Cooking

Peanut butter (smooth) + light soy sauce + sesame oil

Great on noodles, great dipping sauce for hot pots

Butter sauce, grab a bunch of butter, melt it and pour.

Lotta mayo+ contraptions here so I'll add mine, and hard agree with the lemon in handmade tartar sauce it makes all the difference.

Mayo and Cajun seasoning, or if going for more Mediterranean, mayo and greek seasoning if you don't have sub oil, or if you do mayo and sub oil. All great ways to get moisture on a sandwich

Olive oil, grated parmesan cheese, black pepper.

Alfredo sauce:

500 grams of heavy cream with salt to taste heated to boiling on medium heat. Boil for 3 minutes. Add 250 grams of shredded real parmesan (don't use bagged or canned as the cellulose added may fuck up the consistency of the sauce). Turn off the heat and mix until fully melted. Let the sauce sit for 5-10 minutes before adding to 500 grams of pasta. Feeds 4.

Erős Pista (Hungarian paprika paste) or Sambal Oelek + a fuckton of freshly grated garlic + a pinch of sugar = surprisingly close Huy Fong Sriracha alternative (great if you boycott US products or if there is yet another shortage). Can be enhanced even further with a couple drops of liquid smoke.

Mayo + sriracha goes with everything, from sushi to fries.

Sriracha is life.

I like to make my own pizza sauce as my local grocer usually has near expired tomatoes for pennies. It's easy to make, but a bit time consuming.

For around 10oz or so of finished sauce

• 4 large tomatoes
• 1/2 onion
• 1 clove of garlic or 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tbsp dried oregano
• 2 tsp dried basil
• 1/4 tsp salt
• Pepper to taste

Boil water, core tomatoes, cut an X into the bottom of the tomatoes, boil for 30 seconds or so until skin starts to curl, place tomatoes in an ice bath for a few minutes.

Peel the skins and blend the tomatoes. Pour into a sauce pan and add onions, garlic, oregano, basil, salt, and pepper. Simmer for 60 minutes stirring occasionally. Blend one more time. I like to chill it overnight to let the flavors develop.

Guajillo Sauce, many meals I cook I use this sauce.

• 6-10 dried Guajilo peppers, stems/seeds removed
• Half white onion
• 2-4 garlic cloves
• 2 whole tomatoes
• 2 spicy peppers of your choosing, Serrano/jalapeño
• 6ish cups of water

Boil the water in a large pot and add all ingredients. Simmer for 15-20 mins. Drain half the water out, either blend in a blender or use an immersion blender until smooth. Season with salt, pepper, and desired spices. Pass through a sieve if you'd like for further smoothness (I never do)

Made this last night, and poured it over a seared spoon roast (my once a year beef purchase) in the crock pot. Low for 6 hours, had the best shredded beef tacos.

You can see the sauce be made here: La Herencia de las Viudas YT

You need a shot of lemon juice in your quick tartar sauce (mayo, relish, lemon juice)

Soy sauce + mirin + honey/sugar. Add some Sake if you have it. That’s the basic sauce for most Japanese rice meals (oyakodon, gyudon, etc.). If you literally just want one sauce, Knorr liquid seasoning works on almost any savory dish.

You can make a fruit syrup that's to die for on ice cream. It works with most fruits, but berries are great. Blackberries, raspberies, blueberries. Straw berries. Some mix of all of them. Get a pot, sort out the bad berries, cover in water and simmer until it's mush. run it through a strainer or sieve or somethingt to clean out the worst of the mush/seads and add sugar, lemon and maybe some cinnamon to taste. while you still have mostly-liquid juice, take some out to make a corn starch slurry. mabye a tablespoon of juice and a half to a quarter for the corn starch. (this helps it become glossy.) Sugar to texture/taste, and reduce to the desired thickness.

(Yes, it'll eventually become jam.)

Also goes great on waffles, pancakes or anything like that... cheesecake, brownies. I can think of a lot of things.

some of y'all have very loose concepts of 'sauce'

Whorcheschire sauce and Ketchup makes a passable BBQ sauce

Mayonaise + Sambal Bajak = spicy mayo with amazing depth. If you're feeling fancy frate in half a clove of garlic.

Don't sub Sambal Bajak for Sambal Oelek. It is NOT the same thing.

I like mixing various spices with olive oil to dip bread in. Literally just whatever catches my eye in the cabinet.

I mix Frank's wing sauce and Mayo for my breakfast sandwiches.

Frank's wing sauce and ranch for lunch wraps.

Frank's wing sauce and sour cream makes a good dipping sauce too.

Stick chipotles in adobo into a blender then mix with mayo.

1/3 cup Kewpie mayo, 3 Tbsp sweet chili sauce, 1-1.5 Tbsp Sriracha. Makes a nice dipping sauce that is basically bang bang sauce with less sweetness.

Honey mustard. Honey mixed with mustard to taste. Add mayo for extra richness.

I find gravy to be one of the easiest sauces to do quickly and with whatever I have on hand (1:1:8 ratio for fat, flour and liquid).

I made a brown sauce for poutine and some other potato dishes kind of like this the other day: melt butter at medium low heat in a small pot, say about 2 tbsp, add equal amount of flour by volume and fry until getting a little nutty. Whisk in broth or stock (I just use Better Than Bouillon) until consistency of thin gravy achieved (about a cup) and it begins to bubble. Add light and dark soy sauces for flavour and colour to taste. It’ll thicken as it cools.

Sour cream works well with basically anything tomato, including ketchup. Or a hot sauce of right consistency, not so hot that you only use a few drops.

For best results, use the sauces cold, and don't mix them too much — so you taste them both separately instead of blended mush.

Warm some sour cream, mix it with enough yellow curry powder that it starts to look a bit like light mustard. That sauce on top of white rice got me through undergrad, and it's also good on food that costs money

Equal parts soy sauce & water. Crushed black pepper, crushed hot pepper, grated ginger, sugar. Bring to boil, add ginger when off boil.

You can go extra with a crushed clove, 1 star anise petal to get some aromatics.

You can thicken it with a touch of rice flour or other flour.

Chocolate sauce.

Just melt some chocolate.

I make scalloped potatoes in a cream sauce.

3 pounds potatoes, peeled and sliced thin (1/8")
3.5 cups half and half
2.5 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon fresh thyme (or 1/4 teaspoon dried)
2 cloves minced garlic
8 hunks of butter

Cook the sliced potatoes down on the stovetop for about 13 minutes until the sauce thickens. Transfer all to a buttered baking dish, top with 8 hunks of butter, then bake in a 350° oven for 1 hour, rotating 1/2 way through.

any time you use a pan to cook meat throw some onions, or whatever in with a little more oil, get them going, pour in wine, and cook till thick. ad a couple pates of butter to finish for extra gloss and richness, season to taste, serve

Make pasta of choice, and finely chopped garlic and a tablespoon of salted butter to the hot drained cooked pasta. Stir until butter is completely melted.

Ad pepper to taste, garnish with fresh grated Parmesan cheese and chopped chives.

Simple and amazing.

Fo and added treat add chopped mushrooms to butter and garlic, saute, then pour over cooked pasta, then add cheese and chives.

Mayo and dill pickle relish (or chopped dill pickles and pickled jalapenos) is the best tartar sauce IMO.

Chipotle salsa - dump a can of chipotles en adobo into the food processor, press start, turn it off when they are smooth.

Black bean sauce. Dump a can of black beans in a pot with some of the chipotle salsa, heat them together, hit with immersion blender and then whisk in some sour cream.

If you have an abundance of basil (if you have a plant, you will have an abundance) pesto is easy.

Slightly more work but so easy and so good, sheet pan salsa, put tomatillos and fresh hot peppers on a sheet pan and broil them until soft and a little blackened, slide the whole mess into the food processor, season with salt, a little olive oil and vinegar and either cumin seeds or cilantro (you don't need both), pulse until chopped up and combined.

I find vegan gravy so good for the amount of work too. Make a dark roux of oil and flour, mix soy sauce into water until it looks like diet coke for the broth, add it slowly into the hot roux while whisking, season with pepper, salt if needed, rosemary is good as are mushrooms, miso, but it's plenty good on its own.

I'll mix mayo with pretty much anything. It'll mostly work. Although I tried making garlic mayo by mixing mayo and some garlic paste: that was way too garlicy.

Pizza Squeeze and Cajun seasoning. Yum