How to make sauces
Discussion
I'm generally a decent home cook, however I have no idea how to make sauces.
Don't mean pasta sauces which I manage fine, but rather the stuff you pour on top of meat or fish dishes to give them some extra complexity and make them less "dry".
Gravies, "reductions" etc. elude me. I tried to make a saffron sauce the other day and it just came out a buttery mess.
Would you like to contribute some ideas/recipes?
For what it's worth, I mainly cook salmon, monkfish, tuna, scallops, chicken and turkey, pan-fried, grilled or oven roasted.
Don't mean pasta sauces which I manage fine, but rather the stuff you pour on top of meat or fish dishes to give them some extra complexity and make them less "dry".
Gravies, "reductions" etc. elude me. I tried to make a saffron sauce the other day and it just came out a buttery mess.
Would you like to contribute some ideas/recipes?
For what it's worth, I mainly cook salmon, monkfish, tuna, scallops, chicken and turkey, pan-fried, grilled or oven roasted.
Edited by matrignano on Friday 15th January 13:58
I think you need to spend a bit of time mastering Escoffier's "mother" sauces from which most others can be produced.
http://luckypeach.com/the-mother-sauces-of-french-...
Once you can produce these basics reliably, everything else is just tweaking and adding flavours.
http://luckypeach.com/the-mother-sauces-of-french-...
Once you can produce these basics reliably, everything else is just tweaking and adding flavours.
Sauces bridge the gap between the kind of cooking you can do completely intuitively just based on flavours and common sense, and the kind of cooking that requires a degree of precision and chemistry, like baking a cake, making mayonnaise, making pastry.
You can bodge some sauces together very easily by using cream or yoghurt to give them some body. You need to be a bit careful not to curdle them ... e.g. don't boil yoghurt for 3 hours ... but beyond that, it's easy.
You can also bulk a sauce up using flour with a bit of care. Learn how to make a white sauce ... some, but not much technique required. That'll give you a good idea how to use flour to bulk up a sauce.
And then when you're feeling ambitious, have a creak at hollandaise.
And the recommendation above for Larousse is spot on. I'm just a kitchen hacker; very happy to play around and make stuff up; no patience with following recipes. BUT Larousse is a brilliant manual to have to hand. No pictures of the author gimping at you, no anecdotes about the first time he ate a herring, just tons and tons of useful info.
You can bodge some sauces together very easily by using cream or yoghurt to give them some body. You need to be a bit careful not to curdle them ... e.g. don't boil yoghurt for 3 hours ... but beyond that, it's easy.
You can also bulk a sauce up using flour with a bit of care. Learn how to make a white sauce ... some, but not much technique required. That'll give you a good idea how to use flour to bulk up a sauce.
And then when you're feeling ambitious, have a creak at hollandaise.
And the recommendation above for Larousse is spot on. I'm just a kitchen hacker; very happy to play around and make stuff up; no patience with following recipes. BUT Larousse is a brilliant manual to have to hand. No pictures of the author gimping at you, no anecdotes about the first time he ate a herring, just tons and tons of useful info.
Edited by ATG on Friday 15th January 14:00
marshalla said:
I think you need to spend a bit of time mastering Escoffier's "mother" sauces from which most others can be produced.
http://luckypeach.com/the-mother-sauces-of-french-...
Once you can produce these basics reliably, everything else is just tweaking and adding flavours.
Thanks, that's a useful link.http://luckypeach.com/the-mother-sauces-of-french-...
Once you can produce these basics reliably, everything else is just tweaking and adding flavours.
Essentially sauces are a combination of roux (cooked for varying lengths of time to obtain a lighter or darker colour) and a liquid, be it stock, milk or water, plus "flavours".
I guess I need to have a play and figure what combinations work well together.
In my example above, saffron sauce, how would you go about it?
White stock + white roux + saffron?
matrignano said:
Thanks, that's a useful link.
Essentially sauces are a combination of roux (cooked for varying lengths of time to obtain a lighter or darker colour) and a liquid, be it stock, milk or water, plus "flavours".
I guess I need to have a play and figure what combinations work well together.
In my example above, saffron sauce, how would you go about it?
White stock + white roux + saffron?
Personally, I wouldn't. I find saffron has a very medicinal taste and don't particularly like it.Essentially sauces are a combination of roux (cooked for varying lengths of time to obtain a lighter or darker colour) and a liquid, be it stock, milk or water, plus "flavours".
I guess I need to have a play and figure what combinations work well together.
In my example above, saffron sauce, how would you go about it?
White stock + white roux + saffron?
BUT - I'd consider doing something even simpler - maybe a simple saffron butter (gentle heat, melt the butter without letting it colour and let the saffron infuse for a little while before pouring it over the dish) rather than a full sauce. If it needed to be a full sauce, maybe some veg. stock with saffron infused into it and then thickened with a roux once the flavour had developed, or do a saffron hollandaise (no roux, eggs and butter) for something a bit more luxurious.
Experimentation is the key. Once you've got the basic bechamel, hollandaise etc. worked out it all comes down to deciding which flavours will work and which of the basics is the best way to enhance them.
matrignano said:
Trouble is, I hate butter!
So the less there is, the better. So will have to be oil-based roux I think...
So the less there is, the better. So will have to be oil-based roux I think...
matrignano said:
Gravies, "reductions" etc. elude me. I tried to make a saffron sauce the other day and it just came out a buttery mess.
Maybe you should look into the magical properties of slaked cornflour as a thickening agent instead.
matrignano said:
Trouble is, I hate butter!
So the less there is, the better. So will have to be oil-based roux I think...
Are you saying you can taste the butter in a sauce that has used butter for the roux?So the less there is, the better. So will have to be oil-based roux I think...
Have tried any of the cream based sauces?
Edited by dazco on Friday 15th January 15:56
TIGA84 said:
Should keep you going.......
It's basically a cooking bible!
Failing that always de-glaze the pan you cook your protein in with some sort of white/red wine, reduce, add butter and season. If it needs to thicken make a roux rather than just plain old flour or corn flour.
dazco said:
Are you saying you can taste the butter in a sauce that has used butter for the roux?
Have tried any of the cream based sauces?
Some more than others. Bechamel for example I cannot stand, Hollandaise I can just about bear, but I guess they are both on the more buttery end of the scale.Have tried any of the cream based sauces?
Edited by dazco on Friday 15th January 15:56
I was reading earlier that you can use other forms of fat for roux, like lard, bacon drippings, vegetables etc, hence my earlier question!
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