40 easy recipes for a gourmet picnic

How to prepare a gourmet picnic?

Recipes to prepare in advance to anticipate

To surprise, even outdoors, we rely on gourmet and sophisticated flavors. Marinated meat, vegetable pickles, savory or sweet cake, refreshing detox water, we anticipate so as not to offer ultra-famous flavors. If mixed salads are always perfect for a gourmet picnic, we don’t hesitate to focus on originality with changing ingredients. Snacked fruits, chickpeas grilled with spices, eggs marinated in spices or vinegar, we use our culinary knowledge to think outside the box and upgrade the simplest preparations.

Recipes to avoid for a picnic

Generally speaking, for a picnic we limit raw food, particularly for meat and fish. For what ? To prevent the surrounding heat from distorting the flavors and the cold chain from taking a hit. We therefore simply skip the meat or fish tartars from the menu. We prefer meats served cold, previously snacked at home, and cut into slices, easy to enjoy. Concerning the eggs, divine in warm or cold version, we avoid preparing them too runny, but we prefer them soft, with 7 or 8 minutes of cooking, so that they are easy to serve and eat. For fruits and vegetables, as usual when it comes to takeaway meals, we leave aside foods that leak and release a lot of water. For example, for a tomato salad, we will prefer old varieties, fleshier and which contain less “liquid”, than classic tomatoes.

As for dessert, we avoid anything based on whipped cream or whipped cream, which will not survive the heat. Same with ice creams, which should just be banned from a gourmet picnic, if you don’t want to end up with custard at the bottom of your cooler! And we prefer a cake enriched with red fruits, delicious and soft, which brings the right dose of sugar to the picnic.

The best picnic recipes

As part of a picnic, we keep in mind that it is the dishes that are easiest to enjoy that are to be favored. We therefore avoid large pieces that are difficult to cut, dishes with sauce and ultra-delicate layered cakes, and we favor salads, pre-cut meats, pies and quiches that are easy to portion, savory or sweet shortbreads that you can bite into. fingers, dips to slip into a plastic box and enjoy with breadsticks, small homemade puff pastries or even fresh fruit to eat as is. But these are not the only possibilities. The proof with these 40 special gourmet picnic recipes that make you want to lie down on the grass.