Creole Sauce Recipe

I've never tackled Creole cuisine, so when I decided to throw a Creole and Cajun-influenced barbecue, I needed to start from the ground up and used Creole sauce as my introduction.

It's a fitting choice, since the sauce's base is the Creole "holy trinity"—onions, celery, and green bell peppers. I sautéed the aromatics until they started to lose some volume, then added garlic, tomatoes, and chicken stock, along with some Louisiana hot sauce, Worcestershire, bay leaves, white and cayenne peppers, and dried thyme.

After the sauce simmered for twenty minutes, it was finished with butter—which gave it a nice, slightly thick consistency—parsley, and green onions.

What I had created seemed an embodiment of Creole flavors. The vegetables gave the sauce a great freshness along with complexity that went beyond any other tomato sauce I've ever made before. While the garden flavor started the sauce off, as it settled on the tongue, the spices started to mingle, with the distinct white pepper playing heavily, and the hot sauce and cayenne ending the affair with a slight hit of heat.

This was seriously delicious over some blackened catfish, but it can do so much more as the base of shrimp creole or as a condiment on a po'boy, or spooned over almost any grilled meat.