Condiments
725 recipes found
Tamarind Chutney
There is nothing quite like the tangy, sweet and sour sensation of tamarind, the main ingredient in this essential Indian chutney. In chaat, a category of spicy, savory, tangy and crunchy Indian snacks, tamarind chutney provides the pungent, pucker-inducing element that makes those dishes so craveable. In this recipe, from Maneet Chauhan’s cookbook, “Chaat” (Clarkson Potter, 2020), the tamarind flavor is sweetened with jaggery, dates and raisins, and brightened up with ginger, with deep umami coming from the chaat masala. It’s possible to find high-quality store-bought tamarind chutney, but nothing beats the vibrant flavors of a fresh batch made at home.
Braised Peppers and Onions
This base of slowly stewed peppers and onions can serve as the foundation for a wide variety of dishes: Add seared flank steak or pork butt, capers, olives, raisins and canned tomatoes, and simmer it into deliciously shreddable Cuban ropa vieja, to enjoy with black beans, rice and braised greens. Slice Italian sausage, sear it along with chicken legs, then add 1/2 cup each of brown sugar and apple cider vinegar, plus a couple of cups of these peppers and onions, and cook until the sauce reduces to a sweet-tart glaze as the meat slowly braises. (Try that on top of boiled yellow potatoes.) Bloom freshly ground ancho, pasilla or other dried chile in oil, then add this sauté, a few cups of cooked black beans and chickpeas, plenty of Mexican oregano and some canned tomatoes to simmer into a rich vegan chili, garnished with roasted sweet potato. But for the simplest use, just slather these peppers on top of a hot dog in a buttered, toasted bun.
Quick Pickles
Keep this easy recipe in your back pocket for when you want to add crunchy, zingy punch to whatever you're serving. The flavor of the rice vinegar creates a pickle that goes particularly well with Asian dishes.
Spicy-Sweet Korean BBQ Sauce (Ssamjang)
Ssamjang, meaning "sauce for wraps" in Korean, has a wonderful combination of sweet, spicy and salty elements. It’s like American barbecue sauce, which makes sense, as it’s often used with grilled Korean specialties like bulgogi (marinated shaved beef), galbi (thinly sliced short ribs) and pork belly. Its main ingredient, doenjang, is a slow-fermented soybean paste that is similar to Japanese miso, providing the same rich umami flavor. Any Asian food market would stock multiple brands of doenjang; one of our favorite Korean cooking teachers, Emily Kim, a.k.a. Maangchi, advises simply, "Buy the most expensive one!"
Tamarind Ketchup
A touch of tamarind paste lends tomato ketchup an edgy pucker. Spread this sauce all over Chapli burgers, kebabs, fried potatoes or anywhere else you'd think to use the plain stuff.
Fresh Ricotta
Why make homemade ricotta? Because you can. And because the results are so much better than most of the packaged stuff you can buy, especially at the supermarket. Making it yourself is also less expensive than buying fresh ricotta at a fancy gourmet market.
Onion and Tomato Salsa
David Tanis's Yogurt Sauce
Romesco Sauce
Blueberry Jam With Lime
The flavor of blueberries resides almost completely in the purple skins, full of compounds called terpenes. The skins have piney, citrusy qualities, but those flavors cook off quickly, which is why blueberry pies and jams so often taste of sweet and nothing else. Adding lime juice and zest after cooking brings back the sweet-tart balance of the berries.
Chermoula
Chermoula is a pungent Moroccan herb sauce traditionally served with grilled fish. I think it’s great with all sorts of other dishes, such as roasted cauliflower, roasted winter squash or chicken. Sometimes I stir a little into a couscous, too.
Minted Yogurt Sauce
Mayonnaise
This recipe is perfect for a small batch of mayonnaise and does not require a food processor. Whisk slowly as you drip the oil into the egg yolk, lemon juice and Dijon mustard mixture. Once it starts to emulsify, you can start adding the oil a bit faster. In all, it’ll be a few minutes of whisking for a beautiful light-yellow mayo that's worth every moment.
Red Wine Cranberry Sauce With Honey
What does a chef in Napa Valley do to jazz up her cranberry sauce? Add wine, of course. This recipe was inspired by Cindy Pawlcyn, the Napa Valley chef and cookbook author, and includes smashed fresh ginger for extra verve. It’s more tart than most cranberry sauce recipes, so if you like yours sweeter, feel free to add more sugar or a little more honey.
Beurre Blanc (Classic French Butter Sauce)
This is a classic butter sauce. It works well with fish. It’s flexible, too, and can take on flavors like chile, ginger and mustard.
Lemony Cranberry Relish
Cranberry relish using a whole orange is a classic, but here, a whole lemon — pith and all — acts as the bitter, acerbic edge that your Thanksgiving plate needs. Try to find a thin-skinned lemon, which will prevent the relish from skewing too bitter. (Give it a squeeze before buying. Thin-skinned lemons will yield slightly under pressure, whereas thick-skinned lemons will feel hard.) This confetti of a condiment looks beautiful as well, almost like stained glass, with its jeweled, ruby gleam. Definitely make this the night before Thanksgiving to get it out of the way, then store it in an airtight container in the refrigerator until ready to eat.
Cranberry Sauce
Cranberry sauce should be sweet but not cloying, and tart without causing pucker and anguish. It should have a jelly-like quality, but should owe more to the appearance of jam. The key element to making cranberry sauce is to understand that cranberries are high in pectin, a carbohydrate that exists in many fruits and which is released by the berries when they are heated and the cells of the fruit break down. In the presence of sugar, the pectin molecules bond to one another, forming a kind of gel. The longer you cook a cranberry sauce, the more pectin is released and liquid is evaporated, and the stiffer the result will be. Science! Sometimes it's helpful. So is spice. Some like a clove or two added to their cranberry sauce. (I am not one of them.) Others, a whisper of ginger and a small handful of nuts, for texture. Of this, I approve.
Chunky Cranberry Sauce
Of course, you could buy fresh cranberries and clean them carefully, but if you start with canned whole berry cranberry sauce and add some fresh ingredients, it will taste just as good!
Hot Fudge Sauce
This recipe for a classic hot fudge sauce came to The Times in 2004, from Kay Rentschler. “A well-constructed homemade hot fudge sauce moves forward with dark smoky accents and arrives with plenty of chew,” she wrote. Here, bittersweet chocolate and high-fat Dutch process cocoa bring that smokiness, while heavy cream, butter and sugar mellow it out. It’s a perfect contrast to the milky sweetness of a sundae loaded with vanilla ice cream and whipped cream.
Christina Tosi's Pickled Strawberry Jam
Raisin-Hater’s Apple Chile Chutney
Barbecue Sauce
Sofrito
Sofrito — a blend of garlic, onions, peppers and recao (culantro) — is the backbone of Puerto Rican flavor. Also referred to as recaito, it’s typically sautéed in oil as the foundation for sauces, braises, beans, stews and rice dishes. It’s also adaptable, and can yield a lighter, more verdant flavor if sautéed for 2 to 3 minutes, and a richer flavor if sautéed for 7 to 10 minutes and combined with tomato sauce. This recipe yields about 3 cups, which is probably more than you’ll use for any recipe, but it keeps well. My grandmother often kept sofrito in the freezer stored in a repurposed plastic margarine container, or frozen into cubes and saved in plastic zip-top bags. If kept in the refrigerator, it’s best if used within a week, but can be frozen for up to six months. You can also put it into a pan with hot oil straight from the freezer, though it may sputter a smidge.
Preserved Lemons
This is Paula Wolfert’s original recipe from her 1973 book “Couscous and Other Good Food From Morocco,” but I leave out the warm spices like cinnamon and cardamom so that the flavors are adaptable. The brightness of this pickle has lately elbowed its way out of Morocco’s tagines. New York chefs add the minced peel to salads and garnish fried seafood with it; the cured-lemon flavor is particularly friendly to salmon, carrots, olives, parsley and potatoes. The lemony brine is great in a bloody mary.