How to Lunch Responsibly ~ Use a Condiment!
In this post ...
A condiment is defined as …
“a seasoning or other edible substance used to
improve the taste of food.”
Often they are placed on the table for diners to add accordig to their own personal taste. Salt and pepper qualify, of course, and flavoured salts can be wonderful (make your own such as bacon salt) and freshly ground black pepper gives a boost to most things.
See here for how to season to taste.
Here is a list of other condiments together with some ideas of how to use them, do bear in mind that several of these are very powerful tasting and act accordingly.
Tomato Ketchup
See here for lots of ways to flavour and some brilliant ways to use ketchup.
Mayonnaise
See here for lots of Briliant Ways to Use Mayonnaise.
And here’s 38 Delicious Ways to make Flavoured Mayonnaise.
Apple Sauce
Famously good with pork dishes but here are lots of other apple sauce ideas including how to make it.
I have also made apple ice cream with apple sauce using my genis easy no-churn ice cream recipe!
Cranberry Sauce
This is a good side to turkey and chicken, obviously, and duck, goose and sometimes pork, less obviously. It is also a natural accompaniment to Brie and is good with goat cheese too. Add to brie and bacon sandwiches, serve with fried or baked Brie etc. Use to glaze chicken, sausages, pork chops etc. Stir a little into braised red cabbage. Warm a little to drizzle onto pumpkin or butternut squash soup.
Horseradish Sauce
Season up mashed potato, add to fish cakes, add a tad to Yorkshire pudding batter to serve with roast beef and/or a little is good in beef gravy. It’s a great addition to smoked mackerel paté and other smoked or oily fish dishes, Add to dumplings to go with beef dishes, stir into a cream sauce to serve with steak or Bloody Mary, of course. You will notice I have used such words as “a little” or “a tad”; be cautious, you can always add more. Stir together with sour cream as an accompaniment to fish.
Worcestershire Sauce
Remember, my American friends, in the UK we pronounce this Wooster Sauce which saves a lot of bother (or you could say Lea and Perrins as that is the trs aditional make). Here’s an Italian guy’s attempt to pronounce Worcestershire sauce.
This is great with beef (eg. in burgers or on steaks) and is famous in a Bloody Mary so naturally goes well added to tomato dishes such as soup. Other good ideas include adding it to Welsh Rarebit and Cheese on Toast. Caesar salad dressing often includes Wooster Sauce, add a little sautéed kidneys and if you make a prawn cocktail (you old fashioned thing, you!) try a splash of the Wooster sauce in that. It is also very good in beef stews and mushroom dishes
Hot Sauce
This is, of course, a biggie in the Caribbean where it is so popular that it is placed on restaurant tables alongside the salt and pepper (and OFF, which can be confusing to those unfamiliar with the last product – it is mosquito repellent!).
Add a drip or two of hot sauce judiciously anywhere you fancy to spice up mayonnaise, cream cheese, cheese on toast, pasta sauce, soups, chillies and stews, tomato ketchup and lots more.
Sweet Chilli Sauce
I use this a lot to add a certain je ne sais quoi to my meals. It goes very well indeed with Asian dishes and shellfish but with lots of other things too.
Often a tomato dish will require a little sweetness and sweet chilli sauce adds this and a little spice perfectly. If your chilli con carne is lacking add this. Stir into mayonnaise or salad dressings. Add to fishcakes, fish salads and fish dishes in general. (A delicious meal can be made by cooking a piece of fish in butter, setting aside the fish, adding another knob of butter, a dash of sweet chilli sauce and a squeeze of fresh lime to make a sauce).
Chipotle Paste
This is gorgeous and if you like a bit of spice in your food check out my post here which is all about my discovery of Chipotle Paste and how to use it.
Mustard
~ Stir ready made mustard (maybe Dijon for this) into a cream sauce for steak,
~ Add a little mustard to beef gravy,
~ use to season homemade dumplings to go with beef dishes.
~ Mix together about equal parts of (wholegrain, if possible) mustard and mayonnaise and then add a little honey to taste for a fabulous accompaniment to ham or spread for ham sandwiches.
~ Stir into the cream before pouring over potatoes when making a potato gratin.
~ Adding little hot English mustard makes for a very good cheese sauce.
~ Add a little mustard powder to flour or breadcrumbs when coating appropriate things to fry.
Oils
Interesting ones such as extra virgin olive, sesame, avocado, walnut, truffle, etc. or those flavoured with lemon, chilli or basil, for instance.
Drizzle a tasty oil on top of an appropriate soup eg. basil oil on tomato soup or pumpkin seed oil on pumpkin soup (what a surprise), or salads, pizza edges are nice brushed with a little roasted garlic oil before baking, truffle oil is great on mushroom or mashed into potatoes and so on and so forth. Extra virgin olive oil is good all over the place!
Vinegars
Match your vinegar to your meal to drizzle, add to pan sauces, dress salads, make marinades, highlight dishes and so on, a drip here and a drop there can do wonders.
~ balsamic vinagar for cheese, salad greens, mushrooms, beef etc.,
~ cider vinegar for pork, chicken, apples,
~ fruit vinegars – add a little to fruit salads,
~ sherry vinegar is delicious drizzled onto asparagus and other green veggies,
~ red wine vinegar for beef, pork, cheese,
~ white wine vinegar for chicken, seafood, rabbit,
~ rice vinegar for Asian dishes and cucumber,
~ malt vinegar for fish and chips.
Balsamic Glaze
This is a wonderful tasting and attractive looking drizzle to add to all sorts of meals. I used to make my own balsamic glaze by boiling down balsamic vinegar and then adding a little honey but it makes the place stink and it’s so much easier to buy a bottle these days.
It goes particularly well with mushrooms, roasted root veg, caramelised onion dishes, certain pizzas, beef (and kangaroo, apparently), cheese and I always drizzle some on hummus. Oh, and strawberries, of course!
Vinaigrettes
Chutney and Pickles in General
Add to toasted cheese sandwiches, mix into cream cheese, enhance a salad dressing or mayonnaise, perk up a sauce with a spoonful of chutney (eg. apple chutney in apple sauce or in pork gravy), brush onto grilled meats as a glaze, etc.
I’d like to mention these three in particular …
Red Onion Marmalade
This is something else that is easy to make at home but easier still to buy. Not only is it a delicious cheese enhancing chutney-like thing it is also great in quite a variety of dishes. Serve with meat pâtés, sausages, cheese, charcuterie and so on.
Stir a little into the pan juices together with a knob of butter to make a delicious pan sauce for steak or pork.
Mango Chutney
~ Stir into chicken curry a few minutes before serving to upgrade the flavour.
~ Purée with roasted red pepper to make an excellent sauce.
~ Brush on grilled chicken to glaze just before serving.
~ Drizzle the runnier bit of chutney onto appropriate soups
~ Stir into yogurt as a dip or accoutrement.
Patak’s Chilli Pickle
I know this is a bit specific but it’s so deliciously useful and I find the “sludge”; the oil and spices including mustard seeds, more useful than the whole pieces of chilli so when I open a new jar I purée the lot!
It goes into a good deal of my cooking and I have sometimes been unfairly complimented (compliments which I gracefully accepted) on the complexity of a dish, which complexity I owe entirely to Pataks.
~ Add to cheese on toast, mayonnaise, seafood salads, chicken dishes, mashed potatoes and potato cakes, etc. but always abstemiously!
~ Stir into plain yogurt as a sauce or dip.
~ A little of the thick coconut milk from the top of a can together with a soupçon of chilli pickle sludge and a squeeze of lemon or lime makes a super sauce for scallops and other shellfish.
~ Or simply stir though cooked rice.
Suzy Bowler
Having been a somewhat itinerant chef for over 30 years I was amazed, on my return to the UK, at the blatant food waste that now seems to be rife in the country; amazed and irritated. So much so that I decided to start a blog about spontaneous cooking from leftovers to show people that there are great alternatives to throwing food away.
3 Comments
Suzy Bowler
Oops! I had a husband that way inclined once but I wouldn't have done that!
Sue
This is a REALLY useful post.
When I managed a Scope shop back in Cumbria we once had three bin bags full of 'gentlemen's apparel' donated to us. The said gentleman came into the shop to try and buy most of it back, but unfortunately the good stuff, thigh high boots, specialist make ups, three wedding dresses and all his wigs had already flown off the shelves ….
…seemingly his wife had found his stash in his lock-up garage and discovered his little secret!!
Cathy Murray
Fantastic ideas for livening up bland food, Susy. I'm adding some to my repetoire immediately.