Chimichurri Sauce (or Dip)

This traditional Argentine herb sauce is great on grilled meat or fish

Chimichurri Sauce mixes minced parsley (and often cilantro) with lively spices and vinegar. It’s a traditional topping for grilled steak in Argentina. But it’s also tasty on any grilled meat, fowl, or fish.

This sauce takes only a few minutes to make. And, conveniently, you can prepare it a couple of hours ahead of time.

The flavor is so enticing, you’ll be tempted to use it as a spread or dip. Ask us how we know.

Pasilla Negro Chile and Tomato Sauce

Great for meat, seafood, tacos, enchiladas – or pretty much anything

Pasilla negro chilies – also called pasilla chilies or sometimes chile negro – have deep, haunting flavor. But they’re not too hot for comfort.

Here, we pair them with fire-roasted tomatoes for a tangy sauce. One that’s great on almost any meat (try it with steak), rich seafoods (swordfish, anyone?), or Mexican-style dishes like tacos, enchiladas, and burritos.

You might even be tempted to dip a tortilla chip into it. Go ahead – we won’t tell.

Steak with Mushroom and Wine Sauce

Make this tasty sauce ahead of time, then finish it right before serving

Need a special dinner for Valentine’s Day? We’ve got it: Succulent steak served with a rich mushroom and wine sauce.

This elegant meal is actually easy and straightforward to prepare. That means less time in the kitchen and more time at the table.

With your own special valentine.

Italian Sausage and Tomato Sauce

This homey pasta sauce features bold flavor

We love us some pasta. Comfort food at its finest!

Especially when we top it with this sauce – which is meaty with a bit of spicy zest. Combine your dish of pasta with a salad (and maybe some garlic bread) for a particularly satisfying meal.

Saucy.

Romesco Sauce (or Dip)

A gluten-free version of the famous Catalan tomato-and-red-pepper sauce

Romesco sauce originated in the Catalan region of northeastern Spain. No two recipes seem to be quite the same, but virtually all of them include red chile pepper (both fresh and dried), tomato, garlic, and nuts.

Traditionally, this sauce is served with seafood. It’s also terrific with grilled meat and poultry, or when used as a dip with chips or crudités. Or as a sauce on vegetables.

Versatile and delicious. Two of our faves.

Tonnato (Tuna) Sauce and Dip

This classic Italian dish is basically tuna mayonnaise

Tuna + mayo? Primo flavor pair.

This classic recipe makes it even better with capers and anchovies. Then smoothes the mixture into a velvety sauce.

Tonnato sauce is great on veal (and other meats, too). If you thicken it a bit, it turns into an excellent dip for crudités or chips.

Mayo-nificient.

Tzatziki Dip, Sauce, and Dressing

Tangy and garlicky, this versatile Greek cucumber-yogurt dish is easy to make

Looking for the perfect summer dish? Tzatziki is here!

It’s quick to prepare (no cooking!) and endlessly versatile. You can serve it as a dip, but it also makes a dandy sauce (it’s particularly nice with chicken or fish). Or use it as dressing for salad. You can even thin it out and serve it as soup.

We’ll drink to that. Make ours an ouzo.

Basic Italian Tomato Sauce (Marinara)

This fast and flavorful sauce is perfect for weeknight pasta

Looking for quick and delicious? We’re here to help.

Our basic Italian tomato sauce (sometimes called marinara) cooks in half an hour or less. It also has a lighter, fresher flavor than meat-based ragù.

It’s great with almost any pasta shape. You can also use it as a sauce for dishes like chicken or veal parmigiana. Or even as a topping when you make pizza.

Weeknight quick, company ready. Perfecto!

Carnitas in Adobo Sauce

A richly flavored Mexican favorite

Most of us know about adobo sauce, right? It’s the stuff that canned chipotle chilies are packed in. But have you ever made homemade adobo? It’s a great sauce or marinade for meat, especially pork.

Our method for making adobo sauce is quick and easy. And in this post, we serve the sauce with its best friend, carnitas.

So get ready to pig out for Cinco de Mayo.

Italian Pork Ragu for Pasta or Polenta

Think of this as Italian Pulled Pork

Cooler weather has arrived in our part of the world, so we’re looking for heartier fare. Like this luscious meat ragu.

In Italian, “ragù” refers to a meat-based sauce. In the US, we mostly use beef for Italian Pasta Sauce. But pork makes a tasty change.

Serve this ragu by tossing it with pasta or ladling it over creamy soft polenta. But be sure to wear ear protection when you dish this up. Because once your guests taste it, their cheers will be deafening.

Plum Salsa

Great as a dip, perfect as a sauce for grilled chicken or fish

Love all the berries and stone fruit that summer brings?  If you’re anything like us, you’ve been making fruit desserts (pies, shortcakes, cobblers, buckles, fools, and more) like there’s no tomorrow. 

But fruit can do more than end a meal with something sweet — it works well in savory dishes, too.  Like today’s easy-to-make Plum Salsa.

Salsa is an excellent dip for chips and raw veggies, of course.  So it’s a natural to serve while you’re outdoors on the patio, waiting for your main course to finish grilling. But it can also dress up your dinner plate.  ”Salsa” means sauce, after all — and this one combines particularly well with chicken or fish.

When you make your own fruit salsa, you can create flavors that you’ll never find in stores.  And once you try this Plum Salsa, you’ll be adapting the recipe to all sorts of fruits.  You may even develop your own signature salsa.  And best of all, you’ll be finding new ways to include healthy fruit in your daily diet.

Tangy KC-Style Barbecue Sauce

A spicier, less sweet blend than most bottled sauces

Walk into any supermarket in the US, and you can find Kansas City-style barbecue sauce.  It’s usually tomato-based and tasty, but definitely on the sweet side.  It obviously has appeal — it’s one of the most popular styles of barbecue sauce sold commercially.  What shoppers may not know, however, is that KC-style sauce has a long tradition — and a flavor range that goes way beyond sweet.

Back in our early married years, Mrs. Kitchen Riffs and I lived in Kansas City and ate barbecue quite often.  But the sauce served at our favorite spots was quite different from the bottled stuff you buy in supermarkets today.  It had a hint of sweetness, but was never cloying.  Instead, it tended to have a peppery, spicy flavor with a hint of vinegar — and a texture that could be almost gritty. 

The sauce I’m making today is a compromise — sweeter than the sauce of my youth, but less sweet than most commercial versions.  The sugar nicely tames the spicy flavor in my sauce (which isn’t fiery — though it will get your attention).

Speaking of attention, that’s what you’ll attract when you serve this sauce with your favorite barbecue meat.  Your guests will love it!  And you, for making it.

Homemade Mayonnaise

You Can Make Your Own By Hand in Under Five Minutes

Homemade mayonnaise is quick and easy to make.  Yet the thought of doing so scares the pants off most of us.

And anyway, we don’t have a lot of incentive.  After all, when it comes to mayo, we can just pick up Hellmann’s, Miracle Whip, or a store brand.  All of these get the job done, and reasonably well.  But would you say that any of them have flavor you’d call memorable?  Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Well, if you can hold a whisk in one hand while dribbling oil into a bowl with the other, you can make your own mayonnaise — and its flavor will be tons better than anything you buy.  Plus, you’ll know exactly what’s in your mayo:  no preservatives, “stabilizers,” or other weird ingredients.  (You can also make mayonnaise in the food processor, and I’ll include instructions for that in the Notes.)

Oh, and making it in under 5 minutes?  I lied.  The actual active time — by hand! — is two minutes or less.  I’m spotting you 3 minutes to amble into the kitchen, find an egg and some oil, measure out ingredients, and so forth.  You can handle that, no?

Homemade Grenadine

Superb on Ice Cream — or in Cocktails

Grenadine is a bright red, pomegranate-flavored syrup.  You’ve probably heard of it, though it’s not a regular item on most grocery shopping lists. 

Which is probably a good thing.  Because, well . . . have you tried buying grenadine lately?  Every grocery store has something they call “grenadine” that they’ll be happy to sell you.  But take a look at the list of ingredients:  no pomegranate to be found.  Instead, you see high-fructose sugar syrup and “flavorings.”  And when you taste the store-bought stuff?  You encounter a sickeningly sweet liquid with a flavor that’s (very) vaguely reminiscent of cherries.  These supermarket concoctions bear almost no resemblance to real grenadine. 

Oh, there are quality commercial grenadines out there, but you have to hunt them down.  And when you find them, they’re expensive.  But the good news is, you don’t have to pay big bucks or troll the internet for obscure suppliers.  You can make excellent grenadine at home in just a few minutes — and begin enjoying the awesome flavor of the real thing. 

Grenadine is a traditional ingredient in several cocktails and “mocktails” (it’s a prime component of that kiddie favorite, the Shirley Temple, for example).  It’s also a great topping for ice cream and a wonderful flavoring agent for nonalchoholic summer coolers.

Bottom line:  Homemade Grenadine is flavorful, easy to make, and all natural.  And it’s so good, you’ll find dozens of uses for it.

Hollandaise Sauce

Easy to Make by Hand or Blender

Making Hollandaise Sauce is something a lot of cooks — good cooks — shy away from.  Too many things can go wrong, or so they think.  They might overheat the egg yolks, causing them to curdle.  They might not be able to form a proper emulsion.  Their Hollandaise Sauce might be too thick, or too thin.

But if you pay attention to just a few details (easy ones), you should have no fear.  And if you do run into problems, almost all are easy to remedy.

Besides, Easter is coming up.  For many people asparagus is an Easter tradition — and what’s asparagus without freshly made Hollandaise?

So promise yourself that this year you’ll learn to make Hollandaise Sauce.  And you’ll have the best Easter meal ever.