3-Ingredient Recipe: Magic Summer Sauce

A perfect meal, this time of summer, is one that seems to fly out of the refrigerator and onto your plate, with nothing but a brief stop at the grill (or grill pan). A seared steak, crusted with pepper, or a smoky hunk of eggplant straight from the garden with a salad to keep them company. This is easy living, people.

But what if you want just a touch more to your meal? Get fancy — how about a sauce? I stumbled accidentally onto the easiest and punchiest sauce recently — a magic blend of three ingredients that spices up everything from the grill — steak, chicken, burgers, a pile of vegetables. Zero cooking required. Just mix and drizzle. Want to see what’s in my magic sauce?

With just three ingredients, this falls firmly in the tongue-in-cheek category of “recipes.” The magic three? Yogurt, Dijon mustard, and Sriracha. The yogurt gives creaminess and a little tang; the mustard adds depth and some bitterness (I prefer a mustard that also has a touch of sweetness); Sriracha for spice, of course. You really could use any hot sauce.

I stumbled across this when making a steak for myself and my husband. I whipped together these three things and voilà — it was delicious. Super punchy, a little creamy, cold and spicy. I use this all the time as a last-minute dip or sauce for grilled or fresh vegetables, and to spice up a simple chicken breast.

From me to you, magic sauce. Don’t make cooking this summer any harder than it needs to be.

With grilled meat and veggies on repeat through the summer months, I constantly find myself craving something that just jazzes them up slightly. Now I have this creamy 3-ingredient sauce in my back pocket. It’s the kind of thing that made me wonder why I hadn’t thought of it myself — I always have the ingredients in my fridge anyway, I just never considered combining them. While the original recipe called for Sriracha sauce, I love the extra heat and flavor that chili garlic sauce brings, so I added that as an alternative if you happen to have it on hand.

– Sheela, July 2018