Summer Foods Make Perfect Picnic Foods

If you are about to plan a picnic there are a few tips that it may be worth bearing in mind before you set off.  Always better to be safe than sorry.

• 10 Tips for a Perfect - and safe - picnic

Summer soup recipes are wonderful but on a warm, summers' day what could be lovelier than a bowl of cold soup. Cold soup recipes make perfect and elegant starters for a dinner or for outdoor eating, picnics and barbecues. as they can easily be carried in a flask and drunk from a glass.

The hotter the temperature, the cooler the soup, so add ice cubes or serve in chilled bowls. Not too, too hot then serve at room temperature which also gives the maximum flavour to the soup

• Cold Soups for Summer Picnics and Parties

Salads are always great picnic food. Pack them in an airtight box, a couple of forks and away you go. Perfect.

This colorful and nutritious salad is so, so easy to make. The salad is good served alongside cold meats, quiche or simply on its own. If you can't find fresh thyme, don't worry. Try fresh basil instead.

• Runner Bean and Slow Roasted Tomato Recipe

A warm asparagus salad is suitable for a simple, lunch and great for a picnic.  Use fresh British asparagus when in season or whenever fresh asparagus is available. This asparagus salad recipe is filled with the best of summer vegetables, peas, beans and rocket. If you can't find any of these just use any that take your fancy.

• Warm Asparagus, Pea and Bean and Salad

Pastry based tarts are a lovelt picnic food. Wrap them carefully in foil or place into a platic box and you're away.

This Summer Tomato Tart is the perfect tomato tart recipe when you have lots of fresh, fragrant tomatoes in the garden. The tomato tart recipe is one of my most requested dishes from family and friends. Served warm with a salad it is a perfect supper dish or a light lunch. Cold it goes really well in a lunch box, or a party or picnic food. I like to decorate the tart with salty, canned anchovies and a few black olives, but that's optional.

• The Best Tomato Tart

Cold, cooked chicken is always a great ingredient for the picnic basket. Hot or cold chicken keeps it flavour so what could be better. There are many recipes but this Lemon Roast Chicken recipe is perfect cooked, cooled and then jointed and packed for the basket. Yummy

If I am cooking a whole chicken, my favorite is this Lemon Roast Chicken recipe. It is one of the best I have ever cooked. The chicken remains moist and succulent with soft flavors of lemon and garlic.
It is simple to make and makes a great roast for a Sunday lunch or cold for a summer lunch or picnic.

• Lemon Roast Chicken Recipe

Coronation Chocken is a totally traditional British food and its creamy, spicy flavour plus that it packs easily into a plastic box make is a perfect picnic food.

Coronation chicken was designed for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II as a representation of the, then, colonial nature of the British Empire so includes fruit, curry and mayonnaise. There may no longer be a British empire but this recipes remains a firm favourite all over the British Isles.

Coronation Chicken is a great way to use up leftover chicken. Coronation Chicken is lovely served with a rice salad, as a jacket potato filling, and great for lunch boxes, picnics and buffets. How versatile!

• Coronation Chicken Recipe

As the story goes: Eton Mess was traditionally served at Eton College but how it came to have the name is not clear but the story is a Labrador dog sat on a picnic basket in the back of a car and squashed a strawberry and meringue dessert. So as this dessert is already squashed it is great for a picnic, no-one has to worry about the dish being messed up.

The dessert is quick and easy to make and makes great use of ripe strawberries at the height of summer when they are plentiful. Frozen or canned strawberries don't work.

• Eton Mess Recipe

Jam tarts are one of the first things my mum ever taught me to bake probably because a jam tart recipe is just so easy just a little pasty and jam or, for lemon tarts, using lemon curd. Packed into a little box they are such a great picnic snack or after picnic treat.

Another great sweet food is a box of tasty flapjack. Traditional Flapjack is one of the quickest, easiest and importantly cheap baked goods to make. This is a traditional flapjack recipe and delicious.

• Traditional Jam Tarts Recipe
• Flapjack Recipe

Taking something to drink of course is most important. You choose if those drinks are non, or, alcoholic. It will depend on the time, occasion and who is present.

One of the most refreshing drinks for the summer is an Elderflower Cordial. An Elderflower Cordial Recipe is quick and easy to make and a great excuse for a long walk collecting flowers, it also a non-alcoholic drink.

Pimm's is the quintessentially summer drink in the UK, it brinsg the scents of summer, parties, picnics and Wimbledon together.

And, if it is a beer you fancy, check out how to match the two together.

• Elderflower Cordial Recipe
• Pimm's Recipe
• Summer Foods and Beer