Most Popular Dressing Dip and Sauce Recipes
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Dressing, dip, and sauce recipes enhance flavors and make meals more fun. But they can be full of chemicals. Making your own reduces artificial ingredients but the flavor comparison is unreal. Learn how to make amazing toppings in no time flat!
From pasta, to chips, to meat, to salad, dressing dip and sauce recipes can make or break the meal. Here are the most popular homemade versions on the blog. And once you taste them, you’re not going to ever want to go back to store-bought. You’re going to WANT salad every night!
We make our own homemade seasoning mixes and extracts and it makes an amazing difference in the flavor of our food. But we are avoiding so many unhealthy ingredients that help store-bought products sit on the shelf for long periods of time. This is not good for our bodies.
So check out how you can make your own seasonings as well. Once you have them made, you can store them in a mason jar and pull them out to whip up super quick dressing, dip, and sauce or to flavor meat or soups as well.
Ranch dressing mix
Ranch dressing mix is on of our most popular seasoning mixes on the site. We use it in tons of recipes like taco soup, but we also make an incredible dressing with it. We’ll get to that in just a minute.
We also have a recipe for a life changing garlic bread seasoning that you won’t want to miss. It makes THE WORLD’S BEST cheeseball. It’s amazing!
And another popular seasoning mix is our taco seasoning mix. It goes in the taco soup as well, but it also goes in meat for tacos and more, soups, and so many other places. Check them out as well as all the others listed at the links above.
How to make dressings that are better than store-bought
Now let’s get to the dang ranch dressing. You know how when you go to a restaurant and order a salad and it’s so much better than at home? It’s because of those yucky bottled salad dressings you get from the store. If you start making your own dressings, you’ll never go back.
Restaurant ranch dressing recipe
Ranch dressing is the most popular kind of dressing ever sold. And if you master this simple recipe, everyone will be begging for some of your amazing dressing. It’s even better than the kind at the restaurant. And you can add different flavors to it to make it a little different each time. It’s so good!
You can also use the same ranch seasoning mix to make a wonderful ranch flavored dip for veggies or chips and it only takes two seconds but it’s going to be the talk of the party. It puts store bought dips to shame for sure!
And you can spice it up with this Mexican inspired ranch dressing!
Cucumber dressing
Another great dressing we make is made with actual cucumbers. It’s delicious, light, flavorful and so refreshing. And guess what? It’s healthy too! Check out the cucumber dressing recipe here.
Lemon balsamic dressing
My absolute favorite homemade dressing is this citrus-balsamic dressing we created a few years ago. I absolutely LOVE it. And every time I make it, people beg for more.
For more dressing recipe ideas, check these out:
- Honey Lemon Vinaigrette Dressing Recipe
- Strawberry Lemon Vinaigrette
- Caesar Dressing
- Thousand Island Dressing
- Italian Dressing
- Cilantro Lime Dressing
World’s best sauce recipes
There is nothing better than a delicious sauce to make a meal go from drab to fab! I love making my grandma’s old fashioned gravy recipes. She was the bomb at gravy and mine is a close second after a lifetime of perfecting it and trying to get it like hers. Gravy tastes like pure love!
Another great comfort food is spaghetti sauce. It’s my daughter’s favorite. I cook it all day and I’m the master of it. It starts with home grown tomatoes that are harvested at the peak of ripeness and turned into this oven-roasted tomato sauce.
Then I sweat an onion, brown some ground beef, and start creating this homemade spaghetti sauce that you’ll be telling your grandchildren about. If you don’t have homegrown tomatoes, you can start it with a really good quality tomato sauce from a can like San Marzano, but the love is in the time you take to simmer it. It can turn out really good if you give it enough.
This sauce goes in lasagna, on top of any kind of pasta noodles you have on hand, in sloppy joes, and so many other things. It’s just plain good!
We also make a pesto sauce with our excess garden basil that is out of this world and it’s made with sunflower seeds in case you have an allergy like I do. We use it as a pasta sauce, to mix in ranch for a pesto ranch, and all kinds of stuff. And we grow nearly everything in it. It’s incredible.
And one more idea for pasta or veggies is garlic butter sauce. I’m world famous among the preschool set for this. Cook some pasta, or some veggies and drain them. In the pan you cooked them in, melt half a stick of butter (if you are using one batch of pasta or whatever) and sprinkle in about half a teaspoon of Italian seasoning mix. Stir it a bit until the butter melts. Then add a couple of cloves of crushed garlic. Cook for about a minute and toss your veggies or pasta right on in.
You can add salt and pepper to taste, and you can also grate over about half a cup of parmesan cheese if you like. But kids beg for this and I have never met any kids that don’t like it. It’s a kid-friendly side or add some meat and veggies and it’s a main. Bite-sized pieces of cut-up grilled chicken and some broccoli. Or diced ham and some peas. Yummy!
We make our own homemade bbq rub seasoning mix and if you just have some tomato sauce to add to it, you’ll be able to create the best bbq sauce you’ve ever tasted in your life! It’s so deep and rich in flavor and so good!
Our cranberry sauce recipe is so good, you’re going to be looking for excuses to make it and finding new ways to use it. We love it for Thanksgiving or other special meals, but we love it leftover in these ham and cranberry roll ups too. We always hope there is some left!
And for a different kind of sweet treat, try this incredible small batch lemon curd. It’s amazing on so many dishes!
And another sauce we make over and over again every year is homemade applesauce. This is a recipe I make with my daycare kids at least once every year, but it’s so good, we like to have some in the freezer that we can pop out. I don’t care for store-bought applesauce, but homemade is such a different thing! It really tastes like apples and the flavor and texture are taste it to believe it types of experiences. You gotta try making some.
Most popular dip recipes
Now, ranch dip is amazing, but some of our other most popular dips are fresh, spicy pico de Gallo that we make with our garden fresh tomatoes. If you whiz it up in the blender instead of cutting it by hand, it’s a gorgeous salsa.
And another spicy dip for chips is our world-famous Rotel cheese dip. And this does not even use that yucky ole plastic Velveeta. It’s made with real cheese! But it’s just as creamy and good.
I hope these dressing dip and sauce recipes turn your flavor world on its end and change the way you see food.
