The Sauces, Dips and Spice Blends Behind Chain Menus

If you only ever make one category of recipe from this site, make the sauces.

The reason is leverage. A sauce takes ten minutes, costs pennies, keeps for a week, and 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.

There are three families here and they behave completely differently:

Cold emulsions - burger sauces, ranch, mayonnaise-based dips. Oil suspended in water with egg or lecithin holding the two apart. They are tolerant of almost everything except heat and freezing, both of which break them permanently.

Cooked sauces - barbecue, sweet and sour, cheese sauces, gravies. Thickened by reduction, starch or emulsifying salts. They are the ones that reward patience and punish a high flame.

Dry blends - Cajun seasoning, lemon pepper, chicken rubs, the eleven herbs and spices. No technique at all, just ratios and the freshness of what you started with. This is the category where a home version is reliably and obviously better than the restaurant's, because their jar has been open since March.