Condiments
725 recipes found
North Carolina Vinegar Sauce
This mouth-puckering condiment was one of America’s original barbecue sauces, and while a watery mix of cider vinegar, hot red-pepper flakes, salt and pepper may not seem like barbecue sauce to most Americans, North Carolina-style pulled pork just wouldn’t taste right without it. The vinegar counterpoints the fatty pork, while the black and hot peppers crank up the heat. In the western part of the state, ketchup or tomato sauce is often added for sweetness, a practice made optional in this recipe. Some pit masters add liquid hot sauce in place of (or in addition to) red-pepper flakes, while others add water to diminish the vinegary bite.
Alabama White BBQ Sauce
Visit Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q in Decatur, Ala., and you’ll find a barbecue sauce unlike any on the planet. Created by a railroad worker-turned-pit master in the 1920s, this piquant mixture of mayonnaise, vinegar and black pepper has accompanied barbecued chicken for five generations of pit masters. If you’re not from Alabama, mayonnaise may sound like a strange ingredient for a barbecue sauce, but its creamy piquancy goes great with smoked chicken, pulled pork and roast beef. Some pit masters like to crank up the heat with some prepared horseradish.
Watermelon Chow Chow
It’s spicy, it’s sweet, it’s tangy. A perfect condiment, watermelon chow chow has a bright freshness and a gentle crunch that mellows with time. It renders a sweet and spicy kick to anything it’s spooned over, whether you’re serving it with grilled meats, like hot dogs or hot links, or collard greens.
Chimichurri
Chimichurri is a herbaceous and vinegary sauce from Argentina that’s classically paired with grilled meats, especially beef, but its uses don't end there. You can combine it with a dollop of mayonnaise to marinate chicken cutlets. (That same mayo-and-chimichurri mixture makes an excellent potato salad dressing, or toss it with sliced scallions and grilled or boiled corn cut from the cob.) Combine chimichurri with equal parts olive oil to use as a marinade and dressing for grilled vegetables. Add a few crushed cloves of garlic to that same mixture, brush it on a split ciabatta or baguette, and grill or broil it for an oregano-packed take on garlic bread. It may be tempting to think of a chimichurri as a sort of Argentine parallel to Italian pesto, but it is not: While pesto is made in a mortar and pestle and emulsified into a creamy mixture with a base mostly comprised of olive oil, chimichurri is made with chopped dried herbs that are steeped in hot salty water (the brine is called salmuera) and vinegar, with less olive oil added. Its texture comes from the dried herbs rehydrating in salt water. Chimichurri can be stored in the refrigerator for several weeks; it will lose its bright green color, but it will improve in flavor with time.
Garlic Aioli
Zuni Café in San Francisco makes a traditional aioli with only four ingredients: garlic, egg yolk, olive oil and salt. No lemon or vinegar, no mustard, no pepper. Quarts of aioli are produced daily, mounted by hand with a wire whisk. You can, of course, make aioli with an electric blender or food processor in a matter of seconds, but, in “The Zuni Café Cookbook,” the chef Judy Rodgers describes how to make aioli with a mortar and pestle, the old-fashioned way. It takes patience, but the result is sublime. Choose a mild-tasting extra-virgin olive oil, perhaps a French one, or use a mixture of half-olive oil and half-neutral-tasting vegetable oil.
Gabrielle Hamilton’s Sauce Gribiche
Sauce gribiche has a category problem — is it a vinaigrette, a mayonnaise, a condiment, a sauce? — but that liability turns out to be its strongest asset; it can be used as you would any and all of those ways. It’s just delicious, and it makes whatever it lands on even more so. While traditionally (and perfectly) paired with cold boiled meats like beef tongue, it also makes an excellent partner to cold poached salmon, warm braised leeks, steamed asparagus, sliced french ham and watercress, and even halved hard-boiled eggs, like a more piquant version of the classic oefs dur mayonnaise found in French bistros.
Homemade BBQ Sauce
Smoked paprika is the secret weapon in this simple barbecue sauce, which goes beautifully with pork and chicken. If you’re painting the sauce onto cooking meat, thin it out with water to about a one-to-one ratio, which will keep the sugars from burning too quickly over the fire. Serve the full-strength stuff alongside the finished meat.
Pierre Franey's Mayonnaise
Basic Harissa
This spicy North African condiment has many versions, but usually contains dried hot red pepper, caraway, cumin and garlic. Just a small dab packs quite a punch, and can be used to brighten soups, sauces or marinades. Thinned with olive oil, it’s good drizzled over grilled meat or vegetables. Store it in the refrigerator for up to 1 month.
Quick Fresh Tomatillo Salsa
Tomatillos, which are closer botanically to the gooseberry than to the tomato, have a wonderful acidic tang. To get the best out of them they should be simmered or grilled for about 10 minutes, until they’re soft and the color has gone from pale green to olive. You can use them for a quick, blended salsa (like the one in this recipe) and also for a cooked salsa, which has a rounder, seared flavor. Use on tacos, or as chip or vegetable dip, or alongside grilled chicken or pork.
Sweet Corn Tartar Sauce
Pear Salsa
Butter and Buttermilk
This recipe is adapted from Anne Mendelson, the author of “Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages.” It’s a bit of a project. There’s a fair amount of stirring, processing, straining and separating. But the result is butter and buttermilk from your own kitchen, making this a fun recipe to make with children in advance of meals featuring their flavors.
Roy Choi’s Pico de Gallo
This quick, easy recipe comes from Roy Choi, the Los Angeles chef behind the Kogi food trucks. Here, a heaping tablespoon of Chinese chili bean sauce (toban djan) or Korean chili bean paste (gochujang) adds a twist on a traditional pico de gallo. Serve alongside a carne asada taco, or pair with tortilla chips for a truly delicious weeknight meal.
Martha Rose Shulman's Harissa
Harissa is that fiery paste used in Tunisian cuisine. You can get it in tubes, but the homemade version tastes much fresher. Make a note on the label to top up with olive oil whenever the harissa is used so that it will keep for a long time.
5-Minute Tomatillo Salsa
Tomatillo salsa, one of the great taco toppings, is a cinch to make. In this 2011 recipe, the tomatillos, stripped of their papery skin, are paired with Serrano chiles and cilantro. Made from just four ingredients, it comes together in moments and is a superb complement to tacos or tortilla chips.
Cajun Seasoning
Back in 2011, in his New York Times Magazine column, Cooking With Dexter, Pete Wells asked his son about his favorite foods. “It was a tie,” Wells recounted Dexter saying, “between sushi and the fried chicken at Brooklyn Bowl.” The chicken was a specialty of Eric and Bruce Bromberg’s SoHo restaurant Blue Ribbon, and this Cajun seasoning central to it. Adapted from “Bromberg Bros. Blue Ribbon Cookbook,” by Bruce Bromberg, Eric Bromberg and Melissa Clark, this recipe is ready in no time, using ingredients straight from a well-stocked spice rack, but it changes whatever it’s sprinkled on.
Cranberry Chutney
This no-cook, three-ingredient cranberry sauce from Daniel Humm, the chef of Eleven Madison Park and NoMad in New York, could not be simpler. Just toss cranberries, sugar and orange zest into the bowl of a mixer with a paddle attachment (a food processor won't work), flip it on the lowest setting and go about your business for an hour. When you return, you'll have a bright, chunky chutney that has more flavor and personality than the cooked sort.
Garlicky Red Chili Hot Sauce
Salsa Verde
Danny Mena, the Mexico City native who is a chef at Hecho en Dumbo, described a good salsa as being “poignant” with heat when he spoke with Julia Moskin in 2010. This recipe for his salsa verde employs a good number of chiles — anywhere between eight and 12 — alongside a couple of pounds of tangy tomatillos. Ms. Moskin described it as “a rounded, tomatillo-based trickle of concentrated flavor with Serrano chiles.” This cooked sauce is ready quickly, and just as good as a table sauce as it is in a larger main, like chilaquiles.
Cranberry-Orange Relish
This sweet and tart cranberry relish is much more refreshing than cooked cranberry sauce, and it takes about as long to make as it does to open a can. You'll need a food processor for this one; a blender will reduce everything to juice. Leftovers are great for breakfast with plain yogurt or in a post-Thanksgiving sandwich.
Mark Bittman's Mayonnaise
Chicken-Liver Mousse
