Ten-Minute Copycat Sauces

These are the highest-leverage recipes on this site and it is not close.

A sauce carries most of what makes a chain item recognisable. A home burger with a correct Big Mac sauce reads as a Big Mac; the same burger with a perfect patty and the wrong sauce does not. Taco Bell's entire menu is six components, three of which are sauces. Nando's is a chicken and a marinade, and the marinade is the brand.

Every recipe in this collection is a cold emulsion: no cooking, one bowl, a spatula. They share the same three rules.

Fold, do not whisk. Air turns a mayonnaise emulsion pale and foamy and it never fully recovers.

Full-fat mayonnaise, always. Low-fat versions carry added water by design and they will split.

Rest them. Every one of these contains dried powders that need to hydrate, and every one tastes dusty on the day and correct the next morning. This is the lesson that transfers to everything else on the site.

Between them they keep one to two weeks in the fridge, cost around a pound a jar against three to five for a bottle, and none of them freezes - the emulsions article explains why.