5 Homemade Sauce Recipes Everyone Should Know

A good homemade sauce can do more for your cooking than any new gadget or ingredient. These five classics are easy to make, endlessly useful, and far better than anything you’ll find in a jar.

Homemade sauce and the kind you get out of the jar are two entirely different propositions. If you do a lot of cooking at home, or even if you don’t, it’s well worth learning how to make your own sauces. Why? Because they’re perfect for adding new dimensions to otherwise familiar dishes, not to mention they’re fresher and miles better than the ones you can buy. And it’s not at all as hard as it may seem either. In fact, here are five easy sauce recipes that’ll prove just that and forever change the way you eat at home. Once you go homemade, you’ll never settle for store-bought again.

Pesto

Pesto. You know it, you love it, it works. It goes on just about anything too. It’s the most common sauce the people I know make at home, and for good reason. Be it mixed into your pasta, slathered all over your roast chicken, or spread across some bread, it’s the Italian standby that’ll add a bright, herbaceous touch to your dish.

Ingredients (makes ~1 cup):

• 2 cups fresh basil leaves, packed
• 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
• 1/3 cup pine nuts (or walnuts)
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• Salt and black pepper, to taste

Method:

• Toast the nuts lightly in a dry pan for 2–3 minutes (optional but adds flavour).
• Blitz basil, garlic, and nuts in a food processor.
• Slowly drizzle in olive oil while blending until smooth.
• Stir in Parmesan, season with salt and pepper.

A staple of Italian cooking that the world’s kitchens have caught on to, pesto is an easy way to transform the simple into the spectacular. Somehow everyday enough to feel familiar, but yet distinctive enough to impart character, pesto is an all-around sauce that, simply because of how good and how versatile it is, you’ll find yourself making another jar of in no time.

Chimichurri

Argentina is the home of quite possibly the world’s best barbecue (I said ‘possibly’, please don’t come at me), with asado being a way of life there. You can bet they know their stuff when it comes to grilled meats and its accompaniments, the most loved of which has to be chimichurri. But you don’t have to take a trip to Buenos Aires for a proper jar of the fine green (or red) stuff—here’s how you can bring a little South American flair to your home kitchen.

Ingredients (makes ~1 cup):

• 1 cup fresh parsley, finely chopped
• 3–4 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 tbsp red wine vinegar
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
• Salt and black pepper, to taste

Method:

• Combine parsley, garlic, and red pepper in a bowl.
• Stir in olive oil and vinegar.
• Season with salt and pepper. Let sit at room temperature 30 minutes before serving.

What does it go well with? Why, steak of course—but to pigeonhole this zesty livewire to just grilled meat would be doing its multifaceted charms a disservice. Try it out, and you’ll find it equally at home over your roasted veggies and perhaps even be a touch surprised at what it can do to your grain bowls.

Toum

Let me tell you something about toum: I absolutely adore this stuff. I vividly remember the first occasion on which I had it and went around asking everybody if they knew what that “white sauce on my shawarma” was. I once cheated on my go-to shawarma place purely because the second shop gave me more toum. It’s that good.

Ingredients (makes ~1 cup):

• 4 garlic cloves
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup neutral oil (vegetable or canola)
• 2–3 tsp lemon juice

Method:

• Crush garlic and salt in a mortar or food processor until smooth.
• Very slowly drizzle in oil while blending continuously to emulsify.
• Add lemon juice gradually until creamy and fluffy.

What does toum go on? Well, shawarma obviously—but make no mistake, this is a sauce that definitely has applications outside its most well-known use. It also works really well on other grilled meats, which makes sense, and makes a delightful addition to your roasted potatoes or as a spread to enrich your sandwich. A sauce that blew my mind when I first had it, and brings me under its spell all over again every single time.

Garlic Chilli Oil

Alright, now it’s time to spice things up—literally. For all you mouthfeel masochists out there, here’s something with a little bit of a kick to it. You wouldn’t think that something this simple could be this good, but that’s a you problem. You need to stop equating hardship with achievement. Sometimes, good things do come easy, as this effortless garlic chilli oil recipe will so spectacularly attest to.

Ingredients (makes ~1 cup):

• 1/2 cup neutral oil
• 4–6 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 2–3 tbsp chilli flakes
• 2–3 (Optional) sesame seeds, soy sauce, or a pinch of salt

Method:

• Heat oil until hot but not smoking
• Pour over garlic and chilli flakes in a heatproof bowl
• Let it sizzle and infuse
• Stir and cool before storing

If you’re having anything carb-heavy—noodles, dumplings, or rice bowls, for instance—this is the one you’re going to reach for. Besides this, you absolutely have to try this on a fried egg—that’s borderline mandatory—or you can drizzle it over some grilled meat or roasted vegetables that could use a touch of attitude.

Lemon Butter

Much like the garlic chilli oil before it, lemon butter is pretty self-explanatory. It’s basically lemon paired with, you guessed it, butter! So this is one that falls into my favourite genre of food/condiments to make at home, in that it looks fancy but doesn’t need you to actually try. It’s a sauce that manages to be rich, silky, and yet bright all at once. How does that work? You see, some things are better left enjoyed and not questioned.

Ingredients (makes ~1 cup):

• 3 tbsp butter
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• Salt & black pepper

Method:

• Melt butter over low heat
• Add garlic and cook briefly until fragrant
• Stir in lemon juice
• Season and serve immediately

Fish and seafood are the obvious choices for this, and for good reason, too. It also does well to perk up your chicken or pasta when you want to keep things light, and yet still with that thread of indulgence. Roasted vegetables need a bit of pop? Pour in a little—or a lot—we can turn a blind eye to calories when the sauce is this good.

And there you have it: five versatile, easy-to-make sauces that’ll completely switch up your home dining experience without you having to change anything else about your cooking. They also have the neat side effect of making you seem more cultured and an adroit kitchen operator indeed to those uninitiated on how easy they are to actually make.

Opening photo: Einladung_zum_Essen / Needpix