32 Sauce Recipes Perfect For Grilled Chicken

Cooking chicken on the grill is the ultimate way to inject it with smoky, caramelized flavor, and create that all-important charred finish. And while the grilling process itself is sure to elevate the taste of the meat, there's another way to maximize its deliciousness. Grilled chicken is the perfect canvas for pairing with a range of flavor-boosting sauces, which can completely transform the overall vibe of your dish.

With succulent, savory chicken being such a versatile base, there are endless sauces it'll taste fantastic with. Perhaps you're in the mood for something creamy and garlicky, or want to give the meat a spicier finish. Herb-forward sauces are a fitting match here, too, and anything that blends sweetness and tanginess is always a winner. Some sauces are ideal for marinating or brushing atop the chicken before or during grilling, to create a sticky, glaze-like coating, while others are best drizzled generously over the meat or served on the side when plating up. However you fancy upgrading your chicken dinner, there's a sauce that can help, and below are 32 mouth-watering options that are sure to make your next grilled chicken dish shine.

If you're looking for a sauce that offers the perfect balance of sweetness, tanginess, and spiciness, this BBQ-style honey mustard sauce is the perfect option. Alongside yellow mustard and honey, it features apple cider vinegar, tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, and cayenne pepper, which get heated in a saucepan until smooth and thickened. This would be equally amazing as a glaze, drizzle, or dip for your roast chicken.

Recipe: Carolina BBQ-Style Honey Mustard Sauce

Sofrito is a punchy blend of herbs, vegetables, and aromatics that's particularly popular in Caribbean cuisine. It's often added to soups and stews, beans and rice, or drizzled over steak, but it also tastes incredible with grilled chicken. To make it, you'll simply add onion, garlic, bell peppers, green onions, and cilantro to a food processor and pulse everything into a chunky sauce. Then, it's ready for spooning atop that juicy meat.

Recipe: Simple Sofrito

It's a classic for dunking fries into or spreading into a hearty sandwich, but aioli is often overlooked as an accompaniment to chicken. Loaded with earthy, garlicky flavor, this creamy, truffle-infused version is a fantastic match for the charred meat. The blend of mayo, mustard, truffle oil, garlic powder, and lemon juice is the perfect tool for boosting the richness of your final dish, while adding plenty of aromatic flavor. It also works brilliantly with a whole host of sides, such as roasted potatoes or steamed greens.

Recipe: Easy Homemade Truffle Aioli

Five ingredients are all you'll need to whip up this spicy chipotle mayo. That's canned chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, mayonnaise, lime juice, garlic, and smoked paprika. Blitzed up with a pinch of salt and pepper, the resulting sauce is ultra creamy with a moreish hint of smoky heat, that complements the caramelized char of the chicken beautifully. And, if you prefer a milder sauce, there's always the option to remove the seeds from the peppers before blending them into the sauce.

Recipe: 5-Ingredient Chipotle Mayo

A crowd-pleasing sauce with an undeniably fitting name, yum yum sauce is far easier to make from scratch than you'd think. It sees mayonnaise combined with ketchup, rice vinegar, sugar, and sriracha, and the resulting sauce is creamy, tangy, and a little sweet and spicy. Try spooning it over the chicken when it's fresh off the grill, or portioning some of the sauce into a small bowl to serve on the side if you're serving the chicken as part of a wider spread.

Recipe: Homemade Yum Yum Sauce

When elegance is the goal, it has to be romesco sauce. This sauce is bursting with natural sweetness from the perfectly caramelized oven-roasted bell peppers, tomatoes, and garlic. Toasted almonds add a gorgeous nutty richness, while smoked paprika enhances the color and flavor even further. To ensure the final sauce is lovely and smooth, you'll peel the skins from the roasted peppers and tomatoes before blending them with the other ingredients.

Recipe: Smoky Romesco Sauce

Sweet chili has long been a beloved addition to chicken, and there countless reasons why this sauce works so well. This recipe is a delightfully complex blend of garlic, ginger, rice vinegar, sugar, sambal oelek, red chili flakes, and soy sauce. So, it really hits every flavor note you could wish for, and the balance is just right. The sauce's sticky texture also makes it an ideal glaze to brush over the meat during cooking, and it'll caramelize nicely under the high heat of the grill.

Recipe: Easy Sweet Chili Sauce

Cranberry sauce isn't just for turkey. It also complements the slightly milder and sweeter profile of grilled chicken brilliantly. This flavorful sauce begins with chicken stock, cranberry juice, a cinnamon stick, and sprigs of fresh herbs, while are first simmered together to allow the flavors to meld. Then, with the solids strained out, in go fresh cranberries, sugar, and salt, with everything slowly cooked down into a jammy, vibrant sauce that's bursting with natural tanginess.

Recipe: Savory Cranberry Sauce

To give your chicken an Asian-inspired twist, try serving it with a sticky hoisin sauce. It takes just five minutes to prep, and you can store any leftover sauce in the fridge for use in other meals throughout the week. Featuring umami-rich black bean paste, tangy rice vinegar, and sweet, sticky prunes, this sauce hits all the right notes. It's a great one for using as a marinade or a glaze.

Recipe: Classic Hoisin Sauce

Pesto is most commonly made with basil, but switching this out for cilantro is a wonderful way to give the sauce a more zesty, peppery flavor. Just blitz the fresh cilantro leaves with olive oil, toasted pine nuts, lemon juice, garlic, Parmesan, salt, and pepper, and you'll have a bold, vibrant sauce that's perfect for adding brightness to grilled chicken. Try serving the sauce-topped meat with Mexican-inspired sides such as esquites, cilantro-lime rice, or spicy black beans.

Recipe: Cilantro Pesto

You can't go wrong with the combo of chicken and gravy, and this silky, deeply savory take on the classic brothy sauce is just as worthy of a topping for grilled meat as it is for a roast dinner. This chicken gravy is made with melted butter, which gets whisked up with flour to form a roux, before chicken broth is gradually poured in. Heavy cream adds richness, while a dash of Worcestershire sauce boosts delivers a hit of umami.

Recipe: Simple Chicken Gravy

Wonderfully warming with a hint of booziness, this green peppercorn sauce oozes sophistication. It's something we often see spooned atop a pan-seared steak, but try this sauce with chicken, and you won't look back. The creamy texture, boldness of the briny peppercorns, and fruitiness of the brandy make this indulgent concoction a delicious match for the mild, tender meat, and it can transform you're plateful into something infinitely more comforting.

Recipe: Green Peppercorn Sauce

Creamy country gravy is another sauce that feels almost tailor-made for upgrading grilled chicken. It's thick, buttery, and subtly flavored with a hint of onion powder, salt, and pepper, which give it a savory boost without making it too overpowering. Unlike most gravies, this version doesn't include broth, but calls for milk as the main liquid component, hence its unique creamy consistency and milder taste. It's great for spooning over grilled chicken breast, or even dunking spicy grilled chicken wings to mellow their heat.

Recipe: Creamy Country Gravy

Great for elevating a bruschetta or wholesome Caprese salad, this Italian-inspired glaze works wonders on chicken, too. Here, the complex fruity tartness of balsamic vinegar makes the sauce a real standout. The vinegar is simply simmered with honey until thickened and reduced, to create a sweet, sticky sauce. Try brushing it into chicken around halfway through cooking, or adding it to a squeezy bottle and drizzling it over a grilled chicken-topped salad or grain bowl.

Recipe: Honey Balsamic Glaze

If sweet and sour sauce is something you'd typically pick up in a jar at the grocery store, we highly recommend giving this homemade version a try. After all, it'll only take ten minutes of your time. Sugar, vinegar, soy sauce, ketchup, and water come together to produce a moreish contrast of sweet, salty, and tangy flavors, that'll make your grilled chicken taste just like your favorite takeout dish.

Recipe: Homemade Sweet And Sour Sauce

The salty, nutty taste of peanuts is such an incredible addition to chicken, especially when it's in the form of a creamy sauce. This Asian-inspired recipe has a fuss-free prep method, and requires a handful of ingredients that you may well already have in your kitchen. Stir peanut butter with a splash of lime juice, some garlic powder, soy sauce, honey, and a pinch of chili flakes, and it's good to go. This one's particularly great for dipping grilled chicken skewers into.

Recipe: Satay-Style Peanut Sauce

It might be a steakhouse classic, but mushroom sauce is also a game-changer for grilled chicken. Mushrooms are packed with natural earthy, umami flavor, and when this sauce is spooned over chicken, it really amps up the overall savory depth of the dish. First, sliced mushrooms are sautéed in butter, then sprinkled with flour. A splash of sherry adds a touch of sophistication, and meaty beef broth ties all of the flavors together.

Recipe: Steakhouse Mushroom Sauce

Hailing from Laos, this fiery sauce certainly isn't short of bold ingredients. There's citrusy cilantro, salty fish sauce, and hot Thai chilis, which get pulsed in a food processor with sugar, lime juice, and garlic to create a chunky, fragrant sauce. You can drizzle it, serve it on the side as a dip, or even combine it with the raw chicken in a sealable food bag overnight, to infuse it with heaps of sweet, spicy, and sour flavor before grilling.

Recipe: Bang Bang Sauce (Laotian Sour Sauce)

BBQ chicken never gets old, and making this trusty sauce from scratch is the perfect way to take your chicken to the next level. You'll need ketchup, white vinegar, sugar, honey, and Worcestershire sauce, plus a glug of vegetable oil and sprinkling of spices. These are heated together on the stovetop, forming a versatile mixture that can be brushed, dolloped, or drizzled. Try tossing bone-in thighs or wings in the sauce when they're still hot off the grill.

Recipe: Sweet And Tangy BBQ Sauce

Cool and creamy but delightfully indulgent, a dollop of tzatziki sauce brings a welcomed dose of freshness to anything it touches. We love slicing succulent grilled chicken up into bite-sized pieces, and adding it to a pita pocket with some crunchy salad and a generous spoonful of this sauce. To whip up a batch, start by grating cucumber and squeezing out the excess moisture, then stirring it with Greek yogurt, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, chopped mint leaves, and a pinch of salt.

Recipe: Classic Tzatziki Sauce

Teriyaki is known for its distinct umami-packed tang, and chicken is a natural pairing for this mouth-watering sauce. Its sticky texture really helps it cling to the meat, whether you're brushing it on as a glaze or spooning it over post-grilling. Making it is super simple, too. You'll heat soy sauce with brown sugar, honey, garlic powder, ginger, and water on the stovetop, then thicken things up with the addition of a cornstarch slurry.

Recipe: At-Home Teriyaki Sauce

Who knew you could whip up a buffalo wing sauce with just four kitchen staples? Here, we stir apple cider vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, and hot sauce into melted butter, which yields this rather dreamy blend of savory, spicy, and tangy flavors. And, it's not just wings that this mixture can enhance. It's just as well-suited for adding flavor to grilled chicken breast, bone-in thighs, or legs. A great approach is to marinate the meat in the sauce overnight before cooking, and brush it over during the last few minutes of cooking.

Recipe: Buffalo Wing Sauce

Mole sauce is a traditional Mexican recipe with a rich, complex flavor profile, thanks to its diverse medley of ingredients. It begins with an aromatic base of sautéed onions and garlic, to which broth, canned chipotle chile peppers, raisins, almond butter, and cocoa powder are added, alongside various herbs and spices. With everything simmered together, the mixture is then blended until smooth, yielding a pourable texture that's perfect for serving with grilled chicken breast, rice, and roasted veggies.

Recipe: Shortcut Mole Sauce

With its vibrant green hue and herbaceous aroma, chimichurri is more than just a steak topper. The bright, spicy taste of this sauce fits in beautifully alongside grilled chicken, whether you're using it as a marinade or adding it after cooking. This chimichurri is made with red wine vinegar, minced shallots and garlic, plus those all-important herbs — fresh parsley, cilantro, oregano, and chives. Red pepper flakes deliver a burst of heat, and extra virgin olive oil ties everything together.

Recipe: Fresh Chimichurri Sauce

Chicken alfredo is the ultimate comfort food, offering heaps of rich, cheesy deliciousness. The silky sauce combines butter and heavy cream with garlic powder, salt, pepper, and Parmesan cheese. Then, to assemble the dish, the sauce is tossed with fettuccine pasta, before everything's topped with a pan-fried chicken breast. But, how about levelling things up by grilling the chicken instead? The smoky char of the meat will contrast the smooth sauce beautifully.

Recipe: Easy Alfredo Sauce

In this spicy, nutty sauce, peanut butter serves as the ultimate creamy base. It's infused with garlic and ginger, which give it an irresistible aromatic depth, and a good squeeze of lemon juice brightens everything up nicely. Simmered and stirred with a dynamic trio of condiments — that's hoisin, chili, and soy sauce — the final mixture is bursting with Asian-inspired flavor, and ready to transform a basic piece of grilled chicken into something altogether more exciting.

Recipe: Spicy Peanut Sauce

Zaxby's fans will be pleased to learn that it's totally possible to make a batch of Zax sauce from the comfort of your own kitchen. This creamy dip is generally served with the fast food chain's fried chicken offerings, and it's great for dunking crispy fries into as well. It's creamy and tangy, with the perfect balance of sweetness and saltiness, so basically everything you could want in a sauce. This copycat version requires a handful of kitchen staples, including mayo, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and apple cider vinegar.

Recipe: Copycat Zaxby's Zax Sauce

Chili and lime make for a wonderfully dynamic duo, especially when they're blended into a fiery sauce. This homemade hot sauce makes use of scotch bonnet chile peppers, which really turn up the heat, so be aware that a little goes a long way on your chicken! Once you've chopped the peppers, along with some tomatoes and garlic, add these to a food processor with vinegar, salt, and the zesty lime juice. Once blended until smooth, the sauce is then simmered low and slow, to maximize those intense flavors.

Recipe: Chili-Lime Hot Sauce

This creamy Alabama white sauce is a Southern classic that boasts a uniquely tangy, peppery taste. With a total of 11 ingredients, it's certainly not short on flavor, and somehow, this mishmash of sauces and spices come together to create something truly irresistible. Some of the notable add-ins to the mayo and apple cider vinegar base are ground mustard, horseradish, and Old Bay seasoning, which do an amazing job of cutting through the richness. Try spooning it over BBQ-marinated grilled chicken for a delicious sweet and spicy flavor contrast.

Recipe: Alabama White Sauce

If horseradish on roast beef is your go-to, we urge you to try it on your next grilled chicken dinner. Pungent and creamy, this sauce calls for prepared horseradish, which adds a bold kick to the blend of sour cream and mayonnaise. Mustard and sherry vinegar bring extra tang, and Worcestershire sauce balances everything with a hint of umami. Horseradish sauce is also fantastic spread into a grilled chicken sandwich or wrap.

Recipe: Creamy Horseradish Sauce

Give your next batch of homemade hot sauce a colorful twist by making it with green jalapeños. The peppers get sautéed in oil with garlic, then simmered with a splash of water and pinch of salt, before they're blitzed up with fresh cilantro and vinegar. It's a simple but gloriously punchy sauce that's perfect for spice lovers, and it truly brings out the best of grilled chicken. You could also try drizzling this over a chilled chicken salad for a fresh, spicy finish.

Recipe: Spicy Green Hot Sauce

Fruity, floral flavors haven't been especially prominent in this line-up of sauces, but this tangy chamoy proves they deserve more recognition. A Mexican recipe that features dried hibiscus flowers, apricots, prunes, and dried chiles, chamoy can be used in a whole host of different ways. You can stir it into fruity drinks, drizzle it over tacos or enchiladas, or dunk tortilla chips into it. But, of course, it's also the perfect pairing for grilled chicken, especially when used as a marinade.

Recipe: Sweet, Spicy, And Tangy Chamoy

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