Store-bought is fine. This is better

There’s the famous Ina Garten line, of course: store-bought is fine. But I’d like to propose a summer remix: restaurant-bought is divine. Especially when it’s 94 degrees and the very thought of stovetop steam feels like betrayal.

Treating your local restaurants like your personal sous chefs isn’t just a smart dinner strategy. It’s a win-win. You get to keep your kitchen cool and your meals joyful while supporting the places you love in a low-effort, high-impact way. A tub of cilantro sauce from the Venezuelan place, grilled corn from the taco stand or a side of mapo tofu from the Szechuan spot? That’s not laziness. That’s home cooking with local flair.

Here are the sauces, sides, proteins and leftovers that make us feel like a genius home cook — without actually cooking much at all.

The sauce is the star

I recently walked into my favorite neighborhood arepas spot and asked, on a whim and a hope, if they’d sell me a deli tub of their house cilantro sauce — the tangy, creamy, avocado-green one I usually hoard in tiny ramekins after takeout. They did. I paid less than ten bucks and walked home with a pint of what can only be described as summer dinner insurance. Since then, I’ve drizzled it over grilled tofu, spooned it onto fried eggs and swiped it across toasted bread before layering up a sandwich. I dipped snap peas into it. I considered drinking it. I did not quite drink it.

This is the power of a good sauce. It doesn’t just dress a meal — it is the meal, or at least the part that makes you feel like you’ve done something clever and chic without turning on the stove. A hunk of bread and a blob of labneh becomes dinner with the right olive oil. Leftover rice plus a jammy egg and your favorite chili crisp? You’re in business.

When sourcing my coworkers’ favorite tips for treating local restaurants like sous chefs, Lexie Clinton, Salon’s executive producer, dropped this flavorful little nugget: “Some Desi places sell the chicken tikka masala sauce as a side dish — and that’s like buying gold.”

She’s not wrong. That rich, tomatoey, spice-laced gravy is pure alchemy for turning whatever’s in your fridge (leftover veg, freezer naan, string cheese in a pinch) into something that tastes intentional.

So, if a local joint’s sauce haunts you, ask if you can buy it by the tub. Think salsas, pasta sauces, chimichurri, housemade condiments and dips. Some places will say yes, and some will look at you like you’ve just whispered a secret code. Either way, it’s worth a shot. Go forth and flirt with your neighborhood counter staff.

Sides steal the show

Every summer, I convince myself I’m going to grill more. I’ll march a little tote of pre-marinated tofu or good, all-beef hot dogs to the park, commune with nature and return home sun-kissed and full of smoky triumph. But if you’ve ever stood in your apartment in July thinking I could grill, or I could just… not, I have an easier move. Buy the grilled corn from your favorite Mexican spot and act like you did it yourself.

This is another trick Lexie Clinton swears by. She builds weeknight dinners out of a few strategic side pick-ups from the Mexican place across the street: building her kids cheaper tacos at home using the organic meat she wants them to have, but buying the delicious fresh guac, good salsa and free chips to make it a little fancier for the adults.

“Sometimes we just get the grilled corn from there — because apartment, no grill — and add that to whatever meat we are cooking at home,” she said.

My own go-to is a cold sesame noodle appetizer from the Szechuan place on my block. It’s technically a starter, but the portion is laughably generous—easily enough to stretch into three or four meals when dressed up with some sliced cucumbers, snap peas or bits of rotisserie chicken. No heat required. Just open the fridge and assemble, no heating up the kitchen required.

The secret here is recognizing that what the menu calls a side might be your dinner in disguise. Deli case pasta salads. Sautéed greens from your favorite Thai spot. Szechuan green beans. A few slices of focaccia. One or two stars and a couple of pantry backups, and boom: meal.

Proteins that pay dividends

There are people who maintain a Costco membership exclusively for the rotisserie chicken. And truthfully, they’re onto something. At just $5, the bird is tender, generously portioned and cooked according to surprisingly rigorous in-house standards (yes, there are internal rotisserie timing protocols, as Salon’s senior culture critic, Melanie McFarland, recently informed me). Melanie is a loyal devotee, using one chicken to anchor several nights of easy, low-cook meals: sandwiches, salads, grain bowls, quesadillas. It’s reliable, adaptable and — importantly — already done.

But if Costco isn’t in your weekly orbit, you’re not out of luck. Local rotisserie joints often have similar offerings, and Peruvian chicken spots in particular tend to come with the added bonus of ají verde, a spicy, herbal green sauce that’s practically a second meal on its own. Barbecue restaurants, too, will sometimes sell smoked meats by the pound — brisket, pulled pork, chicken — that need little more than a good bun or a scoop of rice to become dinner.

Another smart approach comes from executive editor Hanh Nguyen, who frequently orders proteins (and sides) à la carte from Chinese or Thai restaurants — think Szechuan green beans, mapo tofu, fish with black bean sauce — and supplements them with pantry staples. “I make my own rice, add shiitakes (always on hand, dried) or other frozen vegetables to boost,” she says. It’s a kind of modular meal prep that favors improvisation and flavor over rigidity.

And finally, Lexie Clinton has perfected the pasta night shortcut: a $10 order of housemade meatballs from her local pizza place, dropped into a pot of spaghetti with jarred sauce and maybe a handful of fresh herbs. It’s restaurant flavor with home comfort — and almost no cleanup.

Leftovers remix club

This is the part where your fridge starts acting like a co-writer. A scoop of rice here, a few ounces of sauce there, half a piece of naan folded and forgotten behind the eggs — and somehow, it all comes together. Leftovers are often framed as second-tier, but the truth is, they’re often the best meals of the week. They’ve had time to settle, soak, infuse. They lend themselves beautifully to reinvention.

Take the aforementioned leftover chicken tikka masala, for example. Lexie Clinton turns it into what she calls desi pizza — spooning the leftover sauce onto naan, adding a little cheese and fresh arugula and crisping it all in the oven until it becomes something entirely new.

Melanie McFarland keeps leftover rice from Chinese or Indian takeout and uses it to make gallo pinto, a Costa Rican dish of spiced rice and beans that’s deeply comforting and endlessly customizable. (If you’re short on time or ingredients, a quick kimchi fried rice hits a similar note.)  Fried chicken finds its second act in her household, too: reheated and paired with waffles for a kind of back-pocket brunch.

Restaurant sides can also shine the next morning. Chief content officer Erin Keane’s local Mexican spot, El Nopal, serves such generous portions that she’s often left with rice, beans and fixings. “Scramble that up in the morning with some eggs and you have a great breakfast,” she said. “Or heat it up with some cheese in a burrito for lunch.” It’s the kind of no-brainer upgrade that tastes like more effort than it took.

And then there’s the wildcard: Too Good To Go, the surplus food app that lets you scoop up end-of-day restaurant leftovers for a few dollars. Hanh Nguyen regularly grabs mixed sides and stretches them across multiple meals with the help of a good topping. Typically something cheesy or something crunchy — and as remix philosophies go, that one’s hard to beat.

This story originally appeared in The Bite, my weekly food newsletter for Salon. If you enjoyed it and would like more essays, recipes, technique explainers and interviews sent straight to your inbox, subscribe here.