Capsule Cooking Issue #3: Romesco Sauce

It's a dip, a sauce for cooked veg, *and* sandwich condiment.

Welcome to the latest installment of the Capsule Cooking series! In case you missed the intro, the goal here is to showcase the versatility of ingredients. It’s about breaking recipes down into mix-and-matchable building blocks and using your creativity to repurpose them. This series is entirely reader-supported (thank you! 💕) and available only here on Substack. For full access, upgrade to a paid subscription.

---

Mastering a handful of sauce/spread/condiment recipes is one of the best gifts you can give yourself as a home cook. Plain roasted vegetables or seared tofu may not amount to much on their own flavorwise, but add an awesome homemade sauce, and you suddenly have a complete meal.

In general, I avoid store-bought dressings, sauces, dips, etc. (My only exceptions are hummus and marinara.) Pre-made sauces are typically made with poor-quality oils, preservatives, and stabilizers, which make them cheap to produce and enable them to sit on store shelves for months. This really decreases their appeal to me and frankly, most of them just don’t taste good.

Romesco sauce is one of those superstar all-purpose sauces that can add a special touch to so many different things, making it the perfect staple for your “capsule kitchen wardrobe”.

Romesco is a traditional Catalonian sauce originally created as a compliment for fish. There’s no one “authentic” romesco but the cast of characters usually includes roasted red peppers, roasted tomatoes, nuts, bread or breadcrumbs, garlic, vinegar, and olive oil.

For my romesco, I skip the tomatoes, since I like the ease of just using jarred red peppers. For the nutty element, I use literally whatever I have in the pantry: almonds, walnuts, cashews, pumpkin seeds, or sunflower seeds.

Below, my romesco recipe, plus 3 ideas that show off the versatility of this vibrant sauce. 

The Base Recipe - Romesco Sauce (P.S. All this info is also in a printable pdf below!)