Dressings, Dips, and Sauces
If there’s one section of this book that you want to become intimately familiar with, it’s this one. In fact, you could cook just using our Kitchen Fundamentals tips and these dressings, dips, and sauces for the entirety of your Whole30 and never get bored with your food.
Dressings, dips, and sauces are literally the spice of your Whole30 life. They transform plain old meat and veggies into cohesive, flavorful meals; change Mexican-themed dinners into Asian-inspired lunches; and give you an easy way to turn one roasted chicken into three days of totally different meals. Take our Broccoli, Mushroom, and Summer Squash recipe. Without the red pepper sauce, this dish is pretty ho-hum . . . cooked veggies with garlic, salt, and pepper. Keep making sides like this and you’ll be bored out of your Whole30 mind in no time. But with the pesto, presto! You’ve got a delicious dish exploding with flavor and texture—so much so that it could easily be the star of your dinner show, served alongside any basic protein.
The more you play around with these recipes, the more you’ll see that the variations are limitless! Just look at our Basic Mayo* variations. One five-minute recipe can be transformed any number of ways, adding depth, dimension, and creamy, dreamy goodness to your dishes.
Wait, you don’t like mayo? Oh, but you haven’t tried our mayo.
Let’s be honest—the store-bought stuff tends to be gloopy, slimy, and tastes, well, kind of funny. But our mayo, made from scratch with just five ingredients, is light and fluffy. It tastes clean and neutral, with no aftertaste. And once you mix it up with hot sauce, avocado, fresh herbs, or wasabi, you may just find yourself scraping the bowl and licking the spoon after you make yet another batch.
We’re convinced mayo is the new cake batter.
Including dressings or sauces in your regular meal planning also makes your meal prep easier, as most of these can be made in advance, prepared in extra-big batches, or frozen for later use. So for those of you new to cooking, let’s lay out a game plan for three nights of Whole30 dinners based around dressings and sauces.
Find some recipes in this section that look delicious, and prepare three or four in advance. For example, let’s prepare a batch of Basic Mayo, our Chimichurri, Sunshine Sauce, and Curry Sauce. Next, plan your dinners for the week, shopping for simple ingredients specifically designed to go with the sauces you’ve already prepared.
At dinnertime, use our Whole30 Cooking Fundamentals to prepare your basic protein and vegetables. Let’s say you’ve planned on a grilled steak with mashed sweet potato and steamed spinach; a seared chicken breast with roasted carrots and fresh garden salad; and oven-baked salmon with sautéed broccoli, pepper, onions, and mushrooms.
Now, the magic . . . top your meat and veggies with one of your sauces or dressings—the steak would be delicious with Chimichurri, the chicken tastes great drizzled with Sunshine Sauce, your garden salad can be dressed in a Balsamic Vinaigrette (using mayo in place of olive oil), and our Curry Sauce is perfect over salmon and veggies.
See what just happened there? You’ve got dinner in 20 minutes or less, and a family who thinks you’re some kind of culinary genius. Plus you made enough leftover sauce from each meal to make your next few meals exciting, too—eggs topped with Chimichurri for breakfast, raw celery dipped in Sunshine Sauce with lunch, ground beef mixed with Curry Sauce for dinner, and enough mayo left over to make a big batch of Protein Salad for on-the-go days. Whoa. We practically came to your house and cooked this all for you. Aren’t you lucky! For more meal planning ideas, turn to the meal template.
*If you can’t eat eggs, don’t worry—we’ve given you an egg-free version of our Basic Mayo, so you won’t miss out on all of the dressing and sauce variations in this section. BACK
