Here’s a recipe for a super- simple way to make your own Homemade Cocktail Sauce:

I mentioned in my last post that my nephew Jordan visited us for Christmas this year. He brought his wife Stephanie and their adorable, perfect little girl Olivia, and we had a fabulous time. Jordan has been the executive chef at many restaurants. He creatively plans themed menus and does the majority of the cooking too. The dude is a talented guy.

It’s so much fun to have a chef in our family because I can totally relate to him and we have so much in common. While at our house, he made us a ton of awesome treats. On the day after Christmas, we decided to have a Tapas Night. Jordan whipped up some homemade cocktail sauce for us to dip our gigantic cooked shrimp into.

He started to prepare the cocktail sauce, and then he asked my husband where we kept the horseradish. OOPS… no horseradish in our house. Time to improvise. He scoured my fridge and my pantry for a spicy alternative and decided to sub pepperoncini for the horseradish.

We were all delighted to discover that the pepperoncini worked out GREAT. So in this recipe, you can either use pepperoncini OR horseradish. I’d say that the horseradish makes the sauce a little bit spicier.

If you’re celebrating in any way on New Year’s Eve this year, grab some fresh shrimp (you can even buy it already cooked), and make your own cocktail sauce. It’s the perfect, fancy way to ring in the New Year. And it’s a great recipe to serve with shrimp at all other celebrations during the year too!

Here are a few more homemade sauce recipes you might like to try: