Homemade Sauces and Dips That Upgrade Any Meal

A good sauce is the cheapest way to make any meal better

Most home cooks treat sauces as an afterthought, something you buy in a jar and squeeze out when the food looks naked. That's backwards. A bowl of plain rice, a piece of grilled chicken, yesterday's roasted vegetables — none of it has to be sad. The right sauce or dip turns leftovers into something you actually want to eat.

The six below are the ones I keep coming back to. Most take ten minutes and a food processor. They keep in the fridge for days, they double easily, and once you've made them yourself you'll wince at what the supermarket charges for the watered-down version.

Hummus — the dip that earns its place in the fridge

Chickpeas blended with tahini, lemon, and garlic into something smooth and savoury. It's the workhorse of the list: spread on bread, scooped with vegetables, dolloped next to roast meat. Cheap to make and endlessly forgiving.

The secret to smooth hummus isn't the chickpeas, it's the tahini and how long you blend. Run the processor far longer than feels reasonable, a full three or four minutes, and add a splash of ice water at the end. That's what whips it into the silky texture you get at a good Lebanese place instead of the grainy paste most people end up with.

→ Hummus recipe

Tzatziki — yogurt that does the heavy lifting at dinner

Thick yogurt with grated cucumber, garlic, and dill. It cools down anything spicy, cuts through grilled lamb, and works as a dip on its own. Greek in origin, useful in every cuisine.

Salt the grated cucumber and squeeze the water out before it goes anywhere near the yogurt. Skip this and you get a soupy mess in twenty minutes, because cucumber is mostly water and it will leak. Wring it in a clean towel until it's almost dry. The fix takes two minutes and saves the whole bowl.

→ Tzatziki recipe

Chimichurri — the sauce that makes cheap steak taste expensive

Parsley, garlic, oregano, vinegar, and oil, chopped fine and left to sit. Argentina's gift to anyone grilling meat. Bright, sharp, a little fierce. It does for beef what nothing else quite manages.

Don't blend it into a paste. Chimichurri should be chopped by hand, or pulsed two or three times at most, so you still see the flecks of green and it has some texture. And make it ahead. An hour on the counter lets the garlic mellow and the herbs soak up the vinegar, and it's better the next day than the moment you make it.

→ Chimichurri recipe

Pesto — proof that fresh always wins

Basil, pine nuts, garlic, parmesan, and olive oil, pounded or blitzed into a green sauce. Tossed through pasta in the time it takes to boil the water. The jarred kind tastes of nothing by comparison, and I mean that.

If you're using a food processor, keep it brief and keep it cold. The heat from the blade bruises the basil and turns it dark and bitter, so pulse rather than run it, and stir the cheese in by hand at the end. A few cubes of ice in the processor help. Toast the pine nuts first too, it costs you three minutes and changes the whole thing.

→ Pesto recipe

Romesco — the Spanish sauce nobody expects

Roasted peppers and almonds blended with garlic, bread, and a little vinegar into a thick red sauce. This is the one your guests won't recognise and won't stop eating. Smoky, nutty, faintly sweet. Spectacular on fish, grilled vegetables, or just bread.

The almonds and bread are what give it body, so don't leave them out thinking they're filler. Toast them until they're properly golden, because raw almonds make the sauce taste flat and pale. And roast the peppers until the skins blacken, then peel them. That char is half the flavour, and skipping it gives you something that tastes merely fine.

→ Romesco recipe

Baba Ganoush — the smoky cousin worth the extra step

Roasted eggplant mashed with tahini, lemon, and garlic. Like hummus but darker and smokier, with that unmistakable burnt-edge flavour. Underrated, in my opinion, and the better dip of the two.

Char the eggplant until the skin is blistered black and the inside has collapsed. People undercook it out of caution and end up with a bland, watery dip. You want it cooked past the point of looking pretty, ideally over an open flame, until it almost falls apart. Let the flesh drain in a sieve afterwards so the dip stays thick instead of weeping liquid.

→ Baba Ganoush recipe

Building a sauce repertoire

Learn five or six of these and you'll never serve a boring plate again. They share a handful of staples — good olive oil, garlic, lemon, tahini, a bunch of soft herbs — so stocking up for one stocks you up for most. Make a batch on Sunday and it carries you through the week. That's the whole trick: the food doesn't have to be fancy if the sauce does the talking.