Inspired by this thread, what are your favorite homemade condiments / sauces?
Besides workhorses like mayo and tartar sauce, what are some of your creations you would eat a shoe with?
My candidates in no particular order:
chimichurri
Peruvian green sauce (with added bird peppers cuz we like it hawttt)
nuoc cham
nam jim talay / jaew
hollandaise & béarnaise
flavored mayo (the possibilities are endless)
anchoiade
zhoug
toum
Let’s get saucy!
I just bought a copy of Saucy by Ashley Boyd because I was in a sauce rut.
since we frequently do ‘home baked bread(s)’ - our favorites tend to ‘dipping oil’ -
the BoneFish Grill copycat recipe is one of our favs.
Dipping sauce - goes particularly well with chicken.
4 tbsp mango chutney
1 garlic clove
2.5cm piece of ginger
2 tsp soft brown sugar
2 tsp white wine vinegar
3 tbsp soy sauce
Tabasco or other hot sauce (only you know how hot you want it)
Whizz in blender till well combined.
This isn’t one of my creations, but I add Chamoy sauce to my Bean & Corn soup recipe. I have no idea why it works (so well), but it. is. GOOD!!
A Thai(ish)-style peanut sauce. Natural PB, a little sugar, garlic, some fish sauce, Chili flakes.
Great over meats, you can thin it out into a dressing for salads. Works well over pasta too!
Thai flavors are right down my alley. Love the heat.
@linguafood You might want to try this recipe. I’ve modified it to fit my tastes, but its original form… VERY YUMMY!!
Your first two are my top two.
chimichurri
aji verde
salsas
nuoc cham
aioli
cocktail sauce
Salsa macha and its cousin, chile crisp
Ginger-scallion sauce
Tzatziki
Raita (again, a cousin of the above, and the possibilities are endless)
Mint-cilantro chutney
Sour cream-mustard-horseradish-garlic
HA! How could I forget tzatziki!
Also cocktail sauce (sharp horseradish, habanero sauce, tomato paste, ketchup, worcestershire, salt, lemon juice)
Well, I like to consume most of them with the exception of sweet and/or ketchup based sauces. I most frequently make green sauces, ranging from pestos to chimichurri to salsa verde.
Tosa soy sauce
Ponzu
Teriyaki sauce
Dashi
Goma
You make all these at home? Respect!
I do. (I also think they’re all easy to make. As opposed to let’s say Thomas Keller’s recipe for veal stock)
I am absolutely in awe. I don’t think I’ve ever read a more impressive statement in my years on this forum and previously on Chowhound. Which is a lot of years. Total respect.
(PS: I had to Google Goma as I’d never heard of it. There are bottles of soy, ponzu and teriyaki in the cupboard - all supermarket purchases. And, whilst I’ve heard of dashi, I’ve never used it.)
In retrospect, I’ve been really into compound butters, which are a sauce when melted…?
Winners include:
twice-cooked miso butter (get it bubbling in melted butter in the stove first, then refrigerate and re-cook in the microwave. The miso shrinks into little chewy crispy nuggets that are an awesome pop of salt and umami on potatoes, fish, etc. It just keeps getting better. I use ~2-4 tbsps miso with 1 stick of salted butter.
same vein, I made preserved lemons and added 1/4 of one to salted butter, refrigerated overnight. It tastes like savory lemon curd and would go well with potatoes, fish, pork, … Probably also rosemary or basil. And maybe also mixed with the miso butter, need to try that next.
shoyu koji – less common than it’s salt-based counterpart shio koji (make this! It’s easy and incredibly tasty!). I use ~1:1 rice koji to soy sauce by volume. Give it a few weeks in the fridge and enjoy the extra malty umami flavors.
EVOO, onions, and tomatoes, but cooked low and slow for 2-4 hours. I use this for long-cooking (another 2-4 hours) greens like spinach and green beans.
Wow, those all sound absolutely delish!
Not sure why but I didn’t realize I could make shoyu koji at home. I’ve been buying a fancy-pants version and going through the jars quickly. Thanks for the enlightenment!
We have in our family a sauce we simply call “vegetable sauce”, which is a mix of shoyu and mayo, sometimes with a few drops of sesame oil included, but not always. It’s a ubiquitous sauce for so many steamed vegetables (broccoli, asparagus, beets, string beans, et al), plus as a dressing for raw veggies (tomatoes, cucumbers, or even a wedge of iceberg). There was always a small tub of vegetable sauce in the fridge as I grew up, and IIRC it was one of the first things I ever learned to ‘make’ in the kitchen, probably when I was five or six.
I think most Japanese Americans of my generation or older share this secret sauce, and I would guess it was a product of the internment camps during WW2.
