Make summer cooking and entertaining a breeze with these batch cooking hacks. Prep these 8 quick and easy micro recipes ahead.

Then, when the sun shines, you’re ready to upgrade your barbecue or transform a picnic with flavour-packed dressings, sweet and savoury sprinkles, marinades and syrups.

  1. Chimichurri — keeps 2 weeks

The most useful jar in the fridge. Finely chop a large bunch of flat-leaf parsley with a smaller handful of oregano, then stir through minced garlic, red wine vinegar, dried chilli flakes, salt and enough olive oil to loosen. Don’t blitz it — hand-chopping keeps the texture. Use it as a marinade before grilling, a sauce after, or a dressing thinned with more vinegar. Make double: it disappears fastest of everything here.

  1. Miso, honey and ginger marinade — keeps 3 weeks

Whisk white miso with honey, grated ginger, garlic, soy and a splash of rice vinegar until smooth. It’s sweet enough to caramelise beautifully but salty enough to season properly, which makes it the best all-purpose barbecue marinade for chicken thighs, salmon, aubergine or halloumi. Because of the sugar, keep it to the cooler side of the grill or it’ll scorch before the middle cooks.

  1. Preserved lemon and yoghurt dressing — keeps 5 days

Blitz the rind of one preserved lemon (discard the pulp) with thick Greek yoghurt, olive oil, a crushed garlic clove and a little cold water until pourable. Salty, sour and creamy all at once, and it turns plain leaves or cold roast vegetables into something worth eating. Take it to a picnic in a small jar and dress the salad on arrival rather than in advance.

  1. Dukkah — keeps 1 month

The savoury sprinkle that does the most work for the least effort. Toast hazelnuts, coriander seeds, cumin seeds and sesame seeds separately, then pulse coarsely with salt and black pepper — you want rubble, not powder. Scatter over hummus, boiled eggs, tomato salads, grilled flatbreads or roasted carrots. Store in a sealed jar away from light; it loses its punch once the oils go stale, so make it in modest batches.

  1. Smoked chilli and fennel dry rub — keeps 3 months

Grind toasted fennel seeds with smoked paprika, dried oregano, garlic powder, brown sugar, salt and a little cayenne. Rub it into pork, chicken or thick slices of cauliflower an hour before cooking. A dry rub has a real advantage over a wet marinade for entertaining: it takes up no fridge space, needs no planning, and one jar covers a whole summer.

  1. Salted hazelnut praline crumb — keeps 2 weeks

The sweet sprinkle. Melt caster sugar in a dry pan until amber, stir in toasted hazelnuts and a good pinch of flaky salt, then pour onto baking parchment and leave to set hard. Once cold, bash it in a bag or pulse briefly in a processor. Over ice cream, yoghurt and berries, or a plain tray bake, it turns a five-minute pudding into something that looks deliberate.

  1. Mint and lime syrup — keeps 3 weeks

Simmer equal parts sugar and water until dissolved, take off the heat, add a large handful of bruised mint and wide strips of lime zest, then leave to infuse until cool before straining. It’s the shortcut to fast drinks — a spoonful with soda and ice, or in a jug with rum for a crowd. Also good spooned over a melon or summer fruit salad.

  1. Strawberry and black pepper shrub — keeps 6 weeks

Macerate hulled strawberries with an equal weight of sugar and a good grind of black pepper for 24 hours, then strain and stir the resulting syrup into an equal volume of cider vinegar. The sharpness is the point: it’s a drinking vinegar for soda water, but it also works as a dressing base whisked with olive oil, and it stops a glut of soft fruit going to waste.