22 Labor Day Main Dish Recipes for Your End-of-Summer Bash

By now, you should be all set with Labor Day sides and desserts, so now it's time to start thinking about the main event. Old standbys like burgers and grilled chicken may be great, but Labor Day is a time to pull out the big guns and send off summer right.

To that end, we've got show-stopping grilled mains for every palate, from Chilean beef sandwiches to whole fish tacos and vegan banh mi. You'll find all of those recipes and more in our roundup of 22 party-worthy Labor Day mains.

Burgers

The Ultimate Smash Cheeseburger

While a more traditional griddled burger might be cooked with the goal of a loose, tender texture in mind, a smash burger goes for one thing only: maximum crust. It packs in a wild amount of flavor in a single, manageable, four-ounce package, and the textural contrasts you get from just the patty and cheese alone are mind-blowingly good. 

Wisconsin Butter Burger

When it comes to this regional burger, the more butter, the better. Mixing butter with lean, tender sirloin steak boosts the burger blend’s richness. We like to flavor the butter with soy sauce for umami depth, which we also add as a final touch when serving the burgers.

Sausages

The Best Grilled Hot Dogs

Natural-casing hot dogs are easy to grill—you could just throw them on the fire and end up with decent results. But for the best flavor (and lowest risk of the skins exploding), we recommend simmering the sausages with beer and sauerkraut before quickly charring them on the flames.

Completos (Chilean Hot Dogs)

These Chilean hot dogs take a "more is more" approach, generously heaped with sauerkraut, diced tomatoes, mashed avocado, mayonnaise, and more. Whether they're homemade or store-bought buns, the tight uniform interior crumb of the bread and its sturdy flakiness ensures they are hardy enough to hold the hot dog’s abundant toppings.

Chicken

Thai-Style Grilled Chicken (Gai Yang)

Coated in a marinade flavored with cilantro, white pepper, and fish sauce, this Thai-style chicken is one of the tastiest things you'll ever pull off your grill. For the absolute juiciest chicken, we grill it on the cool side of a two-zone grill until nearly cooked through, then finish it off on the hotter side to crisp up the skin. Splitting the chicken in half and holding it steady with skewers also makes it easy to flip and maneuver on the grill.

Grilled Tarragon-Mustard Chicken Skewers

Sweet, savory, and tangy flavors combine in the marinade for these chicken skewers, a simple mixture of mustard, honey, lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, and fresh tarragon. Tarragon's strong profile is balanced out here by sweetness and acidity from the other ingredients; acids in the lemon and mustard tenderize the chicken and add flavor simultaneously. Once the meat is marinated, there's nothing to do but thread it onto skewers and throw it on the grates—as with many of our grilling recipes, we recommend using a two-zone fire, cooking the meat over high heat first but moving it to the cooler side if it threatens to burn.

Chicken Souvlaki With Tzatziki Sauce and Greek Salad

With a double-duty marinade, it's easy to pull together this Mediterranean feast at home. The marinade—a combination of garlic, zingy lemon, puckery red vinegar, and fresh oregano—works both for the chicken and as a dressing for the salad. For the most flavorful results, let the chicken marinate for two hours.

Grilled Cajun Chicken Wings

Frying isn't the only way to cook chicken wings—they come out wonderfully tender and flavorful when grilled. Here, we season the wings thoroughly with a blend of spices before letting them rest for eight hours in the fridge. We then grill them over indirect heat until blistered and crunchy, then toss in a simple sauce of butter, Louisiana-style hot sauce, and Worcestershire.

Grilled Tandoori Chicken Patties With Jalapeño-Mint Yogurt Sauce

These chicken patties take inspiration from tandoori chicken, with cumin, coriander, paprika, and turmeric lending plenty of warm spice and fresh ginger providing heat. A little yogurt mixed with the ground chicken and seasonings helps them stay moist on the grill. Serve them on toasted burger buns or naan, topped with a creamy, refreshing yogurt-based sauce spiked with jalapeño and mint.

Seafood

Grilled Blackened-Fish Sandwiches

We're of the opinion that too few people in this country choose seafood as the star of their cookout, but these blackened-fish sandwiches—flavored with paprika, oregano, thyme, onion and garlic powder, and cayenne—are a guaranteed hit. In Florida, blackened-fish sandwiches are typically made with grouper, but mahi-mahi or any other firm white fish will work.

Grilled Whole Fish With Molho à Campanha (Brazilian Pico de Gallo)

Grilled fish fillets make for easy, quick portioning, but whole fish are much easier to grill well—the skin protects the meat and keeps it from falling apart. Your guests will get a bit messier eating it, but that's part of the fun, right? Here, we grill whole fish (branzino, mackerel, and trout are all good bets) and serve them with molho à campanha, a vinegary Brazilian sauce similar to pico de gallo.

Whole Grilled Fish Tacos

Once you're comfortable grilling whole fish, you've got a whole world of options for how to eat it, and tacos are always a crowd-pleaser. In this recipe, we flavor the fish with salt, pepper, ancho chile powder, cumin, lime juice, and olive oil, then serve it with plenty of tortillas, pico de gallo, and fresh vegetables, so that guests can assemble their own tacos.

Grilled Shrimp With Garlic and Lemon

There are a couple secrets to making perfect grilled shrimp. Start by shelling the shrimp, tossing them with salt and baking soda to keep them firm and juicy, and letting them air-dry. When you're ready to grill, pack the shrimp tightly onto skewers, coat them with oil, and cook them over the hottest part of the fire. The result will be tender, moist, snappy shrimp with a great char. Flavor your grilled shrimp simply with garlic and lemon, or toss them with chermoula for a North African twist.

Beef

Chacarero Chileno (Chilean Steak and Bean Sandwiches)

This Chilean steak sandwich pairs grilled beef—we prefer skirt steak, hanger steak, or flap meat—with tomatoes and green beans, the latter of which we cook in boiling water until totally tender. Brushing the meat with aioli before grilling encourages even browning. You can add smashed avocado to the sandwich if you want, but we think it's rich enough without it.

Crying Tiger (Thai-Style Grilled Steak With Dry Chili Dipping Sauce)

The grilled aroma of the steak and the smokiness of the piquant dipping sauce contribute to the appeal of this classic dish. Using the piquant Jaew as a dipping sauce on the side instead of a dressing also allows its clean, crisp flavor to shine and retains the steak's smoky aroma and flavors.

Birria de Res (Beef Birria)

This Mexican birria is loaded with spoon-tender chunks of beef in a rich and complex consomé flavored with a blend of chiles, achiote paste, and the unexpected addition of savory gochujang. Serve alongside a small bowl of consomé that’s infused with a sprinkle of raw onion and cilantro for further dunking. 

Pork

City Chicken

This dish of crispy breaded pork skewers smothered in an oniony gravy—a Depression-Era Rust Belt specialty—is a classic in Pittsburgh. A brief dry brine and short bake time keep the pork juicy and tender instead of tough, while seasoned bread crumbs give these faux drumsticks a classic, homespun “chicken cutlet” flavor. 

Charcoal-Grilled Al Pastor Skewers

Here, giving al pastor the skewer treatment allows us to achieve the juicy, charred results of a traditional taqueria rotisserie trompo, but on a home grill. A special skewer set-up for a charcoal grill makes it easier and faster to cook the skewers, producing lightly charred pork that is still juicy and tender. The skewers can be enjoyed as-is, or paired with tortillas and accompaniments for traditional tacos.

Thit Heo Nuong Xa (Vietnamese Grilled Lemongrass Pork Chops)

These pork chops get their Vietnames flavor from a mixture of lemongrass, fish sauce, palm sugar, and white pepper. The chops only need a 30 minute marination before grilling, and are then served with a sweet and crunchy version of nuoc cham.

Vegetarian

Really Awesome Black Bean Burgers

Vegetarians shouldn't be an afterthought at your Labor Day cookout (or any other), and luckily, these black bean burgers are so good that they might turn out to be popular among meat-eaters, too. Their complex flavor comes from a combination of partially dehydrated black beans (drying them out in the oven helps keep the burgers from becoming mushy), feta cheese, roasted cashews, chipotle and Poblano chiles, and a little mayonnaise. Be sure to grill these over moderate heat so that they cook all the way through.

Grilled Lemongrass- and Coriander-Marinated Tofu Vietnamese Sandwiches (Vegan Banh Mi)

If you're looking for a fully vegan grilled main dish that's utterly delicious, these banh mi are a perfect fit. For a bit of Thai-Vietnamese fusion, we fill the sandwiches with tofu flavored with the same cilantro-based marinade used to make gai yang, along with vegan mayo and traditional banh mi ingredients, like jalapeño, cucumber, and pickled daikon and carrot.

Grilled Spiced Cauliflower

The high heat of a grill is well suited to browning and crisping cauliflower, but florets are prone to falling through the grates. Our solution is to slice the cauliflower vertically into thick steaks, which we rub with a Pakistani-inspired spice mixture before grilling. Start the cauliflower on the hotter side of the grill; once the exterior is well charred, move it to the cooler side to finish cooking.