Strawberry Lemonade

This homemade strawberry lemonade recipe is easy with the best sweet tart flavor! It’s quick to mix up a big pitcher that’s deliciously festive.

Got fresh strawberries? Here’s one of the best ways to use them…a pitcher of homemade Strawberry Lemonade! This drink is bright and beautiful, citrusy with a hit of berry on the finish. It tastes infinitely better made at home: the flavors are brilliantly fresh. This one has become a favorite over here as a summery drink (if we’re not making the shortcut pink lemonade, of course!). This recipe is fast and easy: you don’t even need to cook down a syrup! Simply blend and go.

Ingredients for strawberry lemonade

This strawberry lemonade recipe skips making a strawberry syrup on the stovetop, and goes right to the blender. All you’ll need to do is blend berries and sugar, then mix it with lemon juice to form lemonade. Easy as that! In fact, you only need three real ingredients (plus water):

• Strawberries
• Lemons
• Sugar

Use the best ripe berries

It might go without saying, but this strawberry lemonade is best with beautifully ripe strawberries. These days, it’s easy to find strawberries out of season: and their flavor is tart and bland. Make sure you find ripe fruit, because no amount of sugar can save an unripe berry! Bonus points if you’ve got a pint of berries from a local farmers market.

How to make strawberry lemonade (basic steps)

Once you’ve got your ingredients, there are just a few basic steps for strawberry lemonade. Here’s all you need to do (or jump to the recipe below for the exact quantities):

• Juice the lemons. The only time consuming part is this! We recommend using a press juicer, which is the quickest, gets out the most juice and saves your hands. The next best choice? A handheld citrus juicer.
• Blend the strawberries, sugar and water. Give it a whiz in the blender.
• Mix the pitcher. Then mix it in a pitcher with the lemon juice and more cold water. Garnish with ice and mint if you like!

Serving in a pitcher with ice? Reduce the water

Are you planning to make this strawberry lemonade for a party, leaving it out in a big pitcher with ice? The ice melts over time, which can dilute the drink. If you think it might sit out for quite a while, you can reduce the cold water you add at the end to account for dilution.

But if you’re planning to serve it right away, there’s no need! Simply follow the recipe below.

Variations on strawberry lemonade

There are so many tasty ways to mix up this drink! Here are a few ideas:

• Sparkling lemonade: Stir in 4 cups soda water instead of cold water.
• Spiked lemonade: By the glass, serve 1 cup of this strawberry lemonade with ¼ cup vodka or 3 tablespoons gin.
• Arnold Palmer: Make a Strawberry Arnold Palmer by mixing 6 tablespoons lemonade with 1 cup iced tea.

More strawberry recipes

Got berries? We’ve got lots of strawberry recipes to make the most of the season! Here are a few more tasty recipes with this delicious berry:

• Try delicious Strawberry Muffins with a cream cheese swirl
• Make a cozy Strawberry Crumble
• Wake up with Strawberry Waffles
• Go for Classic Strawberry Shortcake

01

Best-Ever Strawberry Muffins

02

Classic Strawberry Crumble

03

Strawberry Waffles

04

Classic Strawberry Shortcake

This strawberry lemonade recipe is…

Vegetarian, vegan, plant-based, dairy-free and gluten-free.

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Easy Strawberry Lemonade

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★★★★★

5 from 1 reviews

• Author: Sonja Overhiser
• Prep Time: 10 minutes
• Cook Time: 0 minutes
• Total Time: 10 minutes
• Yield: 8 drinks
• Diet: Vegan

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Description

This homemade strawberry lemonade recipe is easy with the best sweet tart flavor! It’s quick to mix up a big pitcher that’s deliciously festive.

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Ingredients

• 1 ½ cups fresh squeezed lemon juice (7 to 8 large lemons)
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 8 ounces fresh strawberries, stems removed
• 6 cups water, divided
• Ice and fresh mint, for garnish (optional)

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Instructions

1. Juice the lemons.
2. Add the strawberries, sugar and 2 cups warm water to a blender and blend until smooth. Strain through fine mesh sieve into pitcher, using a spatula to push the liquid through (discard the seeds; this takes a few minutes to complete).
3. Add 4 cups* cold water and the fresh squeezed lemon juice. Add ice to the pitcher and serve. If desired, garnish with extra strawberries and fresh mint sprigs.

Notes

*If you plan to serve in a large pitcher with ice and leave it out at a party, use 3 cups water to account for ice melting and diluting the drink.

• Category: Drink
• Method: Lemonade
• Cuisine: American

Keywords: Strawberry lemonade, strawberry lemonade recipe

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Easy Tortellini Salad

This tortellini salad is full of zingy flavor: a delicious pasta salad for picnics and cookouts! Leftovers last for days, so it’s also an easy lunch idea.

Here’s a pasta salad recipe that’s ultra versatile for picnics, barbecues, and an easy lunch idea: this Tortellini Salad! The tang of the artichoke, chewy pillowy pasta, zippy tomatoes, and peppery basil come together into a symphony of flavor! Even better, it stores up to 4 days in the fridge, making it a perfect easy lunch. We’ve made this more times than we can count already: and it’s irresistibly delicious every time.

The pasta to buy for tortellini salad…tortelloni!

Here’s an important tip for making tortellini salad. Make it with tortelloni pasta! What’s tortelloni vs tortellini?

• Tortelloni is a pasta shape that is larger than tortellini, and it’s got a filled center versus a hole in the middle. Because it’s larger, it’s easier to taste the filling. Tortelloni is easy to find the refrigerated section at your local grocery.
• How to tell the difference quickly? Tortellini has a hole in the middle, tortelloni has a solid center that encloses the filling. Of course, this really makes it a tortelloni salad. But it’s the tastiest pasta for the job!
• Don’t make this pasta salad with frozen or dried tortellini. It’s just not as good! Trust us, we’ve tried it.

Ingredients for tortellini salad

Got your pasta? It’s easy to throw together this tortellini salad once you’ve got the right type. Here’s what else you’ll need:

• Cherry tomatoes
• Spinach
• Artichokes
• Fresh basil: optional, but we highly recommend it! It’s especially easy in summer if you have a basil plant
• Parmesan cheese
• Homemade vinaigrette (or purchased dressing)

Use homemade dressing, or shortcut with purchased

This tortellini salad is very easy to throw together: boil the pasta, chop the veggies, then make the dressing! We created a homemade vinaigrette dressing for this salad that makes it beautifully fresh and delicious. Here’s what to note about it:

• The homemade dressing is best flavor-wise. All you need is oil, vinegar, and a few spices. Dried dill makes for an intriguing flavor without overpowering.
• In a rush, use ¾ cup purchased Italian or vinaigrette dressing. It makes it even easier to throw together.

Stores as leftovers for up to 4 days!

This tortellini salad works great as a pasta salad for summer picnics and barbecues, but we also designed it to work for lunches! This one is a fantastic make-ahead pasta salad that lasts for up to 4 days in the refrigerator. We had to work a bit to engineer that flavor to perfection. Here are a few notes for leftover storage:

• Using neutral oil plus olive oil makes store well! Olive oil tends to clump up when it’s cold. How to make olive oil not solidify in dressings in the refrigerator? Add a neutral oil! Using equal parts organic vegetable oil or grapeseed oil makes a vinaigrette that doesn’t solidify. But if you prefer to use all olive oil, feel free! Just beware the salad dressing may clump up (just bring it to room temp before eating).
• You may need to add a few pinches of salt. Some foods become more bland when refrigerated, which is the case with this pasta salad. Taste and add a few pinches salt before serving, if necessary.

More pasta salad recipes

There are lots of great pasta salad recipes for summer or lunches! Once you’ve tried this tortellini salad, here are a few more summer salads to try:

• Try tasty Italian-style Antipasto Salad
• Go classic with Classic Tuna Pasta Salad
• Grab Italian Vegan Pasta Salad

01

Antipasto Salad

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Classic Tuna Pasta Salad

03

Italian Vegan Pasta Salad

This tortellini salad recipe is…

Vegetarian. For gluten-free, use gluten-free tortellini. For vegan, use vegan tortellini and skip the Parmesan cheese (add a bit more salt as needed).

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Easy Tortellini Salad

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• Author: Sonja Overhiser
• Prep Time: 15 minutes
• Cook Time: 5 minutes
• Total Time: 20 minutes
• Yield: 6 to 8 side dish servings
• Diet: Vegetarian

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Description

This tortellini salad is full of zingy flavor: delicious for picnics and cookouts! Leftovers last for days, so it’s ideal as an easy lunch.

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Ingredients

• 18 ounces refrigerated cheese tortelloni*
• 2 ½ ounces (2 cups) baby spinach or chopped spinach
• 1 handful fresh basil leaves, roughly chopped (optional but recommended)
• 14 ounce can (8.5 ounce dry weight) quartered artichokes, roughly chopped
• 1 pint cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
• ¼ cup white wine vinegar***
• 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
• ½ teaspoon each dried dill and garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
• Fresh ground black pepper
• ¼ cup olive oil
• ¼ cup neutral oil (like organic vegetable or grapeseed**)
• ¾ cup shredded Parmesan cheese

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Instructions

1. Start a large pot of well-salted water to boil. Boil the pasta until al dente according to the package instructions (usually around 2 minutes). Drain the pasta and run it cool water over it until it’s warm. 
2. Meanwhile while the pasta cooks, chop the spinach, basil and artichoke hearts, and slice the tomatoes. In a large bowl, whisk together the vinegar, sugar, dried dill, garlic powder, kosher salt, and fresh ground black pepper. Then whisk in the olive oil and neutral oil. 
3. Once the pasta is done, add it to the large bowl of dressing and toss with the chopped vegetables. Add the Parmesan cheese and stir to combine. Taste and add salt or more cheese to taste. Serve at room temperature or cold. Stores up to 4 days refrigerated (leftovers taste great and work well for lunches!).

Notes

*Tortelloni is large tortellini that you can find in the refrigerated section. It’s best for this salad because standard tortellini is too small. 

**Using neutral oil in this pasta salad helps leftovers keep in the fridge: if you use only olive oil, it clumps up after about 1 day of storage. If you’re not planning to have leftovers, you can use 100% olive oil if you prefer. 

***In a rush? Substitute ¾ cup Italian dressing or your purchased vinaigrette dressing of choice for the homemade dressing. 

• Category: Salad
• Method: Stovetop
• Cuisine: American

Keywords: Tortellini salad

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Our Favorite Overnight Pizza Dough

No matter the toppings, homemade pizza is sure to be a crowd pleaser. And the foundation of good homemade pizza is, of course, the crust. Once you find a reliable, go-to pizza crust recipe, you’ll be set for life.

We’ve made dozens of different crust recipes over the years, and this one is our all-time favorite: an overnight pizza dough recipe that uses what’s called a poolish, or pre-ferment, to develop a lovely depth of flavor without the need for a sourdough starter. It’s thick (but not too thick) and perfectly chewy, with an open, airy crumb and a delightfully crisp bottom.

As much as I love sourdough, I find most sourdough pizza crusts too tangy for my tastebuds. But often times recipes using instant yeast are downright flavorless. This pizza dough, however, strikes the perfect balance of flavor and fermentation, and it does so using what’s called a poolish, or pre-ferment, which gives the dough a lovely depth of flavor without the harsh undertones of sourdough.

This post and recipe is really focused the dough: what you put on top of it is up to your personal taste and limited only by your imagination.

Our favorite go-to pizza assembly includes a thin layer of extra thick pizza sauce (recipe coming in a separate post!) plus slices of creamy mozzarella and lots of pepperoni (I have to say, I never used to be a pepperoni person but lately it’s been growing on me). Sometimes we’ll add a sprinkle of parmesan or some fresh basil leaves to finish it off.

If I happen to have fresh chard on hand, this pizza bianca with goat cheese is quite possibly my favorite pizza of all time (just ignore the old crust recipe in that post, ok? This new one is better).

This recipe is scaled and adapted from one of my favorite bread books, Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast. The book actually has four different pizza dough recipes, including a sourdough pizza dough and a same-day pizza dough. But this one, an overnight dough made with a poolish or pre-ferment, has emerged as our favorite. I’ve scaled it down, as the original makes 6 balls of dough and frankly, I don’t have a container big enough for that much dough.

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Smoked Salmon Salad

This smoked salmon salad is the ideal quick dinner: no cooking involved! It’s fresh, healthy, and full of big flavor.

Here’s a genius trick that makes a fast dinner or healthy lunch with no cooking required. That’s right, no need to grab your pan and spatula. Try this Smoked Salmon Salad! It’s healthy, fresh, and 100% cook free. Imagine: savory smoked salmon, fresh greens, fluffy goat cheese dollops and a tangy shallot vinaigrette. It’s ideal for a summer meal al fresco or fast lunch: and it comes together in 15 minutes flat.

Components in smoked salmon salad

Somehow we tend to forget about the magic of smoked salmon for making fast meals, so we’re remedying that with this recipe. Smoked salmon salad is the type of lifesaver meal you can throw together while your kids are screaming or when you don’t have energy to think. Of course, you’ll need to have a few ingredients on hand:

• Smoked salmon: find it in the refrigerated section near the meat counter
• Fresh greens: we like to use mixed spring greens for color and texture contrasts
• Goat cheese: it adds creamy, savory notes: substitute feta if you’re not a goat cheese fan
• Homemade shallot vinaigrette: easy to mix up (see below)
• Red onion slices: add just the right spicy bite

Optional ingredients to add!

This smoked salmon salad is totally customizable, based on what you have on hand in your refrigerator. Use it as a “clean out the fridge” concept and add any veggies, nuts or seeds you like. A few ideas that would go well:

• Tomatoes
• Cucumber
• Radishes
• Sesame seeds or pepitas
• Almonds, walnuts, pecans, or hazelnuts

Mix up a homemade shallot vinaigrette

The star of this smoked salmon salad, other than the salmon itself, is the dressing! This homemade vinaigrette comes together quickly and has the perfect tangy flavor. It stars shallots, small onions that have a delicate flavor. They’re one of our favorites to use in salad dressings! Here’s what to know about the dressing:

• Whisk the olive oil in gradually to get the perfect emulsion. We like to do it about 1 tablespoon at a time. The Dijon mustard is also a key component to getting a creamy consistency.
• Dressing stores up to 2 weeks. The dressing can solidify in the fridge because of the oil, so bring to room temperature before serving.

Dressing variations for smoked salmon salad

Of course, you can use any other type of dressing you like for this smoked salmon salad. The quality greatly affects the final flavors. So if you use store-bought, make sure it’s best quality! Here we’d recommend tangy vinaigrettes starring herbs, tomatoes or fresh berries. Here are a few more delicious go-to homemade salad dressing recipes we love:

• Go classic with our favorite Creamy Balsamic Dressing
• Try zingy Apple Cider Vinegar Dressing, Dijon Mustard Dressing, or Citrus Salad Dressing
• Mix up a Quick Tomato Vinaigrette with summer tomatoes
• Go herby with Fresh Basil Vinaigrette or Creamy Cilantro Dressing
• Grab berries for Raspberry Vinaigrette or Strawberry Vinaigrette

More easy salmon recipes

Salmon is a weeknight dinner hero, in our book! Smoked salmon is ever better, since you don’t have to cook it! Here are a few more recipes where this lean protein makes a delicious lunch, brunch or dinner:

• Try a quick and easy Simple Salmon Bowl
• Go elegantly simple with Pecan Crusted Salmon or Pistachio Crusted Salmon
• Throw together Salmon and Asparagus Sheet Pan Meal
• Make easy Blackened Salmon
• Impress everyone with Classic Salmon Burgers or Salmon Cakes

01

Simple Salmon Bowl

02

Easy Salmon Patties (Salmon Cakes!)

03

Salmon and Asparagus Sheet Pan Meal

04

Pecan Crusted Salmon

This smoked salmon salad recipe is…

Pescatarian, dairy-free and gluten-free.

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Smoked Salmon Salad

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• Author: Sonja Overhiser
• Prep Time: 15 minutes
• Cook Time: 0 minutes
• Total Time: 15 minutes
• Yield: 4 salads
• Diet: Gluten Free

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Description

This smoked salmon salad is the ideal quick dinner: no cooking involved! It’s fresh, healthy, and full of big flavor.

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Ingredients

For the salad

• 10 ounces greens (2 to 3 cups per plate)
• 8 ounces smoked salmon
• 4 to 6 large sprigs fresh dill, torn into pieces
• 4 ounces soft goat cheese
• ¼ cup red onion slices
• Sesame seeds, for the garnish

For the vinaigrette dressing

• 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 1 teaspoon honey
• ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
• Fresh ground black pepper
• 6 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 tablespoons finely minced shallot (1/2 medium shallot)

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Instructions

1. Make the vinaigrette dressing: In a medium bowl, whisk together the white wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, honey, kosher salt, and fresh ground black pepper. Whisk in the olive oil 1 tablespoon at a time until a creamy emulsion forms. Store refrigerated and bring to room temperature before serving (keeps at least 2 weeks).
2. Make the smoked salmon salad: Place the greens on a plate. Add pieces of smoked salmon, torn dill, goat cheese dollops, and sliced red onions. Drizzle with dressing and serve.

• Category: Dinner
• Method: No Cook
• Cuisine: American

Keywords: Smoked salmon salad

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