KaoutarLunch on the beach can sometimes be a problem, for organizational reasons and various factors: those who prefer to eat comfortably, those who can not stand the heat, and those who even decide to skip lunch (we will never tire of saying that it is a mistake not to be committed). In general, it is preferable to bring from home the food to be consumed under the umbrella rather than having lunch in the bars or clubs overlooking the beach: it is a safer way to avoid junk food, to control the origin and quality of food and to assemble the meal in a healthy and balanced way.
The solutions to eating healthy by the sea are certainly not lacking: we can prepare a cold pasta or a rice salad (discover the rice salad with Bresaola), typical summer recipes that act as unique dishes and that we can season with vegetables, chicken, legumes, cheese, eggs, cold cuts to have lunch with a complete nutritional intake. The same goes for fresh beach salads, an always valid alternative to eating light and fresh.
What To Avoid On Your Beach Day
The first tip is to forget about the classic sandwiches stuffed with cold cuts and cheeses, wraps, pizzas, and focaccia: they are practical to bring, but far from refreshing! In fact, both bakery products and sausages and aged cheeses have a contracting and warming effect on our internal organs, the opposite of what we need in summer by the sea!
Another thing to avoid is the excess of cold and sweet: carbonated drinks, granitas, and refined or industrial sweets. The absolute best dessert for the beach is the fruit! Let’s choose, of course, quality, seasonal and local. We avoid tropical fruit, which has ground hundreds of thousands of kilometers to get to us when we have the availability of beautiful melons, watermelons, peaches, apricots, and many other small fruits all Italian!
We have seen what is better to avoid, now let’s see what is more suitable to consume on the beach as a snack or main meal.
Maxi ice creams and yogurt enriched with fruit, syrups, muesli, and chocolate, are so fashionable as prausa lunch. They are fresh, light a little less, but above all, they contain an excessive amount of simple sugars and do not constitute a balanced meal, since we will always miss what is the basis of the Mediterranean diet: the cereal. Rice, spelt, barley, corn, and all cereals in grain, are the food on which to base our diet, even on vacation. Consumed in salads with many vegetables, herbs, maybe legumes, seeds, and even fruits, they are a great complete meal! Cold pasta and couscous are also excellent because they are easy to digest
Best Meals For Beach Day
The right choice is to orient yourself on vegetables, and simple proteins and limit frying to a minimum, complex sauces, and carbohydrates. These, it is true, it is impossible to eliminate them, but it will be enough to prefer cold dishes - which require less seasoning - such as pasta, rice or cereal salads, which are also extremely convenient to transport: they can be divided already at home and put in trays of one or two portions, in order to make everything easier to manage under the umbrella.
Hummus with vegetables
is a typical dish of Middle Eastern culture, beloved in several countries of that geographical area, so much so that it is called “the dish of peace”, being one of the few cultural elements to be “at home” on both sides. of borders at war. Made from chickpeas, it is light and digestible and can be eaten cold, which makes it perfect to take to the beach. It is usually eaten in accompaniment to crunchy elements, such as tortillas. In the case of a take-away lunch in the height of the summer season, it is advisable to replace them with raw and crunchy zucchini and carrots, in order to stay light. The best choice is to pre-portion it at home and transport it already in single portions, in order to make the meal as hygienic as possible.
Spelled salad
Spelled salad is one of the lightest, most digestible and transversal dishes you can take to the beach. It can be replaced with other cereals, such as quinoa, or rice - better if Venus or red - but the basics remain the same. That is: boil spelled - or quinoa - let it cool and season it with a few ingredients, all strictly fresh and rich in liquids and vitamins to reintegrate what the heat takes away. Vegetables then, raw, boiled or lightly sautéed in a pan: peppers, courgettes, aubergines and cherry tomatoes - indispensable, they will give a touch of acid and three-dimensionality to the flavor -, a mixture of aromatic herbs and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. You can put it in a large container and then divide it on the beach into small reusable bowls - or at least compostable containers so as not to pollute the coast - or take it already in resealable containers in the right portions.
Caesar Salad
A dish known all over the world, loved by those who prefer a healthy and limited carbohydrate diet, it is not only suitable for the city, but also goes very well on the beach. The recipe is really flexible and knowing the basic elements - lettuce, chicken, bread and sauce - can vary according to our taste. Chicken, for example, in the case of the beach it is better to roast it - boiled would release too many liquids - so as not to have any kind of thought but to eat our dish at the time that suits us best, even with the sun. As for the green side of this recipe, if you don’t have Roman salad available, the more common iceberg will be a worthy substitute. The important thing is that the lettuce leaf is crunchy, in order to keep the consistency of the dish unchanged. Finally, the sauce:
Rice salad
Rice salad is a fresh and tasty summer first course, whose great strength, as for cold pasta and partly for spelled pasta, is that it can be prepared in advance and can be kept in the fridge, thanks to the storage capacity of the beans, up to three days. The ideal type of rice is Carnaroli, as the grains maintain the right consistency and also have the right size so as not to “disappear” once mixed with the varied and variegated dressing typical of this salad. The most classic type of condiment includes cherry tomatoes - even better if treated as for cold pasta -, corn, black olives and green olives and filleted tuna, to be replaced if necessary, especially if there are children, with good quality wrustel. If you want a fresh and even lighter version,
Cold pasta with cherry tomatoes and vegetables
Cold pasta is one of the passe-partout for the summer, whether you go to the beach or decide to stay at home, perhaps eating on the balcony of your home. The cherry tomatoes should be boiled briefly, peeled, cut into wedges, and then left to cool, so that they can then be added to the freshly drained pasta, with a generous grating of cheese and a drizzle of oil. If, on the other hand, you want to replace or add other vegetables to tomatoes, such as courgettes, peas, or green beans, you can peel them and put them in a pan; the pasta must then be added when almost cooked, so as to blow everything together with a drizzle of oil. The pasta will blend well with the vegetables, which will remain crunchy. Then just let everything cool and that’s it.
Chicken skewers
Imagine taking them to mid-August lunch: fun, easy to cook on the grill - if you can equip it or you are in an area already suitable for the purpose - or perfect even cold, perhaps with a side of vegetables and the right pinzimonio. Chicken skewers - or even chicken and turkey - even more so if interspersed with peppers, they can rightly be considered balanced dishes in nutrients and very comfortable to eat even when you do not have a table, as the wooden stick it’s actually all we need. If you want to accompany them with carbohydrates, just add in the hermetic container some boiled basmati rice seasoned with oil and lemon.
Courgette flower omelette
The omelettes are notoriously “reusable” even as a cold dish, greedy and tasty even the next day and not just lukewarm, a few minutes after coming out of the pan. This characteristic allows them to be counted among the classics of summer lunch, especially the one out of town, by the pool or by the sea, packaged and put in the fridge bag, ready to take away. Among the many possible recipes - almost infinite - the combination with vegetables and Parmesan - inevitable, to make the omelet well - is the most suitable. In addition to potatoes and peppers, one of the most suitable choices for the summer is of courgette flowers: colored and suitable for this type of cooking more than any other vegetable. There are many tips to make the omelette even more of a beach type than usual:
Fruits salad
A fresh, tasty dish with a touch of Caribbean that makes it intriguing. Fruit salads that wink Hawaiian poké can contain almost any fruit, but the perfect balance sounds like this: watermelon, cantaloupe, fennel, papaya, and mango. Exotic fruit alongside examples of our house for a balance of sweetness and freshness broken by fennel, which makes this salad very different from the fruit salad. How to make a real salad: a sprinkling of pepper, a pinch of salt, and three broth spoons of extra virgin olive oil. A sprinkle - 5 cl - of lemon, just a little and that’s it. Suitable for the beach, but also for a boat trip, where the footprint must really be reduced to a minimum.
Octopus And Potatoes
The octopus and potato salad is a single dish ideal to be served on the beach in summer not only because it must be served cold, but also because it is decidedly balanced in the relationship between proteins, vitamins and carbohydrates, a very important fact especially when eating in very hot hours and outdoors. In case you have to transport it, it is preferable to put it in a resealable salad bowl and then portion it on the beach, but for those who prefer pre-packaged single portions, just cut the tentacles into smaller slices. It does not need many ingredients, but only attention so that the octopus is well cooked and does not laugh hard and callused and the potatoes - which must be previously boiled - are not too hard. You can add green olives - pitted since you go to eat on the beach - and thinly sliced red Tropea onions.
