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Sauces & Dips

The part that makes the plate make sense. Everything from a chimichurri you'll remember to a hollandaise you'll stop fearing.

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Adjika with hot red peppers, blue fenugreek and ground coriander — Georgia recipe

🇬🇪GeorgiaEasy

Sauces and Dips

Adjika

A fiery Georgian-Abkhazian spice paste of hot red peppers, garlic, salt, walnuts, and Caucasian spices like blue fenugreek and coriander. Authentic adjika has no tomatoes; it is ground raw into a red pesto-like paste and used as a rub or condiment. It needs a day or two in the fridge before the flavors come together. Makes about 750 g; a serving is 1 tablespoon.

25 min25 kcal50 serves

🌱Vegan🌾Gluten-free🌶️Spicy

Aïoli (Traditional Provençal Garlic and Olive Oil Sauce) with garlic cloves, extra virgin olive oil and egg yolk — France recipe

🇫🇷FranceEasy

Sauces and Dips

Aïoli (Traditional Provençal Garlic and Olive Oil Sauce)

Aïoli is the classic Provençal garlic and olive oil sauce — a thick, glossy, intensely garlicky emulsion made from raw garlic, egg yolk, and extra virgin olive oil. Its name comes from Occitan: alh (garlic) and òli (oil). The authentic 'aïoli véritable' uses no egg and relies purely on garlic's emulsifying compounds, but Larousse Gastronomique and modern French restaurants now standardize the egg-yolk version as 'aïoli'. In Provence, this sauce is the centerpiece of Le Grand Aïoli — a Friday lunch of boiled vegetables, salt cod, and hard-boiled eggs all dipped into a communal bowl. Vegetarian, gluten-free, keto-friendly. Active work 15 minutes, no cooking. Yields 250 ml, serves 8.

15 min220 kcal8 serves

🌿Vegetarian🌾Gluten-free⚡Quick

Ají Criollo with fresh ají amarillo, ají limo and huacatay leaves — Peru recipe

🇵🇪PeruMedium

Sauces and Dips

Ají Criollo

Ají criollo is the emulsified chilli sauce that sits on the table in Peruvian chicken houses and beside the grill. In Peru it is usually called ají de pollería. Fresh ají amarillo is deveined and softened, fried with onion and garlic, then blended with fresh cheese and evaporated milk while oil is streamed in to build a thick, glossy emulsion, with huacatay and coriander folded in at the end for the herbal edge. It is a condiment rather than a cooking sauce: nothing is simmered in it, and it goes onto roast chicken, anticuchos, boiled potatoes and fried cassava after they leave the fire. With the ribs out and after boiling, ají amarillo brings more fruit than heat, so the sharpness in a good version comes from the ají limo added separately. Makes about 650 g (roughly 2½ cups); a serving is about 5 tablespoons. The sauce chills for 30 minutes before serving.

25 min185 kcal8 serves

🌿Vegetarian🌾Gluten-free🌶️Spicy

Baba Ganoush with eggplant, tahini and lemon juice — Israel recipe

🇮🇱IsraelMedium

Sauces and Dips

Baba Ganoush

Smoky roasted eggplant mashed with tahini, lemon juice, and raw garlic into a rough, creamy dip that's simultaneously rich and light. The entire point of baba ganoush is the char — the eggplant needs direct contact with flame or the highest heat your oven can deliver, so the skin blackens completely and the flesh underneath turns silky and smoky. I char mine directly on the gas stovetop, which takes about fifteen minutes of turning and gets the best possible flavor.

40 min130 kcal4 serves

🌿Vegetarian🌾Gluten-free

Bazhe with walnuts, blue fenugreek and ground coriander — Georgia recipe

🇬🇪GeorgiaMedium

Sauces and Dips

Bazhe

A cold, uncooked Georgian walnut sauce, often called the king of Georgian sauces. Ground walnuts, garlic, and spices like blue fenugreek and marigold are loosened with vinegar and water into a creamy, tangy sauce served with poultry, fish, and vegetables.

15 min130 kcal10 serves

🌱Vegan🌾Gluten-free⚡Quick

Béarnaise Sauce with egg yolks, butter and tarragon — France recipe

🇫🇷FranceEasy

Sauces and Dips

Béarnaise Sauce

Béarnaise is hollandaise's sophisticated sibling — a rich, silky French butter sauce flavored with a tarragon-and-shallot reduction in white wine vinegar, then emulsified with egg yolks. The classic pairing with grilled steak, but equally stunning on roasted vegetables, fish, or eggs Benedict.

20 min200 kcal4 serves

⚡Quick🌿Vegetarian🌾Gluten-free

Béchamel Sauce with butter, flour and milk — France recipe

🇫🇷FranceEasy

Sauces and Dips

Béchamel Sauce

Classic French béchamel — one of the five mother sauces. Butter, flour, and milk, whisked into a velvety white sauce that forms the base of lasagna, gratins, and croque monsieurs. Fifteen minutes, three ingredients, endless possibilities.

15 min120 kcal4 serves

🌿Vegetarian⚡Quick

Beurre Blanc (Classic French Loire Valley White Butter Sauce) with unsalted European butter, dry white wine and shallots — France recipe

🇫🇷FranceEasy

Sauces and Dips

Beurre Blanc (Classic French Loire Valley White Butter Sauce)

Beurre blanc is a French sauce from the Loire Valley, around Nantes: a reduction of dry white wine, white wine vinegar and finely chopped shallots into which cold butter is whisked until the sauce turns pale, glossy and creamy. By the most common account it was invented around 1890 by Clémence Lefeuvre, a cook near Nantes. It is served warm over poached or pan-fried white fish, scallops, lobster, asparagus and poached eggs; the traditional partner is Loire pike. The sauce is light yellow and slightly sharp from the wine and vinegar, with a soft sweetness from the shallots.

20 min250 kcal6 serves

🌿Vegetarian🌾Gluten-free⚡Quick

Brandade de Morue (Provençal Salt Cod and Olive Oil Spread from Nîmes) with salt cod loin, garlic and whole milk — France recipe

🇫🇷FranceMedium

Sauces and Dips

Brandade de Morue (Provençal Salt Cod and Olive Oil Spread from Nîmes)

Brandade de Morue is the southern French classic from Nîmes, in Languedoc, an emulsion of desalted cod, olive oil, milk, and garlic. The name comes from Occitan 'brandar' — to stir, to shake — describing the vigorous beating that turns flaked cod and oil into a creamy spread. The first printed recipe is in Charles Durand's cookbook of 1830; the Nîmes version is made without potato. This recipe keeps to that: cod, oil, milk and garlic, nothing else. Spread on toasted baguette, baked into a gratin, or used as a dip with raw vegetables. The spread itself is gluten-free and low in carbohydrates (serve it with gluten-free bread or raw vegetables if that matters; keto-friendly when no potato is added and it is eaten without the croutons). Active time about 50 minutes plus 24–48 hours of soaking the salt cod. Yields about 900 g, serves 8 (roughly 110 g each) as appetizer with crostini, salad, and chilled rosé.

50 min310 kcal8 serves

🥑Keto

Buffalo Chicken Dip with shredded cooked chicken, full fat cream cheese and Frank's RedHot or hot cayenne sauce — USA recipe

🇺🇸USAMedium

Sauces and Dips

Buffalo Chicken Dip

Buffalo chicken dip is everything a chicken wing delivers — hot sauce, butter richness, cooling dairy, sharp cheese — in a scoopable baked format that works for a crowd without the mess. Rotisserie chicken goes in shredded, cream cheese and ranch hold it together, cheddar seals the top, and the oven does the rest. Ready in 35 minutes. Scales easily. Disappears faster than you expect.

35 min290 kcal8 serves

💪High protein🌶️Spicy🌾Gluten-free

Chermoula with cilantro, parsley and garlic — Morocco recipe

🇲🇦MoroccoMedium

Sauces and Dips

Chermoula

Chermoula is Morocco's answer to chimichurri — a herb sauce built on cilantro and parsley, sharpened with lemon, warmed by cumin and paprika, cut through with raw garlic. It's used three ways in Moroccan cooking: as a marinade before cooking, a sauce spooned over at the end, and a condiment on the side. The fish version, where whole fish are stuffed and grilled with chermoula, is the most famous application. But it works equally well on chicken thighs, roasted cauliflower, fried eggs, grilled bread, or anything else that could use a hit of brightness. Make it in a food processor for speed, or by hand with a knife if you want more texture.

10 min140 kcal6 serves

🌿Vegetarian🌱Vegan🌾Gluten-free

Chimichurri with parsley, garlic and red wine vinegar — USA recipe

🇺🇸USAEasy

Sauces and Dips

Chimichurri

Bright, herby Argentine chimichurri sauce — flat-leaf parsley, garlic, oregano, red wine vinegar, and olive oil, chopped by hand and rested until the flavors bloom. The best thing you can put on grilled meat.

10 min90 kcal6 serves

🌿Vegetarian⚡Quick🌾Gluten-free

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