Sauce Cook

Sauce, gravy, salsa, dressing

White sauce

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Basic white sauce is also known as Béchamel. “Basic” suggests that it forms a platform for a myriad of other sauces. It is also widely used as is, and also an ingredient in many recipes likes lasagna. Béchamel can be made in several ways. Here are two simple recipes for basic white sauce that work fine.

White base sauce with flour and thickened with fat

15 minutes

Melt the butter on low heat in a saucepan. Add the flour and whisk until smooth. Dilute with about 1/10 of the milk, stirring constantly, and allow the sauce to boil for 5 minutes. This takes the edge of the flour taste.

Dilute with the rest of the milk by adding it under constant stirring. Bring the sauce to thicken by carefully heating on low heat.

Let the sauce simmer for 5 more minutes.

Add salt, spices and season.

 

4 servings

1 tablespoon butter (or margarine)

2 tablespoons flour

4 cups milk

salt, white pepper

Cooking time 5-10 min

 

White base sauce with thickening

Create thickening of some of the cold milk and flour in a micro mixer or shaking container with tight lid. Shake well until it is smooth. The thickening should not be too thick to be poured easily. Heat up the rest of the milk on low, and stir while adding the thickening. Allow the sauce to boil for 5-10 minutes.

 

4 servings

4 cups milk

1 tablespoons flour

Salt and pepper

Cooking time 5-10 min

 

Using white pepper makes the sauce more delicate white, but when I use the bechamel as a base, I always use fine black pepper, since I think it makes a better taste.

  • For a thinner sauce, use just 1 tablespoon of butter and 1 tablespoon of flour. Perfect for creamy soups.
  • For thicker sauce, use 3 tablespoons of butter and 3 tablespoons of flour.
  • For extra heavy white sauce, use 4 tablespoons of butter and 4 tablespoons of flour.

 

Variation proposals

The main ingredients of basic white sauce are so inexpensive that you can test variations over and over, and compose your own special sauce. Do take notes!Try simple variation by adding 4-5 tablespoons chopped green seasonings like:

  • Dill
  • Chives
  • Parsley
  • Cress
  • Horseradish

You may also try out variations by adding other sauces or spice like:

  • 2-4 tablespoons of tomato paste
  • 2-4 tablespoons of caviar
  • 1-2 teaspoons of curry
  • Some shrimps

How to fix a broken hollandaise sauce

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Most separated sauces can be fixed. Even a broken hollandaise can be fixed if the fat is separated from the other liquid, instead of having the smooth consistence of a good emulation.

However, let’s take exceptions first: Sauces with eggs, like all hollandaise derivate are easily ruined by excessive heating. The tips to fix broken sauce do exclude sauces where hard-boiled eggs are included, but no emulations where eggs are whipped or stirred in, such as béarnaise sauce and hollandaise. If those are heated up too much, the protein in the egg is cooked solid, and the sauce can’t be saved.

Too much heat applied is also going to curdle yolks, ruining the sauce.

If the sauce has separated, for instance if you have added too much fat at once, it is easily saved:

Whisk together one egg yolk and a tablespoon of water. Add it to the broken sauce, just a little at a time while you stir vigorously all the time. This should fix most separated hollandaise based sauces.

A sauce that separate because of too much lemon, vinegar or wine, or because it has been boiling for a long time, can usually be smoothed again. Create a new thickening and add it to the broken sauce. Again, it is important to stir constantly and only add a little at a time so you don’t make lumps during the rescue attempt.

One more tip, if you promise not to tell anyone where you got it: If you are serving only yourself or your forgiving family, and don’t have time to make a new sauce, you may revert to the brute force approach. Keep the mixer deep in the sauce, trying not to blend air. You may be able to eat the result…

Stock

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Stock is a flavoured water preparation. It forms the basis of many sauces and is traditionally made by simmering various ingredients in water.

In my opinion all stock should include mirepoix. In fact, many regard the mirepoix as one of the most important “secrets” of fine cuisine, and even more important for the sauce cook! Mirepoix is fine cut onions, carrots, celery, and sometimes other vegetables. Cutoffs that may not otherwise be eaten, such as carrot skins, are just fine.

What “other vegetables” that goes into the stock – and if any at all – is your decision. Actually this is some of the grate chef and sauce cook’s signatures.

The herbs and spices used depend on local traditions and some let the season play a part. The “bouquet garni” is a bouquet of herbs usually consisting of parsley, bay leaves and a sprig of thyme. This is often placed in a perforated container or sachet to makes it easy to remove after the simmering.

Stock may also contain animal ingredients like bones of beef, veal, fish and chicken. The connective tissue that is left on the bones contains collagen. When cooked, the collagen plays part as thickening agent, as gelatin. Leftover cooked meat and cutoffs from fresh meat, bird and fish can be used. Pork is popular in some eastern cuisine, like the Chinese, but not allowed in other cultures.

In daily cooking you may resort to readymade stock in form of stock cubes. It can’t replace your real stock craftsmanship, but it comes handy and self-made sauces based on bouillon cubes are absolutely preferable to readymade sauces. Stock cubes consist of dried compressed stock ingredients. In different parts of the world, bouillon cubes referred to as cooking base Oxo cubes and more.

It is not unusual to talk of broth and stock as the same, but it’s not. The biggest difference is that stock is just the intense flavored strained liquid, free of solid substances from the ingredients. Broth is more like a soup where the solids like fragments of meat, fish and vegetables remain. In ethnical cuisine other ingredients like rice, corn or barley are added.

Here are some stock and broth types, with their “professional” names. For the Sauce Cook, French terms are often used.

Common name French cousin Ingredients Simmer for…
Brown stock Fond brun or Estouffade Basic stock in French cuisine, but often quite complex, containing marrow bones, beef, poultry carcasses, carrots, turnips, leeks, celery, parsnips and onion 4 or more hours
Chicken stock Chicken 3-4 hours
Fish stock, in the East Mainly for use in soups, a broth is made from special tuna flakes
Fish stock, in the West Made with fish bones and fish heads and finely chopped mirepoix Less than 20 minutes. Caution: If left simmering for longer time, the taste is spoiled.
Ham stock Pork ham, used in creole, Cajun and Chinese cooking.
Jus Typically made by deglazing the roasting pan, and lightly reduced.
Lamb stock Jus from chicken stock and roasted lamb necks and bones 5 hours or more
Meat bone stock Glace viande From bones. Usually from veal. 4+ hours or more
Prawn stock Boiled prawn shells
Veal stock 8 hours or more
Vegetable stock Vegetable stock is made of vegetables only
White stock Fond blanc Raw bones – usually from chicken – and white mirepoix 3 hours
Remouillage Remouillage is a second stock made from the same set of bones. 4 hours or more

Just sauce, gravy, dressing and salsa

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Welcome to the Sauce Cook! No food here. Just sauces, gravy, dressings and salsa.

There are literally thousands of websites for food recipes, and many of them are very good. I have learned to make many dishes from those sites, and how to select the right vine and so on. But most food sites fails to provide the information you need to make perfect gravy to the steak, sauce to the fish, dressing to the salad and salsa to the tacos.

A good sauce or gravy will complement your food, and many dishes get their character from the sauce, for instance a dill sauce for cooked veal or lamb.

In some dishes the sauce *is* the food, and off cause then it got all the attention, but when you serve the perfect prepared meat or fish, you do not want to spoil it with a bad sauce or gravy either!

To make good sauce is *always* important!

Here on Sauce Cook you will get the knowledge to sometimes choose *not* to make any sauce. A pot cooked roast can provide good broth that many will use as the basis for the sauce, but often it’s best when you only serve the natural juices that you collect.

While many sauces are just a product of throwing ingredients together by following simple recipes, making great sauces requires more patience and the curiosity to sample taste and make adjustments.
The Sauce Cook shows you how a couple of simple basic sauces, like white sauce (béchamel) and brown sauce, makes you a master of a variety of sauces to complement almost any food.

A good recipe is of course important, but not always enough. All our sauce recipes are accompanied with essential advices to guarantee success.

For instance a brown sauce recipe is just wheat flour, butter and some kind of stock or broth. The Sauce Cook tells you for instance exactly…

It is easier to get real taste on the sauce when the broth is concentrated. Boil in (reduce) the broth if it is too weak. Reduction removes some of the water, and leaves the tasty concentrate back.

The roast cooked in a pot or other container, can provide good broth that many will use as the basis for the sauce, but remember that sometimes it’s best when you only serve juices as they are.

You can use vegetable mixture instead of – or together with – the juices from the cooking. Whether it is fried or cooked, meat and fish can be served with chopped vegetables as they are or with oil, cold or heated or gently fried. For example onion, paprika, parsley and tomato make a good mixture. To fish radish and tomatoes can be just right.
Often sauces are thought about as to be hot, but many famous and delicious sauces are served cold. Many of these are easy to make with sour cream as a base. Flavorings such as mustard, tomato puree and seasons vegetables goes with sour crème, and also other sauces like readymade mayonnaise can be ingredients of your own compositions.