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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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🇬🇪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.

25 min25 kcal20 serves

🌱Vegan🌾Gluten-free🌶️Spicy

Aïoli (Traditional Provençal Garlic and Olive Oil Sauce)

🇫🇷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

🇵🇪PeruMedium

Sauces and Dips

Ají Criollo

Ají criollo is the emulsified chilli sauce that sits on every table in a Peruvian chicken house and next to every charcoal grill in Lima. 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. Ají amarillo itself carries far more fruit than heat, so the sharpness in a good version comes from the ají limo added separately.

20 min150 kcal8 serves

🌿Vegetarian🌾Gluten-free🌶️Spicy

🇮🇱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

🇬🇪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

🇫🇷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

🇫🇷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)

🇫🇷FranceEasy

Sauces and Dips

Beurre Blanc (Classic French Loire Valley White Butter Sauce)

Beurre blanc (literally 'white butter') is the classic French Loire Valley butter sauce, invented around 1890 by Clémence Lefeuvre in Saint-Julien-de-Concelles near Nantes. It is a warm emulsion of cold butter whisked into a reduction of dry white wine, white wine vinegar, and finely chopped shallots. The traditional partner is brochet (Loire pike), but it works with any delicate white fish, scallops, lobster, asparagus, and poached eggs. The sauce is silky, pale-yellow, slightly tangy, with the discreet sweetness of shallot behind a creamy butter front. Vegetarian, gluten-free, keto-friendly. Active work 15 minutes, no make-ahead. Yields about 250 ml, serves 6 with fish or vegetables.

15 min250 kcal6 serves

🌿Vegetarian🌾Gluten-free⚡Quick

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

🇫🇷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 (Languedoc-Roussillon), 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. First documented by Charles Durand in 1830, the original Nîmes version contains no potato — that addition is a 19th-century Parisian shortcut. This recipe follows Durand's purist tradition: cod-collagen emulsion, no shortcuts. Spread on toasted baguette, baked into a gratin, or used as a dip with raw vegetables. High in protein, naturally gluten-free, low in carbohydrates (keto-friendly when no potato is added). Active time 40 minutes plus 24-48 hours of soaking the salt cod. Yields about 600 g, serves 8 as appetizer with crostini, salad, and chilled rosé.

40 min310 kcal8 serves

💪High protein🌾Gluten-free🥑Keto

🇺🇸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

🇲🇦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

🇺🇸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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