. “Summer season is the perfect time for stunning produce! I like including seasonal fruits to salads, breakfast meals and desserts, and even salsa—mango and watermelon anybody? Any leftover greens I’m not grilling or mixing in complete grain dishes I toss into omelets and even gazpacho!” says Katie Pfeffer-Scanlan, RDN.

Strive These Biodiverse Recipes:
4. Save Some Produce for Later
With a lot summer season bounty, why not avoid wasting for later within the yr? When the cooler months take maintain, and fewer produce choices can be found, you’ll be glad to tug out an limitless summer season of home-preserved produce. You possibly can freeze, can, jam, dry, and ferment summer season fruit and veggies. “Protect it so you’ll be able to have recent produce all yr spherical! It’s very easy to freeze or can summer season fruits, and many individuals don’t know that lots of their veggies—even greens—may be frozen. You merely have to blanch them first in order that they preserve their high quality within the freezer. Strive in search of gross sales on seasonal produce on the grocery retailer, shopping for in bulk from a farm, or doing ‘you-pick’ to get the perfect costs and have sufficient to freeze or protect,” says Kate Lee, MPH, RDN.

Strive These Recipes Utilizing Preserved Summer season Produce:
5. Do Strive Fermentation
Strive fermenting or pickling a few of your summer season produce. It really works for all kinds of greens and even fruits, resembling cucumbers, cabbage, inexperienced beans, peppers, olives, and watermelon rinds. “I like capturing summer season’s bounty by way of choosing and fermentation! I like doing fast pickles of onions, radishes, okra, kohlrabi and even fruit like watermelon rinds! I preserve the jars in my fridge and add pickled veggies to salads,” says Christianna Gozzi, MA, MS, RD, LD, CDN, plant ahead dietitian.
Strive These Recipes Utilizing Fermented Produce:
Prime 10 Summer season Produce Recipes
Uncover much more scrumptious recipes that includes summer season produce:
Simple Mulberry Oats with Hazelnuts, Hemp Seeds, and Molasses
Strawberry Banana Chia Smoothie Bowl
Grilled Nectarine Salad with Citrus Ginger Dressing
Simple Herb Grilled Greens
Farmers Market Vegetable Sushi
Simple Chunky Salsa
Zucchini Lentil Curry
Baked Italian Eggplant Casserole
Orchard Stone Fruit Crisp Skillet
Apricot Tart with Slivered Almonds
Predominant Picture: Apricot Tart with Slivered Almonds