Eleven sauces and a taco seasoning that replace the store-bought versions. The biggest difference is in the mayo.
From Cooking with Chris: 11 sauces and taco seasoning. Where he gives no amount, I filled one in and said so. The nutrition numbers and the notes at the bottom are mine.
LA = linoleic acid (omega-6). The three mayo sauces use avocado oil mayo. The same sauce made with regular soybean-oil mayo has about 4× the LA. Why ↓
Stir together. Good on rice bowls, burgers and fish.
full nutrition ↓Pound the garlic, smoked paprika and a pinch of salt to a paste in a mortar (or a food processor). Stir in the mayo, vinegar, tomato paste, chipotle and cayenne. Cover and refrigerate. Best with potatoes, and great with a burger.
Red wine vinegar stands in for sherry vinegar, and cayenne for chipotle powder, in the numbers.
full nutrition ↓Use half to marinate chicken, shrimp or beef, then pour in the other half at the end and cook until it thickens. The same recipe is marinade #9.
The garlic and ginger amounts are mine. The numbers use soy sauce, so coconut aminos will come out lower in sodium.
full nutrition ↓Dice everything as fine as you like and stir together. Adjust the salt. Use on eggs or tacos, or with chips.
The amounts of salt and cilantro are mine.
full nutrition ↓Chop everything fine, put it in a mason jar and shake. A food processor works too, but don't overdo it. Use it on steak and seafood. It's also marinade #3, with double the salt.
full nutrition ↓Mix equal parts honey and sriracha with a splash of vinegar. Toss chicken wings in it.
The ¼ cup of each is mine. The thread just says "equal parts."
full nutrition ↓Whisk together. Use it as a dip, or as marinade #1.
full nutrition ↓Stir together. Adjust the vinegar and sugar to taste. It's modeled on In-N-Out's spread.
Sweet relish is assumed. The ketchup is regular ketchup, so see the note on HFCS.
full nutrition ↓In a mortar, mash the onion, chili, half the cilantro and a big pinch of coarse salt to release the flavor. Add the avocados, lime juice and the rest of the cilantro, then mash to the texture you like and salt to taste. Serve with eggs and sourdough, Mexican food, or seed-oil-free chips.
The 1 tsp of salt is mine. Serrano is counted as jalapeño.
full nutrition ↓Blend until smooth, adding milk until it's the thickness you want. Taste for salt.
full nutrition ↓Toss the tomatoes, unpeeled garlic, onion and jalapeños in a little oil on a sheet pan. Broil on high until charred and blistered, then flip and char the other side. Peel the garlic, then blend everything with the cilantro, lime and spices to the texture you like. Salt to taste. It's better after a few hours in the fridge.
The amounts of salt and oil are mine.
full nutrition ↓Mix. This seasons about 2 lb of meat, so halve it for 1 lb, or scale it up and keep a jar. It's cheaper than store packets and has no fillers. Chris uses Simply Organic spices.
The nutrition is for 4 oz of cooked 85% lean ground beef plus its share of the seasoning (2 lb raw ≈ 24 oz cooked).
full nutrition ↓This is calculated from the same USDA data as Build a Day. A serving is a fraction of the batch, based on its approximate volume. Avocado oil mayo, mirin and gochujang aren't in USDA's data, so they're estimated from their ingredients.
% of the daily target for men (the same targets as Build a Day). ~ = mostly estimated. Carbohydrate is what's left of the calories after protein and fat.
The thread's opening claim: store sauces are "loaded with seed oils, high fructose corn syrup, thickeners."
| Claim | What the evidence shows | Holds? |
|---|---|---|
| Store sauces are full of seed oils | True for mayo and everything built on it. Regular mayo is soybean oil. More ↓ | Yes |
| …and high fructose corn syrup | True for regular US ketchup, but HFCS is about as bad as table sugar or honey, not worse. More ↓ | Half |
USDA's standard mayonnaise is made with soybean oil, and 39% of its weight is linoleic acid. A 2-tablespoon serving carries about 11 g, more than most people need in a day by the Linoleic Acid paper's estimate. Avocado oil mayo has about a quarter of that, roughly 3 g per 2 tablespoons. Avocado oil is mostly oleic acid, the same fat as olive oil. Mayo is also the base of aioli, burger sauce, sriracha mayo, tartar sauce and most creamy dressings, so this one swap covers a lot of the omega-6 that comes from condiments.
Two caveats. First, the swap only works if the bottle really is avocado oil. In UC Davis testing, most US avocado oils were rancid or cut with other oils, some with soybean oil (details on the marinades page). Second, avocado oil mayo is still about 80% fat, about 100 kcal per tablespoon. The improvement is in the type of fat, not the amount. (Strong: USDA composition data. The avocado mayo figure is estimated from its ingredients.)
↑ back to summaryRegular US ketchup is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, so his burger sauce, made with regular ketchup, still has it. But HFCS (42–55% fructose) is chemically close to table sugar (50% fructose) and honey (about 38% fructose and 31% glucose by weight). A 2018 meta-analysis of controlled trials found no difference between HFCS and sucrose on CRP, the main inflammation marker, and no difference between fructose and glucose.[1] The evidence was rated low quality. One author sits on a carbohydrate-industry consortium and an ILSI Europe expert group.
So the useful question is how much sugar, not which kind. The honey sriracha is about half honey by weight, and the honey mustard and stir fry sauce aren't far behind. They're good sauces, but count them as sugar. (Moderate: trials agree, but they're short and few)
↑ back to summary