Soppressata

Your answer to the age-old question "What can I make ahead of time and throw in my bag to feed myself (and, okay, my friends) when we finally make it to the beach/park/festival/fireworks?"

Delicata works in this pasta recipe because it cooks quickly in the pan, but you could sub slices of acorn squash or any roasted vegetables you want.

If you prefer a spicy pie, use twice as much hot soppressata and none of the sweet type. This is part of BA's Best, a collection of our essential recipes.

Park 121 makes its own zucchini pickles for these messy (in a good way) sandwiches.

At Two Boroughs Larder in Charleston, SC, chef Josh Keeler brings out the best in vegetables with…meat. He drizzles a vinaigrette made with cured soppressata over a rotating cast of seasonal produce, like okra and green beans.

It's a pizza. It's a salad. Here, store-bought pizza dough gets this family-friendly dinner on the table in less than an hour.

Meet the most creamy, comforting, flavor-packed baked pasta dinner you can make without any actual pasta.

A bit of soppressata and cheese stuffed ingeniously between each leaf gives these artichokes a heartiness worthy of a special course. (Eat them as you normally would, scraping the leaf with your teeth—but in this case you'll get a mouthful of flavor-packed filling, too.) Using a pressure cooker speeds up cooking time and also results in incredibly tender artichokes.

To minimize untended grill time, bring the stuffing and reserved cheese to the grill along with the mushrooms.

In these stuffed artichokes, based on a recipe by Marie Miraglia — mother of one of our food editors, Gina — the provolone melts into each bite, and the soppressata adds more depth of flavor. Though we've given a regular-pot method in our recipe, there's nothing like the tenderness the leaves acquire in a pressure cooker — and the artichokes are done in a fraction of the time. Active time: 1 1/2 hr Start to finish: 2 hr