Sauce

This sweet-tart relish has 7 fewer grams of sugar than the canned kind, and it supplies disease-fighting antioxidants.

The technique: To show off the tangy freshness of cranberries, don't cook them at all. The payoff: Chopping the berries in the processor gives them a coarse texture, which is great alongside the turkey and the trimmings. Plus, the recipe comes together in 20 minutes.

The technique: If you can roast other fruit, why not cranberries? High-heat cooking intensifies flavors, no matter what you put in the oven.
The payoff: Soft and caramelized berries.

The technique: Pan juices—the flavorful liquid and crispy bits left in the roasting pan— form the base of this gravy. To prevent lumps, thoroughly whisk in the flour, then gradually add the wine and stock, whisking until smooth.
The pay off: Super-roasty flavor.

The technique: On Thanksgiving, do-aheads are key. This super-savory gravy can be made a day ahead. All you have to do before serving is heat it up and stir in some tarragon.
The payoff: No last-minute pan-scraping and reducing required.

The technique: Whole-animal eating is trendy, but using all parts of the bird is nothing new when it comes to gravy. Giblets (the heart, liver, gizzard, and neck) really deepen a gravy's flavor. We recommend using only the neck, heart, and gizzard to make the gravy. The flavor of the liver can overwhelm the rest of the ingredients.
The payoff: You haven't wasted a thing, and you’ve added an earthy dimension to your gravy.

This is one of our most beloved family dishes. It is very much in the Hyderabadi style, where North Indian and South Indian seasonings are combined. Over the years, I have simplified the recipe. Here, you may use the long, tender Japanese eggplants or the purple "baby" Italian eggplants or even the striated purple and white ones that are about the same size as the baby Italian ones. Once cut, what you are aiming for are 1-inch chunks with as much skin on them as possible so they do not fall apart. Serve this hot with meat or vegetable curries, rice, and dal or serve it cold, as a salad, with cold meats, Indian (see Chicken Karhai with Mint) or Western. I love it with slices of ham.

The sauce would also be wonderful with baked apples or drizzled over ice cream.

Learn how our executive food editor rediscovered the joys of fresh pesto and made it her own.

Escoffier codified the mother sauces of French cooking. In the Italian-American tradition, there is only one: tomato sauce. Call it marinara (we do), call it gravy (we don't), call it whatever your grandma called it. It's tomato sauce. There's almost nothing we won't cook in it or put it on. The real deal—what we grew up with and the way we would do it if we had our choice (and didn't have so many vegetarian friends and customers) would be to make that sauce, then simmer up a batch of braciola or meatballs in it, and then use the resulting meat-infused product as our "tomato sauce" in all its myriad applications. And if you're not catering to vegetarians, we advise doing just that: make a triple batch of sauce, use it to simmer up braciola or meatballs and then use that tomato sauce, fresh or from the freezer, whenever tomato sauce is called for in these pages. Use good Italian canned tomatoes and high quality olive oil when making this sauce, and take your time—there's no rushing it. When you're cooking the garlic, you want to very, very slowly convert the starches in it to sugars and then to caramelize those sugars. Slow and steady. Then get the tomatoes in and let them simmer. Not a ton happens over the four hours—no epic deepening of color or furious reduction—but it cooks as much water out of the tomatoes as possible without turning them into tomato paste.

Savor this sweet blueberry sauce on Greek yogurt, French toast, waffles, pancakes, and vanilla ice cream.

If you prefer a spicier sauce, add two chipotles instead of one.

Try with chicken or beef satay, shrimp, or tofu.

Great with the Caveman Porterhouse or with chicken, fish, or lamb.

You'll use some of the dressing for the grilled chicken and the rest for the noodle salad .

The classic Italian sauce gets an update with the addition of parsley and tarragon.

Kenna Jo created this recipe "to use a surplus of strawberries." She said it "brings a fresh and sweet take on traditional barbeque sauce." It's fantastic over pork or chicken, and it also makes a great sauce to serve with corn bread. Kenna Jo calls that "Strawberry BBQ Shortcake."

This versatile sauce can accompany any number of desserts, such as Crunchy Toffee Tortoni or Buttermilk Layer Cake. If you prefer, the sauce can be flavored with chocolate, mocha, orange, or liqueur of your choice. It can be infused with crushed coffee beans, or praline can be folded into it.