27 Sauces You'll Want to Slather on Everything

The not-so-secret lead to tasty food is a good sauce. Savory or sweet, smooth or chunky, warm or chilled: a good topping is the secret to family-friendly chicken dinners, homemade ice cream sundaes — and everything in between. These sauce recipes here are the ones to keep in your back pocket. You’ll find that they’re just as handy for weeknight cooking as they are for special occasions and entertaining. First up: Our Good-on-Everything Green Sauce. This blender sauce is a lovely way to take advantage of those soft herbs tucked inside your crisper drawer and as the name suggests, you can use it on everything from meat to scrambled eggs to salads.

A miraculous sauce that flavors and gently tenderizes meat…at the same time? How? The addition of effervescent Cola, a technique beloved in the Southern barbecue playbook to give the sauce sweet tang while it breaks down tough protein strands to attain a barbecue you’ll want to polish off in full.

Classic aioli has roots in Mediterranean cultures, where it’s often a barebones mixture of garlic and olive oil made with a mortar and pestle. But this recipe turns that format on its head to streamline the process in the electric way while the addition of neutral oil to make up half of the liquid fat mixture lends nuance in flavor. It’s the ideal sauce for thick-cut potato fries.

Also referred to as Japanese Steakhouse sauce, this creamy concoction is made of mayo, ketchup, vinegar, garlic, onion, and paprika. The addition of butter is called upon in other recipes, but not here and yet, not a single bit of the yum factor is compromised. A high quantity of mayo upholds creaminess — just look at that photo!