7 Tasty Homemade Condiments You'll Never Have to Buy Again

Items to make the process easier

You likely have everything you need, but I have found that some tools make preparing and storing your condiments a breeze.

Having an arsenal of wide-mouth Mason jars and swing-top bottles will ensure you have the perfect airtight container for sauces and dressings. Glass containers are durable, easy to clean, don't retain smells, and are translucent, so you can look right inside the jar and monitor things.

A pourable funnel, labels, and chalk markers help keep things clean, categorized, and dated.

1. Ketchup

Ketchup, a pantry staple, and picnic essential, is even better made from scratch. This is a fermented recipe, but don't let that scare you because this recipe looks and tastes like the store-bought versions you're used to.

If you're new to or curious about fermented foods, this is the perfect recipe to start. You'll need a few cans of organic tomato paste, a combination of cayenne, cinnamon, cloves, apple cider, and the juice from an existing ferment (I go back and forth between my kombucha and sauerkraut juice), raw honey, a pinch of salt, and filtered water.

Mix all the ingredients well and pour them into a glass jar secured with a lid. Store in a dark place and allow it to sit for two to four days until slightly bubbling, then move it to the fridge. It will last many months if kept cold.

2. Sour cream

Fermented sour cream uses two ingredients - whipping cream and an existing probiotic yogurt culture. 

Mix a quarter cup of the culture into each cup of whipping cream in a clean glass jar. Wrap with the towel and place in a slightly above room temperature environment, such as a cold oven, for 12 to 24 hours. Store in the fridge and finish within three weeks.  

3. Butter

Making homemade butter is incredibly simple if you have a food processor or a KitchenAid mixer. 

Pour room-temperature cream into your standing mixer, turn it on low, and you'll notice the cream turn into soft, whipped cream after a few minutes. A bit later, you'll hear lots of sloshing and see the butter fat separate from the liquid.

When the mixture sticks to the whisk attachment, you have butter. When you make butter, you also make buttermilk at the same time. Once the butter has solidified, pour off the buttermilk and save it for homemade biscuits, pancakes, or waffles.

You'll want to thoroughly rinse the butter several times in cold water to remove all the buttermilk and casein so it doesn't go rancid. Repeat this process until the water runs clear. Draining with cheesecloth also helps.

Butter will last a few weeks in your fridge and up to six months in the freezer. At this point, you can add a bit of salt or herbs. I kept a small batch of unsalted butter to make savory sage, thyme herb butter, and garlic salt butter on hand.

4. Mayonnaise 

Mayonnaise is created through the emulsion of oil and yolk that's been zested with an acid like lemon, lime juice, or vinegar.

Then you throw in a bit of mustard and herbs. This recipe uses an immersion blender to make the process quick, easy, and foolproof. Unlike store-bought mayonnaise, your homemade will be preservative, additive-free, and a rich source of vitamins, minerals, and quality fat.

I couldn't resist adding a bit of Dill pepper and chives.

5. Ranch dressing

Even when I would purchase ranch dressing from the store, it would still fall short of the taste I would get whenever we went out to local restaurants. There was something I just couldn't put my finger on, and then it hit me. Those were recipes that were made in-house or from scratch. I decided to start making my own. 

Ranch dressing can be healthy if the ingredients used to make it are also healthy. You already know how to make the base ingredients which are buttermilk and sour cream. Add dill, parsley, chives, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, and pepper in a bowl.

Squeeze in some lemon juice and pour into a jar to store in the fridge until it's ready to use.

6. Worcestershire sauce 

Worcestershire sauce is a condiment that I love to use in marinades, soups, or casseroles that need a bit of a boom. It does take a few more pantry staples to whip up, but I still think it's worth it because it uses significantly less salt, and the savory factor goes way up.

This recipe does an excellent job replicating the original Lea & Perrins brand that most of us are used to now.

Worcestershire sauce is traditionally a fermented fish-based sauce, but this recipe combines a handful of ingredients to give you robust flavor.

Worcestershire gets its unique flavor from the combination of vinegar, molasses, fish sauce, garlic, tamarind extract, chili pepper extract, sugar, salt, and other spices. If you want to control your salt or the savory factor of the sauce, homemade is the way to go.

7. Pickled onions 

It's hard to believe that I was tossing onions in the compost pile a couple of years ago because I couldn't get to them fast enough. I don't have that problem anymore because I pickle my onions when I'm not canning them in an onion jam.

Pickled onions retain their crunchiness. They can take on a variety of flavors, and they're sliced and ready to go. Pickled onions are the best way to add flavor to a salad, sandwich, or any dish. You can use them raw or cooked.

To make pickled red onions, you'll need six basic ingredients. Onions, herbs, garlic, peppercorns, white vinegar, and cane sugar brine. They'll keep for weeks in the fridge and lend their deep vinegary dimension of flavor to almost any dish.

Homemade condiments

Have you made homemade condiments? Using fresh ingredients will make the best homemade condiments. You'll notice a huge difference over store-bought. Share your favorite recipes in the comments below.