Condiment

The sour cherry relish can be used in a similar way to cranberry sauce. Its tart, fruity flavor is perfect with pork, but it’s also great with ham or turkey.

In Amy Chaplin's salads, the vegetables are in the dressing. This is just one version of the raw beet dressings from her book Whole Food Cooking Every Day, where she combines sweet beets with cashew butter and red chiles to create a rich, creamy sauce.

Herby, tangy, nutty, and slightly salty, this Middle Eastern blend of herbs and spices elevates every dish it touches

Pico de gallo, but make it roasted.

This all-purpose chile crisp—which is tangy, spicy, and addictive—will give your other condiments an inferiority complex. You’ve been warned. Put it to good use on eggs, meat, seafood, or hearty salads.

Once you’ve paired this sauce with all sorts of vegetables and proteins, reinvent it. Try adding chopped toasted nuts, minced tender herbs, spices (such as cumin, turmeric, or coriander), and/or finely chopped dried fruit (like raisins, apricots, and/or dates).

The vinegary brine will soften and sweeten the chiles, and in return, the chiles will infuse the vinegar, creating a balanced, spicy, and acidic ingredient for your next vinaigrette.

For croutons that look ordinary but have big flavor, we borrowed a tip from Kindred in North Carolina, where they steep hunks of bread in herb-infused butter before toasting. Here, we toss the bread in garlic brown butter before baking in the oven.

Gomasio is the nutty, toasty Japanese wonder condiment we’re sprinkling on everything: salads, of course, but also roasted vegetables, seared fish, and even buttered toast.

Transforming cream into butter is one of the most satisfying acts of kitchen alchemy you can perform, and it comes with the bonus of controlling exactly how your butter will taste.

These quick pickles have just the right amount of sweet, salt, and tang going on. The brine can work with any crunchy veg, but we like them best with cucumbers. We guarantee they'll be the sleeper hit of your next party spread.

Crisp pickled vegetables go brilliantly with cocktails (or with sandwiches, a hunk of cheese, a juicy steak...the possibilities are endless). Fresh ginger and dried chiles give them a bracing boost and orange juice plays up their natural sweetness.

Blanching the chopped orange in boiling water before cooking it with the cranberries removes any bitterness from the peel and pith.

Removing the seeds from one of the chiles lessens the punch. If you like more heat, leave them in. If less, scrape out seeds from both chiles.

Figs bring a touch of sweetness to this bright, chutney-ish sauce and nicely offset the sharpness of the vinegar.