Thirteen Easy Sauces! Easy sauce recipes for any meal or occasion (2024)

This is the second in a series of answer posts to reader-submitted questions. Some of these posts may be incorporated into the revised edition of the Learn to Cook book.

“Sauces! I can get by making meat and veggies, but I have no idea how to throw together a quick sauce to jazz it up (like a lemon butter or white wine garlic)! I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“Sounds simple enough, but I can’t make a lemon butter sauce to save my life.”

Okay! Great questions! We got this, team! Easy sauces, coming right up. But first. Let’s dish.

Sauces serve many purposes. They might add a complementary flavor or texture to the main dish to balance it out. Think about the classic pairing of a fat, succulent bratwurst with a sharp mustard that cuts the richness, or the opposite idea: tenderasparagus with a tart, eggy Hollandaise to add richness. Texturally, you might consider the combination of a sweet, sticky fruit chutney alongside salty, charred meats or a slick garlic aioli on a crunchy crostini. Sauces might also enhance a dish by matching its flavor, rather than contrasting. This is a little trickier to do; it works best when the main dish is mildly seasoned — think of baked chicken and chicken gravy, or broiled white fish with anchovy butter melted over top.

Sauces are also a lifesaver to overcooked meats. A dry chicken breast or fish fillet becomes edible again with a pat of compound butter melted on top, or covered in a cream sauce. That’s not to say we should aim for overcooked as an excuse to make a buttery sauce, but it’s a good trick to remember.

And of course, sauces also add visual appeal, as in bright red raspberry sauce on chocolate cake.

To close: Sauces make things fancier than they were before. Learn to use them to your advantage.

I’ll start with an uncooked, super easy sauce that goes great over grilled, roasted, or baked meats and seafood and also goes well with boiled or roasted potatoes, steamed green beans and summer squash, and fresh sliced tomatoes. And, omigaw, it’s stupendous on a simple cheese omelet. It’s a spicy Argentinian sauce called Chimichurri and there are endless variations.

Print

If you vary the basic recipe far enough, you’ll come to the land of persillade and gremolata, which are chopped herb condiments of the French and Italian persuasions, respectively.

For Persillade, just combine the following and serve immediately atop cooked meats and fish, or stir into bean or seafood soups just before serving to add a bright, clean flavor and a shot of color:

Print

For a top-notchwhite wine sauce, make aBeurre Blanc(“white butter“), an easy French sauce that uses the proteins and lecithin in butter to hold the elements together in a smooth, rich, buttery sauce for use over seafood or chicken. It’s a great sauce to add a little fat and flavor to lean meats. At the Palace Cafe in New Orleans, I had blackened catfish topped with aCrystalbeurre blancand it was heavenly. Some beurre blanc recipes (like the Palace Cafe’s) use heavy cream in addition to the butter to help stabilize the sauce, but the original recipe didn’t use it and I find it rich enough without. If you want to try it with cream for a special occasion, add 2 tablespoons heavy cream to the wine mixture after it’s reduced, reheat to a simmer, then whisk in the butter as directed. You can also add any fresh herbs you like, thyme, tarragon, and basil are particularly nice.

Print

And if those aren’t enough for you, here are some other recipes from previous posts:

Tartar sauce for fish and seafood, and even French fries

Pico de Gallofor all your fiestas

Cream gravyfor chicken fried steak or chicken and mashed potatoes

How to make a pan sauce for steakusing red wine and the browned bits from the skillet

This mango salsa is great on fish or chicken