Snack

Min’s Cranberry Fruit Salad is the result of her crusade to bring vibrant colors and crisp textures to those brown winter meals—including plenty of the cheater pulled and chopped meats. Bright cranberries and fall fruits make a drop-dead gorgeous salad with body, color, and crunch. Smoked turkey, chicken, pork loin, and brisket are always better with a bright accessory. Freeze extra cranberries in the fall to whip this up throughout the winter.

This completely fat-free side is the perfect counterpoint to rich meat. No matter the barbecue, Q-Cumbers will expand your side dish repertoire beyond the more conventional slaws, potato salads, beans, and corn. Q-Cumbers are best icy cold. Regular cucumbers may need their seeds removed, but the long, plastic-wrapped English/Japanese/seedless kind grown in hothouses are ready-made for thin slicing. Maybe it’s psychological, but the palate-cleansing effect of fresh vinegary sweet cucumbers is extra good in hot weather. Plus, you don’t have to worry about the mayonnaise issue in the heat. The jalapeños, while optional, are encouraged.

One of the cool things about cooking cheater barbecue is the thought that something is going on inside that slow cooker or behind the oven door while you’re off doing something else. The same is true with making lox in the fridge. Our method is just a simple take on classic cold smoking with a little bottled smoke. The fish “cooks” in sugar and salt and cold-smokes in the fridge. Three days later, like magic, you’re in lox. Serve with toasted bagels and cream cheese or dark rye bread with chopped hard-cooked egg, capers, and red onion.

Fresh briny oysters out of a jar satisfy our periodic oyster craving without the hassle of shucking. To cheat, swap the half shell for a casserole dish and dress the oysters with smoky shallots, butter, and lemon. A few minutes under the broiler and you’ve got a seaside party anywhere, anytime. Slurp them up with saltines. Cold beer, sparkling wine, and dry white wine are what we’re drinking.

These days quality hardwood-smoked salmon and trout in convenient Cryovac packages are easy to find. What we never expected was that even canned tuna, a product that has required little contemplation beyond water- versus oil-packed, would go through a major transformation with the new retort vacuum-packed foil pouch. No can opener, no draining, and new flavors to play with. A pouch or two of hickory-smoked tuna works for this spread. When we say any fish, we mean any fish or any shellfish, like smoked oysters or clams. We usually use a frozen pack of R. B.’s patio-smoked, fresh-caught Rhode Island bluefish courtesy of his friend and neighbor Chappy Pierce. Vary the ratio of seafood to cream cheese to your liking. If things taste fishy, add lemon juice. Serve the spread mounded in a bowl garnished with capers and lemon slices. We prefer plain water crackers for serving.

Have we cheesed you out? Take a cheese break and try this straight vegetable-bean puree with nutty sweet garlic and smoked paprika. It may not be the lead-off dish to a night of Crock Dogs, but it fashionably introduces dressier barbecue dinners. We especially like it with Tandoori BBQ Chicken Thighs (page 96), Cider-Soy Pork Tenderloin (page 79), House Lamb Shanks (page 128), and Ultimate Cheater Oven-Smoked Salmon (page 132).

Hummus may come and go, but warm spinach cheese dip, with its highly satiating qualities and homey familiarity, is still and always will be an excellent choice for casual parties involving cocktails. Broiler-charred jalapeños are our spin to bump this old classic into flavor advanced placement. As with any creamy cheese spread, R. B. will find any leftovers, no matter how buried in Min’s fridge, to plop on open-faced burgers.