Ukrainian and international home cooking recipes
The right sauce can turn the simplest dish into something memorable.
About sauces & dressings
Discover homemade sauce and dressing recipes for meat, fish, pasta and vegetables: creamy, tomato, garlic, cheese and sweet-and-sour. We show how to get the right consistency and balance — and homemade always beats store-bought.
The texture is the whole point here: the tomatoes are ground with the garlic into a loose base, while the zucchini is cut into deliberately small cubes. They should cook through but hold their shape rather than collapse, which is what makes this a homemade answer to the smooth store-bought sauce it’s named for, keeping […]
Chrianteli is a Georgian sweet-and-sour cherry sauce thickened with crushed walnuts. It is a classic example of Georgian cooking, where berries and fruit go not only into desserts but also into sauces for meat and poultry. The cherries are simmered, pushed through a sieve, then enriched with onion, herbs, and walnuts. The walnuts are added […]
Your choice is cranberry sauce Don`t waste your time on going to the grocery stores and looking for the expensive jams. And don`t be lazy! Just try to make it by yourself. There are many sweet sauces you can choose. But cranberry sauce is very tasteful one. And, it takes only 10 minutes to cook. […]
Don’t rush this one. The 6-hour salting of the green tomatoes isn’t busywork — it’s the step that pulls the harsh bitterness out of the unripe fruit. Skip it and the sauce carries an off taste you can’t fix later. The base is unusual: green tomatoes, the ones still on the vine when autumn frost […]
There are few things in the kitchen as quietly impressive as a bowl of silky, golden hollandaise that you whisked together with your own two hands. This is one of those sauces that looks fancy on a restaurant menu but is really just warm egg yolks, good butter, and a squeeze of lemon coaxed into […]
This homemade adjika isn’t a fiery raw paste but a cooked vegetable preserve of tomatoes, bell peppers, carrots, apples, and walnuts. Adjika is a Caucasian (Georgian-Abkhaz) condiment, and this is its “mild” incarnation: an all-purpose sauce for meat, poultry, and potatoes, or a simple spread for bread. You dial the heat up or down by […]
Set your expectations first: despite the name, this adjika is closer to a thick vegetable sauce than a fiery condiment. The carrot and tart apples aren’t here for heat — they bring natural sweetness and a velvety body. Tomatoes give the acidic base, garlic the bite, and a single hot-pepper pod adds just enough fire […]
There’s something deeply satisfying about a mushroom sauce that comes together in the time it takes your pasta water to boil. This is exactly that kind of recipe — earthy, garlicky, glossy with good olive oil, and ready in mere minutes. You toss a handful of mixed mushrooms into a hot pan, let them sizzle […]
A cold adjika with no cooking at all: all the heat comes from raw horseradish and garlic, while tart apples and the tomatoes’ own acidity stand in for vinegar as the preservative. Since nothing is heated, there are none of those “cooked” notes, and the flavor stays sharp and garden-fresh. Adjika, for the uninitiated, is […]
If you have ever felt that a great salad deserves a great dressing, this olive sesame dressing is exactly what you have been looking for. It whisks together in about five minutes, yet it tastes like something you would pay good money for at a restaurant. Bright balsamic vinegar, a squeeze of fresh lemon, sharp […]