Yes! Eating ketchup was a killer for me- I used to drown everything in it. I didn't
realize how much HFCS I was pumping into my system. I'm kind of used to not using condiments now, but when I must, I mix a little hot sauce with mayonaise
Beware that all commercially bottled
mayonnaise widely marketed in the U.S.A., notably including "Hellman's
Real Mayonnaise" (
hah!), seem to contain needless
sugar, the apparently only exception being the "Duke's" brand (yellow label). My Mom recently reminded me that the home-made mayo used by much of the the W.W.-II Generation contained
no sugar (i.e., raw eggs, vinegar, oil, lemon juice, and a little salt).
For readers more concerned with sodium than sugar, practically all commercially bottled
hot sauce has huge amounts of
salt. There are exceptions, but finding them takes a lot of time reading the U.S.-mandated "ingredients" labels
[*].
or use an au jus sauce. For a lot of people I'm sure a little BBQ sauce grilled into the meat or diced tomatoes wouldn't be harmful [....]
I mentioned
diced tomatoes to get as much of the commercial tomato-sauce flavor while omitting the commercial
de facto sugars and salt. I don't know whether fresh tomatoes have a problematic amount of natural sugars; I confess ignorance about the natural-sugar content of other sauce-ingredient veggies (e.g., "sweet" bell peppers and onions).
You could mix up a sauce to your own taste, focused on a savory ingredient:
• pan-drippings, if not limited at all on intake of animal fats (when recipes direct the cook to "pour out drippings and discard all but 1 tbsp. fat", be contrary and save all the fat in a sanitized jar to be refrigerated for future use); or
• olive oil (‘extra-virgin’ for flavor).
That would be added to your sauce's more-or-less base ingredient:
• vinegar (I really like the savory taste of balsamic vinegar); or
• table wine (rice wine also has its enthusiasts); or
• beer (I use ‘stout’ in pan-gravy for red meat cooked to rare or med.-rare).
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Note [
*]: Arguably worthwhile as a separate
topic, so I don't intend to elaborate in this one.
CathInfo members can feel free to beat me to the
original posting for it.