Garlic Parmesan Sauce
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This Garlic Parmesan Sauce is so incredibly creamy and flavorful! It’s perfect tossed with chicken wings or pasta, used as a dipping sauce, pizza sauce or a sandwich spread. It’s easy to mix up in just 5 minutes and is guaranteed to become your new favorite sauce recipe!
Over the last couple of years, I’ve become totally obsessed with making chicken wings at home, most commonly air fryer chicken wings. While I love buffalo sauce (these 70 recipes made with buffalo sauce are proof of that!), I also wanted to try some other wing flavors.
Garlic Parmesan Chicken Wings are my favorite mild wings at Buffalo Wild Wings. So of course, I had to recreate the garlic-parmesan wing sauce at home, and make it even better!
While I originally created this sauce to go on wings, I have been tossing it, dipping it and spreading it on just about everything for the last month. It’s so great as a dip for veggies and french fries. It’s also the perfect sandwich and burger spread. And it’s amazing tossed with pasta.
I’m honestly so excited to make a dozen different recipes with this sauce! It’s so incredibly flavorful and super easy to mix up in just 5 minutes.
Ingredients
- Parmesan cheese – I recommend fresh grated parmesan cheese. I’ve made this recipe with both fresh grated cheese and a can of shaker parmesan, and the texture of the sauce made with fresh grated parmesan was smoother. But in a pinch, either one will work!
- Mayonnaise – feel free to use your favorite brand of mayonnaise.
- Garlic – since garlic is one of the main ingredients in this recipe, I highly recommend using fresh crushed garlic cloves for the best taste. This will really bring out the fresh garlic flavor in the sauce!
- Italian seasoning – click the link to the left for my homemade seasoning recipe. It only takes 5 minutes to mix up and it’s so delicious! It really is the perfect blend of herbs and spices for this recipe. If you’re using a store-bought seasoning mix, I recommend adding 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes to the sauce, if the seasoning mix does not contain red pepper. It doesn’t make the sauce spicy, but it does add just a hint of heat and a lot of flavor to the sauce.
- Lemon juice – I recommend fresh-squeezed juice for the best flavor. The lemon juice adds just the right amount of acidity to balance out the sauce.
- Olive oil
- Salt + black pepper – to season the sauce.
Instructions
- Add all of the ingredients to a food processor.
- Turn the food processor on and blend the sauce until it’s smooth and creamy.
Easy as that, with two simple steps you have the perfect veggie sauce, wing sauce, pizza sauce, burger sauce, the list goes on and on!
Pro tips
- Let the sauce sit in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes before serving. This isn’t required, but I can tell you from experience, the flavor of the sauce develops more and more as it sits in the refrigerator for the first 30 minutes to 2 hours.
- Use fresh grated parmesan cheese for the smoothest sauce. While pre-grated cheese will work, you can’t beat fresh grated parmesan for this recipe. I use a microplane to finely shred the cheese so that it easily blends into the sauce.
- This sauce will stay good in the fridge for up to two weeks. I do not recommend freezing the sauce because it’s dairy-based and the texture won’t be the same after it’s defrosted.
- The sauce thickens up as it sits in the refrigerator. If you leave it on the counter for 10-15 minutes, it will loosen up as it comes to room temperature and won’t be as thick.
- To amp up the garlic flavor even more, sub in roasted garlic for fresh garlic.
- To add spice to the sauce, either add 1/2 teaspoon hot sauce, like Frank’s Red Hot, or 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper.
Ways to use the sauce
While this creamy garlic parmesan sauce recipe was originally created as a wing sauce, I’ve found so many other uses for it. Spread it, dip it or toss it with any of these delicious recipes!
- Toss it with wings. Pictured above, you can see this sauce tossed with Grilled Chicken Wings. It’s also great tossed with Air Fryer Chicken Wings, Sous Vide Chicken Wings or Boneless Wings. I recommend tossing 1 pound of wings with 1/4 cup of sauce.
- Make it into a creamy salad dressing. Add 1/4 cup milk or heavy cream to thin out the sauce and toss it with your favorite salad.
- Use it as a dipping sauce. Dip raw veggies, like carrot sticks, celery, bell peppers, broccoli or cauliflower florets, right into the sauce. It’s also a great sauce to dip french fries, grilled veggies, roasted veggies, chicken strips or mozzarella sticks.
- Spread it on a sandwich. Make an epic Italian sub by spreading this sauce on Italian hoagie rolls, then adding sliced meats, like salami, capicola, ham and mortadella. Add slices of provolone cheese, tomatoes, pepperoncinis and shredded lettuce, to create the best sandwich ever.
- Add it to a burger. Replace the burger sauce on this Mushroom Swiss Burger with this garlic parmesan sauce, and replace the swiss cheese with mozzarella for an amazing Italian-style burger.
- Toss it with pasta. Boil a pound of your favorite pasta. Remove about a cup of the cooking water before draining the pasta. Once the pasta is drained, toss it with 1 cup of this garlic parmesan sauce, plus 1/4 cup at a time of the cooking water until the pasta sauce reaches your desired consistency. Top with a little fresh parmesan and you have an easy, tasty pasta dinner!
- Make this viral pasta recipe. Use the sauce in this Garlic Parmesan Chicken Pasta recipe. It’s easy to make with 7 ingredients, in just 29 minutes.
- Spread it on pizza. Make a white pizza by using this sauce instead of a traditional tomato-based sauce as the base of the pizza. Try it on Kurt’s famous Pan Pizza recipe!
More sauce recipes
Try these other delicious homemade sauce recipes to amp up the flavor of your next meal!
Garlic Parmesan Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 cup grated parmesan cheese
- ½ cup mayonnaise
- 1 tablespoon crushed garlic cloves
- 2 teaspoons Italian seasoning, click link for the recipe
- 2 teaspoons lemon juice, fresh squeezed – recommended
- 1 teaspoon olive oil
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
Instructions
- Add all of the ingredients to a food processor.
- Turn the food processor on and blend until the sauce is smooth and creamy.
- Store in the refrigerator in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.
Notes
- Let the sauce sit in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes before serving. This isn’t required, but I can tell you from experience, the flavor of the sauce develops more and more as it sits in the refrigerator for the first 30 minutes to 2 hours.
- Use fresh grated parmesan cheese for the smoothest sauce. While pre-grated cheese will work, you can’t beat fresh grated parmesan for this recipe. I use a microplane to finely shred the cheese so that it easily blends into the sauce.
- The sauce thickens up as it sits in the refrigerator. If you leave it on the counter for 10-15 minutes, it will loosen up as it comes to room temperature and won’t be as thick.
- To amp up the garlic flavor even more, sub in roasted garlic for fresh garlic.
- To add spice to the sauce, either add 1/2 teaspoon hot sauce, like Frank’s Red Hot, or 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper.
Nutrition Facts
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2 Comments on “Garlic Parmesan Sauce”
Thanks Whitney I’ve been looking for the perfect combination of spices for my Parmesan wings. I also added my own personal all purpose (house seasoning) to it and it’s an awesome blend of flavors.
I need to know more about this “personal all purpose house seasoning”!