Sauce

We made it our business to create an excellent gravy with store-bought broth—no ham hocks, chicken parts, or hours-long simmering involved. You're welcome.

Figs bathed in butter and sugar bring a sweet, tawny balance to tangy cranberries.

This all-purpose chile crisp—which is tangy, spicy, and crunchy—will give your other condiments an inferiority complex.

Feel free to use whatever fresh chile you can find, but remember that this sauce is supposed to pack some heat.

This all-purpose sauce will go with any protein and doubles as a great dressing for summer salads.

This dressing goes great with avocado salad, but we love it with simply prepared salmon, chicken, or rice as well.

You don’t need hours to simmer tomato sauce. This recipe shows you how to make an excellent one in 30 minutes, with 5 ingredients, in 1 pan, with very little effort.

This all-star topper can gussy up anything: steak, roasted potatoes—even a citrus salad.

Like your desserts extra-salted? Just keep adding more and tasting the butterscotch until you reach your personal sweet-salty threshold.

This thin red sauce gets its name since you can frequently brush or "mop" it onto a variety of foods for an extra kick of spice.

This hoisin BBQ sauce, along with ginger-scallion relish and cucumber spears dipped in gochugaru, helps make up the Ssam Dog.

This peanut satay sauce, along with pickled carrots, red chiles, cilantro, and crushed peanuts, helps make up the Banh Mi Dog.

This Russian dressing, along with Swiss cheese, caramelized onions, sauerkraut, and sweet relish, helps make up the Reuben Dog.

Chocolate can burn, which would ruin an otherwise impeccable sauce. Make sure to stir all the way down to the bottom of the pan after adding the chocolate and cocoa. This is part of BA's Best, a collection of our essential recipes.

Add another ½ tsp. red pepper flakes if you like it fiery; omit them all if you don’t. This sauce pairs perfectly with our mozzarella sticks.

Think of this as a universal buttermilk ranch dressing that you could use to dunk your veggies or onion rings or drizzle onto your pizza.

Far less sweet than the bottled version, but equally delicious whether on a salad or tossed with some soba noodles.

This recipe, part of our Throwback Thanksgiving feature, is from our 1970 issue. Granny Smith apples have lots of pectin, which makes them ideal for this sauce; it will set up without adding any gelatin to the mixture.