Accompany Your Meals With A Homemade Sauce

Healthy eating is not in conflict with using sauces in your meals, despite their bad reputation. You can make sauces at home to accompany your meals.

Homemade sauces are delicious and very nutritious, you can adapt them to suit all tastes and use them to accompany most of your meals. Making a homemade sauce is a very pleasurable activity and you can find different alternatives to combine them with different dishes. They can accompany salads, legumes, meat, rice or fish.

Romesco sauce

Ingredients:

• Three spicy red ​​peppers
• One head of garlic
• Two ripe tomatoes
• 1 chilli pepper
• 10 toasted almonds
• A slice of fried bread
• Six tablespoons of oil
• A pinch of salt and pepper

Preparation:

1. Soak the red spicy peppers in warm water until they’re soft. Afterwards, scrape the insides out with a knife.
2. Place both the tomatoes and the garlic head on a plate.
3. Spray them with olive oil and put them in the oven until they are well roasted.
4. Put the freshly scrapped insides of the red spicy peppers, the almonds, the chilli pepper, the fried bread, the skinless tomatoes and the roasted and peeled garlic into a mortar.
5. Mash the ingredients together to make a homogeneous paste.
6. Incorporate the oil and vinegar little by little.
7. Add a pinch of salt and pepper.

Espagnole sauce

Espagnole sauce is one of the most basic sauces that should be included in the handbook of any good cook. It’s used in many restaurants and it isn’t hard to incorporate into our own home kitchens.

To make this sauce, start with a dark roux (flour thoroughly sautéed in butter). You’ll also need a dark meat broth (made by previously roasting bones in the oven). You can thicken the sauce to your liking at the end.

Ingredients:

• Half a cup of meat broth
• One onion
• One carrot
• 1 ripe tomato
• One leek
• 1 tablespoon of flour
• A glass of Sherry wine
• Olive oil
• Salt and pepper

Preparation:

1. Wash the vegetables, peel them and cut them into pieces.
2. Stir them in a saucepan with a little bit of olive oil for a few minutes.
3. Add the flour and sauté everything together for a few minutes; make sure it doesn’t burn.
4. Add the meat broth, stirring constantly to keep it from become lumpy.
5. Put the sherry wine in.
6. Add salt and pepper to taste.
7. Cook over a low heat for 40 minutes.
8. Remove the mixture from heat and mash the ingredients. You should be left with a homogeneous and thick sauce.

BBQ sauce

Ingredients:

• Four tablespoons of water
• Two spicy chili peppers
• 2 tablespoons fried tomato
• Three tablespoons of vinegar or lemon
• Four tablespoons of olive oil
•  A spoonful of salt
• Three tablespoons of sugar

Preparation:

1. Put all of the ingredients into a blender.
2. Blend together until you’re left with a smooth, homogeneous and oily sauce.

Hot vinaigrette sauce

Ingredients:

• 1 red pepper
• One green pepper
• One onion
• 1 tomato
• 2 garlic cloves
• 2 oz of capers
• Half a cup of vinegar
• Half a cup of olive oil
• 1 pinch of salt

Preparation:

1. Peel and finely chop the garlic and onion.
2. Wash the peppers and tomatoes and then cut them into cubes.
3. Heat some olive oil in a frying pan.
4. Fry the garlic, onion and peppers for 10 minutes.
5. Add the tomatoes and cook all the vegetables for another 10 minutes.
6. Add the capers and the vinegar.
7. Cook them for five more minutes.
8. Season the sauce to taste.

Yogurt and mustard sauce

Ingredients:

• 1 natural yoghurt
• ½ tablespoon of mustard
• 1 tablespoon of lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon of chopped fresh parsley

Preparation:

1. Mix the yogurt and the mustard together, until you have a smooth paste.
2. Add the lemon juice.
3. Add the parsley.
4. Whisk everything very well.

It’s a very simple sauce to make and it brings a refreshing touch to many dishes.

Chimichurri sauce

Ingredients:

• Five tablespoons of fresh parsley
• Three tablespoons of dried oregano
• One teaspoon of ground black pepper
• A teaspoon of salt
• Two garlic cloves
• Milled red peppers or 1 red chilli pepper
• Three tablespoons of water
• Half a cup of Sherry vinegar
• One cup of olive oil

Preparation:

1. Place the dried oregano in a bowl and add warm water.
2. Stir it and let it sit for a moment.
3. If you choose milled red peppers instead of a chilli pepper, let them soak with the oregano.
4. Cut the garlic cloves, the parsley and the chilli pepper (if you chose this option to give it a spicy touch) into small pieces.
5. Add the salt, the black pepper, the garlic, the chilli pepper and the parsley to the hydrated oregano.
6. Mix everything lightly.
7. Add the sherry vinegar and the olive oil.
8. Stir it well.
9. Let it sit for one day so that the flavors come together. The result will be a unique, strong and very aromatic sauce.
10. Place it in a previously sterilized glass jar or bottle.