Sauce and Marinade Recipes & Ideas

It starts with jarred sauce, but tastes homemade.

Freeze it now, enjoy great lasagna later.

Roasted vegetables can’t wait for a spoonful.

Editor’s Note: If you’ve cooked this beloved recipe before, it might look a little different these days! We recently improved it to make it even easier to follow and more delicious.Thanksgiving is near! You’ve got recipes for the best roast turkey and creamy mashed potatoes. But do you have a recipe for my very favorite holiday condiment: cranberry sauce? My family have always been pretty staunch cranberry relish people.

Cranberry sauce is the jewel of the Thanksgiving table and often the only spot of brightness on a table full of brown, orange, and tan dishes. While canned cranberry sauce is available year-round, you have to wait until October for fresh cranberries to come to market. Once the ruby-red fruits arrive, it’s your cue to make this easy sweet and tangy sauce for your Thanksgiving celebration.  Only three ingredients.

From scratch tomato sauce in just over half an hour.

When you want to take chicken to the next level, a great marinade can do all the heavy lifting for you. With the right mix of ingredients, these marinades are easy, bold, and ready to transform whatever cut you’re working with.We’ve got the easiest 3-ingredient marinade for juicy grilled chicken, and an all-purpose fajita marinade that’s perfect for sizzling chicken fajitas on a weeknight.

For a long time, the idea of eggplant made me slightly queasy. It was a weird vegetable — kind of soft, kind of bitter, unpredictably textured. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. So I avoided it for years. What I needed was a gateway to eggplant, an ambassador from the other side. Baba ganoush (and Papa Eggplant, as my Greek friend calls it) was what I needed.Ever since I was introduced to baba ganoush, that smooth, creamy, smoky eggplant dip, I’ve been hooked.

It’s a sauce! It’s a dip! It’s a dressing!

The toasted peanuts add rich flavor and irresistible crunch.

You’ll want to put it on everything.

Vinho Verde is a must.

Creamy, tart, and a tad bit spicy, remoulade is tartar’s amped-up sister sauce. While remoulade and tartar sauce are very similar in origin and flavor profile, remoulade is zestier with more spices and ingredients that take the mayo-based sauce to the next level. This sauce is traditionally served with fried seafood, but it’s too good to be limited to a single category of food. Here’s how to make it. It’s creamy, zesty, and extra-flavorful.

It’s liquid gold.

It’s unbelievably creamy.

Tastes like summer.

It’s a five-star recipe.

Several years ago, I fell deeply in love with a maple mustard dressing. I used it for everything from salads to marinades, and told anybody in need of a fast flavor booster to make it. But recently, it’s been replaced by a new favorite — this three-ingredient lemon tahini dressing. It’s creamy without any oil, has just a hint of sweetness, and it’s even more versatile than my former standby.

Welcome to Snapshot Cooking, the home of Kitchn’s easiest recipes. These mini recipes are so simple you can practically cook from the before-and-after snapshot itself. A couple times a year, my husband and I splurge on a nice cut of steak. We season it with plenty of salt and freshly ground black pepper, and either cook it hot and fast in our cast iron skillet on the stovetop or in the backyard on the grill.

If the idea of tackling a home canning project seems too daunting, there are ways to preserve spring and summer produce just by using your refrigerator or freezer. Fresh strawberries lend themselves well to making a beautiful purée that can be stored for a short time in the refrigerator or a longer period of time in the freezer. It’s a treat to pull out containers of peak-strawberry flavor later in the year! Just three ingredients.

Tomato pizza sauce for homemade pizzas is one of the all-time easiest DIY projects. It’s made with just a few ingredients — canned tomatoes, garlic, balsamic vinegar, and a drizzle of olive oil — and a quick blitz in the blender or food processor. You can even freeze this pizza sauce in single portions to make things all the easier for yourself on pizza night! Here is your step-by-step recipe, with everything you need to know to make homemade pizza sauce tonight.

The name yum yum sauce may seem a little on the nose, but when it fits, it fits. This flavorful sauce was created to complement a variety of dishes. Although mayo is wildly popular in Japan, you’re unlikely to find yum yum sauce there. This dip is integral to the Japanese-influenced hibachi steakhouse experience, created specifically with that style of food in mind.For this recipe, I set out to create the most craveable version possible.

It’s ridiculously delicious.

How many times do you look at a sauce or spread and know from its appearance that it’s packed, from top to bottom, with intense flavor? Not too often, right? Even the best, most expertly prepared hummus doesn’t look as good as it tastes. But chimichurri — a rich, herby sauce made from what feels like a whole garden’s worth of fresh herbs, along with red wine vinegar, garlic, and shallots — has no time for illusions.

Chocolate ganache, that amazing concoction we use for everything from chocolate truffles to glazes and layer cakes, is a simple enough thing. After all, it’s just cream and chocolate, right? Well, yes and no! Knowing how to make chocolate ganache — thick or thin, whipped or smooth — requires understanding just two things: proportion and temperature.

It’s just four ingredients.

Ready in just 15 minutes.

A good hollandaise sauce, whether it’s over eggs Benedict for brunch or steamed asparagus for dinner, truly levels up anything on your plate. Maybe you didn’t know that this creamy, buttery, slightly tangy sauce that you love so dearly could be made at home in about two minutes using just a blender. Want to impress your friends this weekend? Invite them for Sunday brunch or a steak dinner and tell them you’re making hollandaise sauce.

Perfect for feeding your loved ones.

Eat up!

Makes good food great.

Deliciously dippable.

Whenever I go to a restaurant that has a salsa bar (always a plus in my book), I skip over the chunky pico de gallo, blended tomato salsa, and ranchero sauce and head straight to the salsa verde. This tart, slightly spicy salsa always makes whatever I’m pouring it onto so much tastier. It can be slightly harder to find at the store, but it’s actually one of the easiest salsas you can make at home! Here’s how to do it. You only need 5 ingredients.

It’s better than anything I’ve ordered in a restaurant.

It’s my secret sauce.

Queso dip, for the uninitiated (welcome to the fold!), is an unapologetically cheesy sauce designed for chip-dipping and ladling over crispy fries. And, most importantly for us, it’s the scene-stealer at any party. We’re making this creamy party dip in the slow cooker and utilizing a few choice ingredients to ensure it tastes just like the neon nacho cheese sauce you love to break out for parties.

It’s zesty, sweet, and flavorful!

Fries never tasted so good.

A pan sauce feels like something you read on a menu, doesn’t it? A bit of fancy chef magic that should only be attempted by trained professionals. But here’s the real secret: pan sauces are so incredibly simple. And fast. In the time it takes your pan-seared steak or pork chop to rest, you can turn those pan drippings into a fantastic sauce, no culinary school degree required.

Guaranteed to brighten your day.