Learning Sauces

A sauce is a flavorful liquid, usually thickened, that is used to season, flavor, and enhance other foods. It adds moistness, flavor, richness, appearance, interest and appetite appeal.

Sauce Structure:

  1. A liquid, the body of the sauce
  2. A thickening Agent
  3. Additional seasoning and flavoring ingredients.

Liquid

The liquid ingredient provides the body or base of most sauces. Classic sauces are built on one of the five Leading Sauces or Mother Sauces:

  1. White Stock-Chicken, Veal, or Fish-for veloute sauces
  2. Brown Stock-for brown sauces or espagnole
  3. Milk-for béchamel
  4. Tomato plus stock-for tomato sauce
  5. Clarified Butter-for hollandaise

Thickening Agents

A sauce must be thick enough to cling lightly to the food or else it will just run off and lie in a puddle in the plate (not very attractive to eat). Starches are the most commonly used thickening agents.

ROUX

Starches as Thickeners

When it comes to making a sauce starches are the most common and useful thickeners. Flour is the principal starch used and others include cornstarch, arrowroot, waxy maize, instant or pregelatinized starch, bread crumbs, potato starch and rice flour. Starch thickens by gelatinization, when starch granules absorb water and swell to many times their original size. Do not add acid ingredients to sauces until the starch has fully gelatinized. Starch granules must be separated before heating in liquid to avoid lumping. If the granules are not separated, lumping occurs because the starch on the outside of the lump quickly gelatinizes into a coating that prevents the liquid from reaching the starch inside. You can separate starch in two ways, either by mixing the starch with fat, or by mixing the starch with a cold liquid. When you mix a starch with a fat it is usually a roux and when you mix the starch with a cold liquid it is called a slurry.

Roux is a cooked mixture of equal parts by weight of fat and flour.

Fats Used For Making Roux Are:

Clarified Butter: Used for the finest sauces because of its flavor. The butter is clarified because the moisture content of whole butter tends to gelatinize some of the starch and makes the roux hard to work with.

Margarine: Used in place of butter because of its lower cost. Its flavor is not as good as butter, so it does not make as fine a sauce.

Animal Fats: Chicken fat, beef drippings, and lard, are used when their flavor is appropriate to the sauce.

Vegetable oil and Shortening: Can be used for a roux but add no flavor. Solid shortening also has the disadvantage of having a high melting point, which gives it an unpleasant fuzzy feeling in the mouth. It is better used for baking.

A good roux is stiff, not runny or pourable. Too much fat in a roux will rise to the top of the sauce and makes the sauce look greasy. This is one of the reasons why equal parts by weight of fat and flour are important to make a good roux. You can brown the flour in the oven for use in a brown roux, but the browned flour has only one-third the thickening power as an unbrowned flour. When preparing a roux it must be cooked so that the finished sauce does not have the raw, starchy taste of flour. There are three kinds of roux and they differ by how long they are cooked.

White Roux: Cooked just enough to cook out the raw taste of the flour. Cooking is stopped as soon as the roux has a frothy, chalky, slightly gritty appearance, before it begins to color. White roux is used to thicken béchamel and other white sauces. Although it is called a white roux it is actually a pale yellow.

Blond Roux: Cooked a little longer, as soon as the roux begins to change to a slightly darker color stop it from cooking.

Brown Roux: Cooked until it looks light brown and has a nutty aroma. You should cook this roux over low heat so the roux browns evenly without scorching it.

Making A Roux:

  1. Melt Fat.
  2. Add correct amount of flour and stir until fat and flour are thoroughly mixed.
  3. Cook to required degree for white, blond, or brown roux. The cooking is done in a saucepan on the top of a stove, and the roux is stirred for even cooking.

When combining the roux and liquid you are trying to get it smooth and lump free. Liquid may be added to roux or the roux can be added to the liquid. The liquid may be hot or cooled, but not ice cold. A very cold liquid will solidify the fat in the roux. The roux can be warm or cold, but not sizzling hot, because adding a hot liquid to a very hot roux will cause spattering and lumps. Also stainless steel pans are best white sauces and whipping a sauce in an aluminum pan makes the sauce gray.

Adding A Liquid To A Roux:

  1. Use a heavy saucepot to prevent scorching either the roux or the sauce.
  2. When the roux is made, remove the pan from the fire for a few minutes to cool slightly.
  3. Slowly pour in the liquid, while beating rapidly with a wire whip to prevent lumps.
  4. Bring the liquid to a boil, continuing to beat well. The roux does not reach its full thickening power until near the boiling point.
  5. Simmer the sauce, stirring from time to time, until all the floury taste has been cooked out. This can take up to 10minutes.
  6. When the sauce is finished it should be covered or have a thin layer of butter melted onto the top to prevent a skin from forming.

Adding Roux To A Liquid:

  1. Bring the liquid to a simmer in a heavy pot.
  2. Add a small quantity of roux and beat it rapidly with a whip to break up lumps.
  3. Continue to beat small quantities into the simmering liquid until the desired consistency is reached. Do not add roux too quickly or you might over thicken the sauce.
  4. Continue to simmer until the roux is cooked out and no floury taste remains.
  5. If the sauce is to simmer a long time, under thicken it because it will thicken as it reduces.

Thin or Light Sauce- 6oz Butter-6oz Flour-12oz Roux-1g Liquid

Medium Sauce-8oz Butter-8oz Flour-1lb Roux-1g Liquid

Thick Sauce-12oz Butter-12oz Flour-1 1/2lb-1g Liquid

Starches:

  1. Beurre Manie: A mixture of equal parts soft, raw butter and flour mixed together to form a smooth paste. Usually used to thicken a sauce at the end of cooking. The raw butter adds flavor and gives a sheen to the sauce when it melts. Drop small pieces into a simmering sauce and stir with a whip until smooth. Continue this process until you reach the consistency you are looking for. Simmer just a few minutes more to cook the flour, and then remove from the fire.
  2. Whitewash: A thin mixture of flour and cold water. Sauces made with whitewash have neither as good a tasted or as fine a texture as sauces made with roux.
  3. Cornstarch: Produces sauces that are not all the way clear, with a glossy texture. Mix it with cold water or another cold liquid until smooth. Stir it into the hot sauce. Bring to a boil and simmer until the liquid turns clear and there is no floury taste. If you boil it for a long time the starch will break down and become thin. It has twice the thickening power as flour.
  4. Arrowroot: It can be used like cornstarch, but it gives a clearer sauce. Arrowroot is priced very high compared to cornstarch, but its quality allows you to cook it for a long time without it breaking down.
  5. Waxy Maize: For sauces that are going to be frozen. Waxy maize does not lose its thickening power when frozen like other flour and starches do. Use it like cornstarch.
  6. Instant Starches: Have been cooked and then redried, so they can thicken a cold liquid without heating. I would not recommend using this starch for a sauce, but it should be a good starch to use in baking.
  7. Bread Crumbs: Will thicken a liquid quickly, but it will not guaranteed a smooth texture in your sauce.
  8. Vegetable Purees, Ground Nuts, and Other Solids: Tomato sauce is a seasoned puree and the sauce gets its thickness from the main ingredient. You can add body and texture to a sauce by adding a smooth vegetable puree, or ground nuts.

Egg Yolk/Cream Liaison

Another thickening technique I recommend you try is a liaison, it is a mixture of egg yolks and cream, it can enrich and lightly thicken the sauce you want. Because egg yolks coagulate when heated, egg yolks have the power to thicken a sauce, but becareful when using eggs to thicken a sauce, because it can cause curdling. Curdling is when the proteins cook too much and seperate from the liquid, or in this case the sauce. Egg yolks cook at about 140degreesF to 158degreesF, so beat them with heavy cream before using them in a sauce. When you do this it raises their curdling temperature to 180degreesF to 185degreesF. The heavy cream will also add thickness and flavor to the sauce. The thickening power of egg yolks are little, so the liaison is used to really just give flavor and smoothness to a sauce. It has a slight thickening power and is mostly used as a finishing technique for a sauce.

How To Make A Liaison:

  1. Beat together the egg yolks and cream in a stainless steel bowl. Use about 2 to 3 parts cream to 1 part egg yolks.
  2. Very slowly add a little of the hot liquid to the liaison, beating constantly. This is what you call tempering.
  3. Off the heat, add the warmed liaison to the rest of the sauce, stirring well as you pour it in.
  4. Return the sauce to low heat to warm it gently, but do not heat it higher than 180degreesF or it will curdle. You should never let it boil.
  5. Hold it at above 140degreesF for sanitary reasons, but lower than 180degreesF.

FINISHING SAUCES

When you simmer a sauce it evaporates the water not the solid, so it thickens the sauce. Solids become thicker and concentrated, which makes the sauce thicker and richer with flavor. This is great finishing technique for a sauce and it will help you to use less starch if you want when thickening a sauce.

REDUCTION

  • Using reduction to concentrate basic flavors; if you simmer a sauce for a long time some of the water evaporates. The sauce becomes more concentrated and flavorful.
  • Using reduction to adjust textures; concentrating a sauce by reduction also thickens it because only the water evaporates not the solids in a sauce. If a sauce is too thin you can probably simmer the sauce a little longer to give it the texture you are looking for.
  • Using reduction to add new flavors; you can also try to the thicken a sauce by reducing a liquid first and then adding it to a sauce.
  • To reduce by one-half means to cook away one-half of the volume so that half is left. To reduce by three-fourths means to cook away three-fourths of the volume so that only one-fourth is left. To reduce means to reduce until dry or almost dry.

DEGLAZING

Deglaze means to swirl a liquid in a sauté pan or another pan to dissolve cooked particles of food remaining on the bottom. You can use wine or stock to deglaze a sauté pan and then reduce it by one-half or three-fourths. Then use this reduction to add more flavors to your sauce.

BUTTER AND CREAM

  1. Liaison: Use this as a thickening agent but more importantly use it to finish a sauce by giving it extra richness and smoothness.
  2. Heavy Cream: Use this to give flavor and richness to a sauce.
  3. Butter: Use this to enrich a sauce. Butter is the best product you can use to finish any sauce. To finish with butter simply add a few pieces of softened butter to the hot sauce and swirl it in until it melts. You should serve the sauce as soon as possible because if you let it sit the butter will begin to separate from the sauce. Finishing a sauce with butter gives the sauce an extra shine and smoothness.

SEASONING

  • The last step to any recipe is to adjust the seasoning and a sauce is no exception. Use salt, lemon juice, cayenne and white pepper are also good flavoring agents to use when seasoning a sauce.
  • Sherry and Madeira can also be used as final flavorings, they are added at the end of cooking.

SAUCE FAMILIES

Liquid+Thickening Agent=Leading Sauce/Mother Sauce

Leading Sauce+Additional Flavorings=Small Sauce

Leading Sauces/Mother Sauces

Liquid: Thickening Agent: Leading Sauce:

Milk                                            White Roux                                         Béchamel Sauce

White Stock                        White or Blond Roux                                    Veloute

Brown Stock                            Brown Roux                                            Brown Sauce

Tomato Stock                        Roux Is Optional                                   Tomato Sauce

Butter                                             Egg Yolks                                              Hollandaise

A tomato stock or tomato puree is naturally thick.

SMALL SAUCES

White Sauces

  • Ingredient: Milk

Mother Sauce: Béchamel

Small Sauce: Cream, Mornay, Cheddar Cheese, Nantua, Soubise, Mustard.

  • Ingredient: White Veal Stock

Mother Sauce: Veal Veloute

Secondary Mother Sauce: Allemande

Small Sauce: Poulette, Aurora, Hungarian, Curry.

  • Ingredient: Chicken Stock

Mother Sauce: Chicken Veloute

Secondary Mother Sauce: Supreme

Small Sauce: Mushroom, Albufera or Ivory, Hungarian, Curry

  • Ingredient: Fish Stock

Mother Sauce: Fish Veloute

Secondary Mother Sauce: White Wine Sauce

Small Sauce: Normandy, Bercy, Mushroom, and Herb

Brown Sauces

  • Ingredient: Brown Stock

Mother Sauce: Espagnole, Fond Lie

Secondary Mother Sauce: Demi-Glace

Small Sauce: Bordelaise, Robert, Charcutiere, Chasseur, Deviled, Lyonnaise, Maderia, Perigueux, Piquante, Mushroom, Bercy.

Red Sauces

  • Ingredient: Tomato Stock

Mother Sauce: Tomato Sauce

Small Sauce: Creole, Portuguese, and Spanish

Butter Sauces

  • Ingredient: Butter

Mother Sauce: Hollandaise

Small Sauce: Maltaise, Mousseline

I gave you the brief example above to show you that mother sauces are rarely used by themselves. They are the base for other sauces called small sauces. Tomato and hollandaise are used by themselves, but they are the base for other small sauces. The three secondary mother sauces under white sauces are allemande, supreme, and white wine sauce, they are finished sauces but can be used to make other small sauces. With a supreme sauce you add cream to chicken veloute to make albufera sauce. Demi-Glace is half brown sauce plus half brown stock reduced by half, demi means half. Hollandaise and Béarnaise are the same kind of sauce with different flavorings, with its own family of sauces.

Quality For Sauces

  1. Consistency and body with no lumps, not too thick or pasty, but thick enough to coat the food lightly.
  2. Distinctive but well balanced flavor, proper seasoning, and no floury taste.
  3. Smooth with a good shine appearance.

Other Sauces

Simple and compound butters, like simple browned butter and butter combined with different flavorings.

Pan gravies, or sauces made with pan drippings of the meat or poultry they are served with.

Cold sauces, like cumberland sauce and horseradish sauce, also vinaigrettes and mayonnaise.

Béchamel: A simple mix of milk and roux, its better to use a blond or a white roux with a béchamel to keep the color looking white. Also you can simmer the béchamel sauce with onions, shallots and other spices to improve the flavor, I recommend you sauté the onions and spices first and then add them to the béchamel sauce.

Veloute: There are three different veloute sauces, Veal/Beef, Chicken, or Fish. Its simply adding a beef stock to the roux to make a beef veloute, adding a fish stock to the roux to make a fish veloute, or adding a chicken stock to the roux to make a chicken veloute.

Espagnole/Brown Sauce: This brown stock and tomato puree added to a roux.

Fond Lie: This is a brown sock thickened lightly with arrowroot or cornstarch. You can also reduce brown stock with browned mirepoix and tomato puree or tomato paste. Then thicken with a starch slurry and strain.

Tomato Sauce: No need to use a roux for a tomato sauce the pureed tomato is good enough to give it a good thick texture. You can call a sauce like this a coulis. A coulis is a puree of vegetables or fruit, used as a sauce. When you puree vegetables make sure you:

  1. Pureeing the product in a food processor or blender.
  2. Passing the product through a food mill.
  3. Forcing the product through a fine sieve.

When you force a puree sauce through a sieve it usually makes the puree smoother.

Butter Sauces

  1. Clarified Butter: Purified butterfat, with water and milk solids removed. Clarified is used mostly because when sautéing the milk solids of unclarified butter will burn at high temperatures. Clarified butter is used in making hollandaise because the water of unclarified butter will change the consistency of the sauce.
  2. Brown Butter: This butter has been melted and heated until it turns light brown and gives off a nutty aroma. You can try this butter sauce by serving it over finished fish, meats, eggs, and vegetables.
  3. Melted Butter: The simplest butter preparation of them all, just melt butter and you can use it over vegetables.
  4. Black Butter: Made like brown butter but is heated until it is a little darker and is flavored with a few drops of chopped parsley or vinegar even capers.
  5. Compound Butters: Made by softening raw butter and mixing it with various flavoring ingredients. You can use by placing it on top of a grilled food and let it melt over the food. You can also swirl it into sauces to finish them and give it a nice flavor.
  6. Beurre Blanc: A sauce made by whipping a large quantity of raw butter into a small quantity of a flavorful reduction of white wine and vinegar so that the better melts and forms an emulsion with the reduction. When holding a beurre blanc keep the beurre blanc at a warm temperature and stir it from time to time so the fat and water do not separate.

How To Properly Clarify Butter:

  1. Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan over medium heat.
  2. Skim the froth from the surface.
  3. Carefully pour off the clear melted butter into another container, leaving the milky liquid at the bottom of the saucepan.

OR:

  1. Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan over medium heat.
  2. Skim the froth from the surface.
  3. Leave the pan on the heat and continue to skim the froth from the surface as it continues to come to the surface.
  4. When the butter looks clear and no longer forms a scum at the top, strain offf the butter through a cheesecloth into another container.

YOU WILL NEED 1 1/4lb RAW BUTTER TO MAKE 1 lb CLARIFIED BUTTER, 1lb RAW BUTTER WILL MAKE 120z TO 13oz CLARIFIED BUTTER.

HOLLANDAISE AND BEARNAISE: A hollandaise is basically egg yolks mixed with clarified butter. A béarnaise is basically a seasoned hollandaise. When you are trying to hold hollandaise for your service you want to keep it warm but it has to be held under 140degreesF so the eggs don’t curdle. Use hollandaise over vegetables like asparagus. To avoid the dangers of food poisoning in your hollandaise you have to follow a few rules:

  1. Make sure all equipment is perfectly clean.
  2. Hold sauce no longer than 1 1/2 hours. Throw away any leftovers.
  3. Never mix an old batch of hollandaise or béarnaise sauce with a new batch.
  4. Never hold hollandaise, béarnaise sauce or any acid product in aluminum. Use stainless steel containers.

How To Make A Hollandaise

  1. Use the freshest eggs possible for the best emulsification. For safety I recommend you use pasteurized eggs.
  2. Beat eggs in a bowl over a hot water bath. Try not to make the eggs scramble.
  3. Use a round bottom stainless steel bowl. The stain less steel will not discolor the sauce.
  4. Have the butter warm not hot or it will overcook the eggs and if it is too cool it will solidify.
  5. Add butter slowly at first. The yolk can only absorb a little at a time. Add a few drops first then beat it thoroughly before adding more. If you add butter faster than the egg yolk can absorb the emulsion will break.
  6. Dont add more butter than the egg yolk can hold. 6 egg yolks per pound of clarified butter.
  7. Broken or curdled hollandaise can be rescued. Try adding a teaspoon of cold water and beat it heavily. If it did not work start over with a couple of egg yolks and repeat the procedure from step 6.

Pan Gravies And Integral Sauces

A sauce based on the juices released during cooking of a meat, poultry, fish, or vegetable item is an integral sauce. Juices released by sautéed and roasted meats are reduced and caramelized in the bottom of the pan during cooking. Deglazing dissolves these caramelized juices and incorporated them into the desired sauce. So you can sautéed a steak and deglaze the sauté pan with a little stock and season the resulting liquid and end up with a sauce for the steak you have just sautéed. Pan Gravy is a sauce made with juices or drippings of the meat or poultry you are preparing. Jus refers to unthickened juices from a roast. Au Jus meaning with juice is when the roast is served with these clear, natural juices.

How To Make Pan Gravy:

  1. Remove the roast from the roasting pan. When roasting try adding a mirepoix to it. Mirepoix-onions, celery, carrots.
  2. Clarify the fat. Set the roasting pan over high heat and cook until all the moisture has evaporated, leaving only fat. Pour off and save the fat.
  3. Deglaze pan. Pour stock or other liquid into the roasting pan. Stir over heat until drippings are dissolved.
  4. Combine with stock and simmer.
  5. Make a roux or a slurry of arrowroot or cornstarch and water.
  6. Thicken the gravy with the roux or starch slurry.
  7. Strain.
  8. Adjust seasoning.

OR:

  1. Remove the roast from the roasting pan.
  2. Clarify fat.
  3. Add flour to the roasting pan and make a roux.
  4. Add stock. Stir until thickened and the pan is deglazed.
  5. Strain. Skim excess fat.
  6. Adjust consistency if necessary with more stock or more roux.
  7. Season.

Broths And Jus

For a broth to work well as a substitute for a sauce it should be well flavored and aromatic. Taste the broth and reduce it to concentrate the flavor, and check the seasonings carefully. A jus is kind of like a broth, the only difference is that it is usually more concentrated, but still unthickened. A jus is the unthickened, natural juices from a roast. In a traditional jus the drippings of a roast are deglazed with stock or other liquid, reduced slightly, seasoned, strained, and served unthickened. To make a jus without a roast:

  1. Cut trimmings of the desired meat or poultry into small pieces. Place them in a pot over medium heat.
  2. Cook until well browned on all sides.
  3. Deglaze with a small quantity of white wine or stock. Continue to cook until the liquid is reduced and the juices again caramelize on the bottom.
  4. Add enough stock to cover the meat. Stir to dissolve the caramelized juices on the bottom of the pot. Simmer until the liquid is completely reduced and caramelized.
  5. Again add enough stock to cover the meat. Stir to dissolve the caramelized juices. Simmer 10 to 15 minutes. Strain and degrease.

PUREE

Vegetable purees can be used as sauces, sometimes called a coulis. Purees of starchy vegetables, like squash or dried beans may need to be thinned with stock, broth, or water. Other vegetables like asparagus make a watery puree, you can always reduce them to thicken them though.

Cream Reductions

Reduced cream is a good substitute for roux thickened white sauces. When heavy cream reduces it thickens slightly, but reducing the cream too much will give it a heavy texture and if it is reduced any further past this point it will break and the butterfat will separate. You should only reduce cream to two-thirds of its original volume. A reduced cream is a combination of reduced cream and a concentrated flavorful stock. For the best results reduce the stock by about three-fourths. You can either reduce the cream to the desired consistency and then adding it to the stock reduction, or you can add fresh cream to the stock reduction and reduce the mixture to your desired consistency.

How To Make A Cream Reduction Sauce

  1. Reduce white stock or brown stock by about three-fourths, or until it is concentrated and flavorful.
  2. Measure the reduction. For each pint reduction, add about 1 1/2 pints heavy cream.
  3. Place the cream in a heavy saucepan over medium heat and reduce until lightly thickened, or about one-third. Stir from time to time with a whip.
  4. Bring the stock reduction to a simmer in a saucepan. Stir in the reduced cream.
  5. Check the consistency. If you want to thicken it further, reduce it further or if you want to thin it out a little use additional heavy cream.
  6. Season and strain.

Salsas, Relishes, and Chutney

Salsa is a mixture of raw or cooked chopped vegetables, herbs, and sometimes fruits. To make a salsa use a mixture of vegetables, fruits and chop them coarsely or finely, as you like. Mix them and season them the way you like, simple as that. Salt draws juices out of the ingredients to provide moisture for the mixture. You can also add some citrus juice or vinegar to add some acidity to the mixture; the acidity will balance out the sweetness from the fruits. Relish is any raw or pickled vegetable used as an appetizer. Chutney is strongly spiced sweet and sour cooked fruit or vegetable mixtures, along with raw or partially cooked mixtures of chopped herbs or vegetables, and can also contain chiles. Most chutneys contain an acid ingredient.

Flavored Oils

Flavored oils make a light alternative to vinaigrettes and other sauces. They work well with steamed, sautéed, or grilled foods, but also work well with cold foods as well. The best way to flavor oil is to simply put some of the flavoring ingredient in the oil and let it stand until the oil had taken on enough of the flavor. To get the most flavors out of a flavored oil, I recommend heating any dry spices in a little oil first and then add it to the oil you are trying to flavor. I also recommend refrigerating any oil, because oil prevents air from reaching the flavoring ingredients and if any botulism bacteria is present in the flavorings those bacteria could grow while covered with oil if not refrigerated. I recommend using a mild or flavorless oil like safflower, canola, corn or grapeseed.

How To Make Flavored Oils

  1. Prepare the flavoring ingredient: Chop fresh roots like horseradish, garlic, shallots, ginger, garlic, fresh rosemary, sage, thyme, oregano, by hand or in a food processor. Grate citrus zests (zests are the outer layer of fruits like oranges, lemons, limes, you can use a tool called a zester to scrape the zest from a fruit.) Blanch tender herbs like parsley, basil, tarragon, chervil, and cilantro in boiling water for 10 seconds. Drain immediately and refresh under cold water. Dry well. Gently heat dried, ground spices like cinnamon, cumin, curry powder, ginger, mustard, and paprika in a small amount of oil just until they start to give off an aroma.
  2. Place the flavoring ingredient in a jar or other closable container. Add oil.
  3. Close the jar and shake it well. Let stand 30 minutes at room temperature, then refrigerate.
  4. The oil is ready to use as soon as it has taken on the desired flavor, this can take up to an hour, depending on the ingredient. After two days strain the oil through a chinois lined with a paper coffee filter. Store in the refrigerator.