This Summer the Only Condiment You Need Is a Batch of Red Zhoug

To me, meal prep is all about the sauce. It doesn’t matter how many vegetables I roast or how many grains I cook in bulk—if I don’t have a few dressings, spreads, dips, and drizzles waiting in the fridge to be deployed throughout the week, I might as well have not prepped at all. It’s the sauce that provides variety: My guess is that anyone who’s ever felt utterly bored by the leftovers from their Big Sunday Cook by 11 a.m. on Tuesday morning did the whole thing sauceless. The ticket to feeling like you’re eating something new (when you’re definitely not) is a swoosh of garlicky hummus or big spoonful of pesto. And the best sauces are versatile as well, ready to tackle whatever miscellaneous extras your fridge may have to offer with flavorful enthusiasm. With just one good sauce, you can make real kitchen magic.

I made the red zhoug from Bavel—a new title from the team behind the Los Angeles Middle Eastern restaurant of the same name—because it was listed as a component of the book's shakshuka recipe, and I have a thing for eggs. Zhoug is a spiced and tangy condiment from Yemen that's often served with shawarma as a counterpart to the other rich and fatty fillings. To make the shakshuka, you add a few tablespoons of the red zhoug to a base of oven-dried bell peppers and onions, to thicken it and provide the lion’s share of the flavor. I love a sauce sub-recipe because you inevitably get leftovers to play with, a kind of secret future meal plan embedded within the thing you’re making for right now. After blistering red bell peppers and Fresno chiles in hot oil on the stove and blitzing them with a handful of spices in a food processor, I had about a cup of the fragrant spread; a few days (and many zhoug-fueled meals) later, I formally inducted it into my sauce hall of fame.

Bavel: Modern Recipes Inspired by the Middle East by Ori Menashe, Genevieve Gergis, and Lesley Suter

$32.00, Amazon

In our spring cookbook preview, editor Lauren Joseph wrote that Bavel breaks the usual restaurant cookbook mold by being actually cookable, a good mix of cheffy (scallop crudo) and weeknight-friendly dishes (turmeric roast chicken). Unlike other titles in the category that are better suited for the coffee table than the kitchen, Bavel is for real life use, and the red zhoug, part of the robust “Sauces” section, is no exception. More like a paste than a ready-to-eat sauce, it’s packed with flavor and much more complex than the sum of its parts: sweet from the peppers, smoky from the char, and HOT from the chiles (though you can scale down if you prefer a sauce that doesn’t pack such a wallop). The spices are also balanced and bright, with cardamom hitting hardest alongside the cumin, cloves, turmeric, and paprika. It is, to put it mildly, not a shy sauce.

In my pan of shakshuka, the zhoug provided much needed spice and heat, and was only improved by the presence of a runny yolk. In more experimentation, I realized that it’s a flavor-bomb base that really wants to be paired with fat: the combination mellows the more powerful parts of the zhoug, and adds a bit of welcome richness. This is in part because there isn’t any oil in the sauce itself, aside from what gets carried over from blistering the peppers. It was perfect, then, stirred into mayo for the ideal tomato toast condiment or sandwich spread; mixed with yogurt or, as Menashe recommends, dolloped atop hummus for a party-ready dip. You can definitely whisk it into a little olive oil to marinate protein or dress just-grilled vegetables. I anticipate I’ll make a fresh batch every few weeks this summer as a gift to myself, since one container can transform anything from an errant chicken breast to the Thursday night dregs of my Big Sunday Cook into something really special.

Red Zhoug

Originally Appeared on Epicurious