Easy Picnic Food Ideas

These Easy Picnic Food Ideas are perfect for summer and outdoor entertaining! Get fresh ideas like big salads, wraps, cheese boards and more.

At least 3 days a week, we have a picnic outside in the summer. Typically, it is often more times per week. We love going to our local pool or splash pad and bringing a picnic or go to an outdoor summer concert about twice a week. We are all about summer fun and bringing a picnic and eating it outdoors is something that we certainly can't do in the winter making it all the more exciting! I wanted to share with you some of our easy picnic food ideas that we do often to help encourage you to get outside with family and friends and enjoy a picnic!

Easy Picnic Food Ideas

Chicken Chimichurri Salad

1. A huge salad

My husband loves joking my mom that she never makes a big salad for a meal and that couldn't be further from the truth. My mom is super creative in making all different kinds of huge salads that serve as the entire meal and we all love them. We eat them pretty frequently, especially during the summer months. Last night, my mom made a Thai Peanut Chicken Salad with romaine lettuce, shredded carrots, red peppers, green onion, cucumbers, peanuts, lime wedges, grilled chicken skewers with a peanut dressing to drizzle. It was amazing! We just bring a tablecloth, sit at a picnic table and bring forks, napkins and paper plates to have with it.

2. Summer cheese board

When we want to entertain or even just make a simple picnic outside, a cheese board is the way to go. Sometimes they are fancy and other times, they are more like a snack board. We do these for lunch a lot of times and they are fun for a picnic at an outdoor concert as well. I love the Kaukauna® Singles products to go on our cheese board because they are full of flavor and travel well. We like the sharp cheddar and port wine flavors. My kids really love these on a cracker or with veggies. Kaukauna® has been creating delicious spreadable cheese for over 100 years, a Wisconsin Tradition since 1918.

This product is really tasty on celery! You don't have to wait for a holiday to enjoy it as they are easy to take on-the-go in these single-serve cups. Each box has 4 2 ounce single serving cups for snacking and are now more spreadable than ever.

My tip when making a cheese board is to use what you have on hand. You don't need to go spend a ton of money to make these delicious. I bet that you have a ton of the ingredients on hand. I recommend a variety of fruit, vegetables, nuts, crackers, lunch meat, dried fruit and anything else you have. Snack trays and cheese boards are so fun and easy to make!

This summer cheese board included:

-Pretzels
-Grapes
-Ants on a log (celery, almond butter, dried cranberries)
-Cherry tomatoes
-Kaukauna Singles
-Gouda cheese
-Mixed nuts
-Strawberries
-Blackberries
-Blueberries
-Pepperoni
-Peaches
-Cucumber
-Red pepper
-Merlot cheese

I literally just grabbed everything that I could think of from my fridge and cupboards and threw together this tray in 5-10 minutes. It's not hard and everyone will LOVE it!

Greek Orzo Pasta Salad

3. Pasta Salad

Pasta salad travels really well in a plastic container and doesn't need to be heated making it awesome for picnics. The flavor options are endless as well. We love Greek pasta salad, a classic Italian one and more. Grilling or roasting veggies and tossing them with chicken, pasta and a dressing is great for a picnic.

Peanut Chicken Lettuce Wraps

4. Lettuce wraps

Lettuce wraps travel well to a picnic and are fairly easy to put together. My mom made some kind of beef lettuce wraps last year that were really good as well. 

Garlic Tomato Artichoke Dip

5. Dips and Appetizers

You can't go wrong bringing appetizers to a picnic! My mother-in-law made the artichoke dip shown above and it is my favorite summer appetizer. I've asked her to make it again because it is so, so tasty! I also love bruschetta, layered hummus dips and more. Appetizers are easy to serve and are always crowd pleasers so we enjoy serving these outside when we entertain.

Marinated Grilled Chicken and Vegetable Wraps

6. Wraps or sandwiches

Wraps and sandwiches are perfect for a picnic because they are easy to eat. These are great if you are dining on a picnic blanket and don't have a picnic table especially. We have had SO many different variations of sandwiches and I love these grilled chicken wraps above. My mom has also made cheeseburger sandwiches, big subs and more. 


Can you tell that we LOVE to eat outdoors? We have gotten good at bringing all of our food for a picnic and coordinating with the rest of the family to bring everything that we need (plates, napkins, forks, drinks, etc.). It is such a fun and casual way to eat and we love it more than anything! I encourage you to get out for few delicious picnics this summer.

Did you make this recipe? Tag @MINutritionist on Instagram.