Wondering how to keep food cold at a party during the summer? Here are our best tips and tricks.
14 Secrets for Keeping Cold Food Fresh All Day Long
Updated on Apr. 28, 2025
There’s nothing more refreshing than a cold bite of pasta salad on a hot day, but when it’s 80°F in your backyard, the heat might threaten to wilt your outdoor buffet—and even cause things to spoil. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recommends leaving food out for no longer than two hours without refrigeration. That might feel hard to do at an outdoor event, but we know over a dozen ways to keep food cold all day long.
So go ahead! Prep that gorgeous fruit salad or a cold pasta salad, and use these tricks to maintain your meal’s freshness, no matter how long your party lasts.
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Put Dishes on Ice
Food should be kept at or below 40°F for safety, and you can achieve this by setting serving plates and bowls on a bed of ice. For bowls, add ice cubes to a larger bowl and place your smaller serving bowl inside. For plates and platters, add ice to a clean plastic or metal tub, and place your dish on top. This will keep everything chilled and won’t take up too much additional space on your table.
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Chill Plates and Bowls in Advance
Once you start cooking and have extra room in your freezer or refrigerator, place your serving plates and bowls inside to chill while you prep. As you finish up your fruit salad and vegetable dips, pop them into the pre-chilled serving dishes.
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Put Leftovers Away
When you notice that guests have moved on from appetizers to the main dish, it’s time to put the appetizers away. This will ensure that nothing goes to waste because it’s sitting out longer than it needs to.
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Keep Food in the Shade
It might seem obvious, but it’s best to shield your food from the sun. This might mean setting up a table under an umbrella or a tree’s leafy branches; it will make a huge difference once your food is out. This is especially true if you’ve gone through the trouble of making an ice cream dessert. The last thing you want is ice cream soup!
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Don’t Put Everything Out at Once
Instead of putting all your food on the table at once, bring dishes out in the order they’ll be eaten. Start with chips and dip or a charcuterie board, and bring out your main dishes and desserts later. When your guests are ready to eat, they won’t find wilted, soggy or sad-looking food.
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Serve in Smaller Bowls
Here’s a tip from the USDA: Instead of making one big bowl of potato salad, dish up two or three smaller bowls. Put one on your buffet table, and store the backups in the fridge to bring out during the picnic as needed. This is a great strategy if you’re feeding a crowd or hosting an open-house style event, where people are showing up throughout the day.
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Keep Food in the Kitchen
If it’s particularly scorching outside, you might want to keep food indoors during the entire event. Use your kitchen counters or island as a buffet station, and serve up the food straight from the fridge. This will also save you the hassle of toting serving trays in and out of the house all day.
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Use an Inflatable Buffet
If you’ll be entertaining all summer long, snag an inflatable buffet to fill with ice and set up outside. When the ice melts, you can use it to water your lawn or flowers, and it can simply be deflated and tucked into storage until your next party.
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Keep Food Covered
Covering food with a clean dish towel or aluminum foil will prevent bugs from getting in, keep the cold from escaping, and it prevent the sunlight from hitting food directly. There are even hinged covers you can buy that make food easy to access.
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Freeze Water Bottles for the Cooler
Drinks need to be kept cold, too, and if you don’t want to be running back and forth to the store to get more bags of ice, this is a handy way to keep your cooler at the right temperature. If you purchased a pack of plastic water bottles for your guests, freeze several of them before the party. The frozen bottles will keep other drinks cool (and take longer to melt than ice cubes), and you can add more as needed throughout the day.
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Invest in “On Ice” Serving Trays
If you’re a frequent host, it might be worth buying special serving trays that have ice compartments built in. For instance, this appetizer tray has a lower compartment that you can fill with ice, making it ideal for serving vegetables, and this serving tray comes with inserts for charcuterie and deviled eggs.
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Serve Out of Insulated Bowls
Another way to keep your pasta salad and coleslaw perfectly chilled is with the help of a few insulated bowls. This stainless steel bowl has a double-walled design for insulation and comes in several sizes, or you can opt for a chiller bowl, which lets you fill up its inner walls with water and freeze the whole thing before your party.
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Upgrade to a Cooler Table
You can serve food or drinks out of this handy cooler tabler, which has a rimmed design that can be filled with ice. It offers plenty of space to arrange multiple platters, and there’s even a drain at the bottom for easy cleanup after your party.
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Invest in an Electric Cooler
If you’re sick of toting around heavy bags of ice during your summer parties, upgrade to an electric cooler—it’s an ice-free solution for keeping food and drinks cold outside. This one has two compartments that you can set to separate temperatures, and all you have to do is plug it into a power outlet or a vehicle’s auxiliary outlet for all-day cooling.
