12 Summer Ingredients You Should Serve With Grilled Chicken

There are few dishes that so perfectly encapsulate summer than grilled chicken. Whether you've got citrus-marinated breasts or sticky sweet drumsticks, they deserve a top-quality side dish, which means cooking with what's in-season.

Warmer temperatures give you a huge variety to work with, so take this as an opportunity to expand your horizons and work with new ingredients or repurpose old ones into new recipes. But the key to making them work with your entree is finding ways to pair them with the smoky savoriness from the grill. Some options are creamy and heavy, cooling down the intensity of charred spices from dishes like blackened breasts. Others are zesty and bright, perfect as both toppings and sides.

Don't neglect serving temperature either. While you'll probably never want your grilled chicken to get cold, something as simple as a chilled salad can make an outdoor dining experience far more pleasurable. Plus, a make-ahead side dish is convenient when you have to man the grill, but you can also opt for an ingredient that cooks well right alongside your chicken, so you don't have to shuffle back and forth. Particularly large or starchy ingredients are also great candidates for using up leftover chicken marinades, creating something effortlessly flavorful. Just be sure to only use your excess and not anything that touched raw meat.

July is when both temperatures and the flavor of watermelon peak, so serving it as a chilled side is sure to keep everyone happy. Its fruitiness pairs well with citrus-based grilled chicken recipes, but it also has enough sugar to provide some contrast so your meal isn't too one-note.

While frying up fruit may seem intimidating, it's even easier than making french fries and provides something just as hearty. Plus, it's easy to make huge batches for cookouts, and they reheat quite well in an air fryer or in the oven.

A beet salad provides plenty of soft, juicy textures and only gets tastier if you make it ahead of time and let all the flavors meld. While beets' sweeter tastes work great with grilled chicken in general, they're also highly customizable, so you can alter your recipe to best work with your main course.

Whether you're making a salad or a sauteed medley, odds are good that avocado would go great with your other side dishes. Plus, its naturally creamy texture helps dampen the sharpness of spicy chicken recipes, so you don't have to choose between flavor and heat. Think of how delicious (and cooling) an easy avocado broccoli salad would be beside some spicy harissa honey chicken wings?

When you're looking for an easy weeknight dinner all from your grill, no further than zucchini. Sliced thick and charred on both sides, all it needs is a brush of leftover marinade to absorb some great taste.

Tomatillos are different from tomatoes thanks to their pronounced zestiness, giving them a more vegetable-forward flavor profile. As a side dish, this makes them great for hearty chicken recipes, but you can also char them on the grill then toss them in the blender for a low-effort salsa topping.

One of the easiest vegetables to grow in the summer, lettuce's high water content makes it great for balancing out any chicken that may have accidentally dried out. This is especially true if you leave the leaves whole and use them to wrap up slices of grilled chicken for an easy sandwich.

This is one of several vegetables that can stand up to the char of your grill no problem, whether you let it butter baste it in foil or leave it to char over open flames. Since it only needs a quick smear of butter and salt, it's possibly the easiest side dish to make when you just want to focus on your chicken.

Sauced chicken only gets sweeter once those sugars caramelize, so you might want a bit of contrast to even the meal out. The bitterness of arugula is great at this, whether you're making a salad, topping a sandwich, or even sauteeing it with a bit of oil.

If you make different grilled chicken recipes and want to stock a summer vegetable suitable for any, dried lima beans are as shelf-stable and versatile as it gets. Hearty when cooked down in butter but robust and bright when sauteed in a succotash, this starchy protein is great at bulking up any meal.

While this popular root vegetable is in-season in the fall, that doesn't mean young potatoes can't be wonderful in the summer. Waxier and firmer than mature ones, they're particularly great for a creamy potato salad that never pairs poorly with grilled chicken.