14 Snack Recipes To Make Happy Hour Even Happier

Can’t commit to a full-blown dinner party but want to gather some friends over good food and drinks? That’s where the at-home happy hour comes in. It might be the precursor to a restaurant meal or dance floor session, or it might be a social gathering all by itself. Whatever its point, the happy hour is a great opportunity to serve some snacks – ones that won’t have you in the kitchen, away from your guests for hours – and sip on a well-made cocktail, glass of fun wine or something sans booze.

Here we’ve gathered 14 recipes that’ll amp up your next happy hour, ranging from a scene-stealing loaded ciabatta to simple sticks strung with mortadella, and a choose-your-own-topping potato snack.

If a grazing platter is on your happy hour menu, follow Julia Busuttil Nishimura’s lead and swap the supermarket crackers for homemade gnocco fritto. These crisp little dough pillows show you’ve put in effort and are great bedfellows with cheese and cured meats.

There’s a lot going on in this zippy dish, which pairs well with a white or textural pink wine. First there’s the subtle herbaceous tang of shishito peppers, followed by the in-your-face aroma of pimenton oil, balanced out by smooth crème fraîche and the crunch of spiced almonds. It all adds up to an unreal drinking snack.

This loaded ciabatta recipe is taken from a book devoted to happy hour snacks – so you know it’s going to be a crowd-pleaser. It involves plenty of the food world’s best elements: olives, mortadella, provolone and burrata – in fact, it’s pretty much a grazing platter loaded onto bread.

Encourage your guests to get interactive with a hands-on happy hour snack that dials the flavour up to 10. The beef ssam from Melbourne’s Supernormal nails the brief: a bite-sized portion of meat coated in a spicy salt mix is wrapped in a leafy vegetable and dipped in green chilli sauce. Napkins at the ready.

You might want to scale up this recipe – it’s unlikely your guests will want to stop at one of these cheesy packages. Bread envelopes mozzarella and your choice of condiment or anchovies, then the whole shebang is covered in panko and deep-fried. You’ll find us eating ours with a cold beer in hand.

Potato crisps are a happy hour classic – and this layered potato number takes the concept to chic new heights. Once you have your crisp layers of potato (which is a stellar snack just as it is), do with it what you will: add some parmesan cheese, dip it into some kewpie mayo or be bold and serve with hot sauce.

Food on sticks is perfect happy hour victuals: drink in one hand, food in the other. These mortadella, cornichon and guindilla pepper sticks are easy to make and fun to eat. Think of them as a new-wave take on the retro cabanossi and cheese sticks popularised in the 1970s.

Simple but satisfying – and anything but boring – Ella Mittas’s crisp and crunchy little zucchini parcels will keep the conversation flowing and are the perfect foil to whatever you’re sipping.

Anything deep-fried is ideal drinking food in our books. And these deep-fried cauliflower florets will keep the whole party happy: they’re gluten free, can be easily made vegan and are gloriously flavoured with lashings of spices (curry powder, turmeric, chilli powder) and curry leaves.

As for deep-fried things for when you don’t have any vegetarian or vegan mates coming over? Pull together Poh Ling Yeow’s pillowy bao, which are stuffed with fried chicken, kimchi and kewpie mayo. Their big flavours are complex enough to stand up to whatever drink you have in hand.

Cookbook author Lucy Tweed reckons Margaritas are essential accompaniments to these cheese-stuffed jalapenos, which solves the problem of what to drink at your next happy hour. These flavour-bomb bites are crumbed, stuffed with cheese and served with both a hot sauce-spiked dip and a blue cheese sauce, and basically exactly what we want to eat while we drink.

Really want to show off? Serve Sydney restaurant Chiswick’s pretty zucchini flowers alongside a light and easy-drinking cocktail and you’ll have your happy hour guests applauding your culinary prowess. The flowers are made crunchy with a tempura batter, levelled off with the creaminess of buffalo or goat’s curd; tangy marmalade is an elegant finishing touch.

Mini sausage rolls have long been a party staple, the perfect ratio of meat to pastry. Here, the classic recipe is given a grown-up glow-up via Thai flavours: jungle curry paste, fish sauce, coriander and Thai basil. The recipe yields 36, making it ideal for a larger-scale happy hour situation.

It’s savoury and it’s crunchy – in other words, anchovy toast is precisely the type of food we crave with a drink. While toast with an anchovy and slick of butter is a classic, this version evolves the concept with a zingy salsa verde and crunchy pickled eschalots.