Condiments Spread Flavor

Condiments enhance flavors and textures and permit instant customization of foods. Every cuisine has its typical condiments, developed through time to mask, enhance and ultimately make craveable foods.

Condiments can include both dry mixtures and sauce-like blends. Some dry mixtures blend herbs and dry seasonings like smoke flavors, salt, dried cheese or chiles, or other flavors. Some wet condiments add fluid components like vinegar and water to the seasonings and other ingredients. Aseptic, retort and hot-filled options are on the market today.

All-American options

Although tomato ketchup, yellow mustard, basic mayonnaise and pickle relish might not instantly elicit excitement, recent variations on these all-American condiments have added new levels of pizzazz.

The versatility of a condiment is critical to foodservice operators. Variations on standard condiments can pair up nicely with fried appetizers, fresh seafood or on a sandwich as a spread, or even complement a center-of-the-plate entrée. Condiments can be used as a finishing sauce, glaze or marinade, too.

Ketchup—perhaps the most-mainstream U.S. condiment—provides a good balance of flavors that mask some flavors while enhancing savory foods, such as burgers and fries. The salt, sugar and acid in ketchup are in perfect harmony to complement a wide range of meal components.

Ketchup’s format works well with innovative flavors. But accenting ketchup with a flavor like chipotle is almost commonplace now. Other exciting flavors of chiles, such as, ancho, poblano, habanero, Villa Argentileon hot pepper (Greece), Vallero hot pepper (Mexico) and serrano—not to mention sweet pimento bell peppers—add diverse flavors, too. Smoky flavors—in the case of smoked chiles—and a slight amount of heat make products craveable. Combinations of chiles can create bold flavors with manageable heat.

Chiles combined with chocolate are considered cutting-edge. One possible application of these flavors would be an out-of-the-box condiment that combines the sweet, bold, bitter and acidic flavors of dark chocolate with chiles from the various regions of the world.

When many people think about chiles, they think hot sauce. Such products, in many styles—in varying flavors and heat levels—are in abundance.

Chiles like habanero, jalapeño, serrano and cayenne are blended with various ingredients like vinegar (cider, white distilled, malt, red wine) or a citrus juice (lime, lemon, orange) to create hot sauces. The vinegar’s acidity brightens the flavors in the hot sauce.

The viscosity of hot sauces can vary from thicker, barbecue-sauce-style glazes to thin, vinegary types. Thicker hot sauces typically have more purées or solids, and possibly sugar content, to achieve such a consistency.

The combination of a thicker hot sauce with melted butter or margarine makes a great glaze for fried wings. A touch of honey can also be added to diversify the sauce’s flavor and consistency.

Mayonnaise is another versatile condiment. The color and flavor is easy to enhance with the addition of various pestos, chiles, pastes or spices like paprika (smoked, Hungarian, Spanish or Mexican). Mayonnaise melds well with wasabi and variations of horseradish. Adding relish or sofrito (a Latin American flavoring agent, often with onions, garlic, tomatoes and chiles cooked in oil) to mayo adds a new dimension, creating a condiment suited to use as a dipping sauce or as a sandwich spread. The punch of heat and bold flavor in such flavored mayos is certainly on trend.