This Food Network Star Planned Your 4th of July Menu So You Don’t Have To

The Fourth of July menu always sounds easy until you actually have to make one.

You start with hot dogs. Then someone suggests ribs. Then you remember half the group wants burgers and suddenly your casual cookout has become a full production with patriotic napkins.

Katie Lee Biegel gets it. On All on the Table, she calls America’s birthday the “Thanksgiving of summer,” and she’s not wrong. Between pool parties, backyard barbecues and family dinners, one menu was never going to cut it. So she came up with five. Pick the one that fits your party and run with it.

Katie Lee Biegel Shared 5 Easy 4th of July Menu Ideas for America’s 250th Birthday

The pool party menu

• West Virginia-style hot dogs with homemade sauce, coleslaw, yellow mustard and chopped white onions
• Really good potato chips
• Cold watermelon with flaky sea salt
• Homemade popsicles
• S’mores brownies

The star here is the sauce, which Biegel describes as “kind of like a cross between a chili sauce and what we call spaghetti sauce.” It simmers in a slow cooker all morning while you’re in the pool. And “if you’ve never salted your watermelon, you got to try it,” she says. “It awakens your taste buds.”

The ribs and chicken menu

• Baby back ribs with homemade barbecue sauce
• Her Gramma’s barbecue chicken
• Succotash salad
• Bourbon bacon slaw
• Peach and blueberry skillet cobbler

Biegel’s ribs are “a foolproof method for making ribs at home,” seasoned, wrapped tightly in foil, and baked low until they get “so, so tender,” then brushed with sauce and crisped on the grill or under the broiler. “Once you start doing it this way, you’re going to want to make your ribs like that all the time,” she says. And she votes homemade on the barbecue sauce, calling it “one of the things that I think makes a huge difference.”

The fancy grown-up menu

• Grilled flank steak with a coffee-brown sugar dry rub
• Elote-inspired corn salad
• Heirloom tomato salad with basil
• Lemon berry cheesecake

The coffee in the dry rub isn’t just there for flavor. Biegel says the tannins actually help tenderize the steak, while the brown sugar creates “that great crust that we all crave.” As for those heirloom tomatoes, keep them out of the cold. “When you put them in the refrigerator, it zaps them of their flavor,” she says, so store them on the counter, stem side down, until you’re ready to slice them.

The burger menu

• BLT ranch burgers with homemade ranch
• Corn on the cob rolled in crushed Cool Ranch Doritos
• Classic potato salad
• Ice cream sandwiches

The burgers are great, but the bacon might steal the show. “I know it’s counterintuitive,” Biegel says, but she starts the strips in a cold oven instead of a hot one. “You think, oh, I want crispy bacon, I’m going to crank the heat up. No.” Starting cold renders the fat slowly, “which is what you want,” and every slice comes out crispier for it. 

The Northeast menu

• Lobster rolls, or shrimp salad rolls if you’re watching the budget
• Individual clam packets on the grill
• Grilled bread for dunking
• Steamed corn
• Blueberry hand pies

“Lobster rolls are better to have at home than to get out,” Biegel says, pointing out that restaurant prices are hard to justify and frozen lobster works just fine. She also loves serving individual clam packets and hand pies because everyone gets their own. “I think that feels special,” she says.

Listen to the full episode on All on the Table, available wherever you listen to podcasts.

Read Next:

• Why Your ‘Healthy’ Seafood Choice Might Not Be That Clean, According to ‘The Art of Being Well’
• 6 Small Resets That Are Making One Food Network Star Feel Like Herself Again
• 8 Things Broma Bakery’s Founder Said About Food and Body Image That Hit Way Too Close to Home