SAUCE BASICS

THE MYSTIQUE THAT SURROUNDS SAUCE making probably scares off many home cooks. However, if you follow some basic principles, good sauces are generally easy to prepare and will vastly improve your cooking. There are three general areas of concern: techniques, equipment, and ingredients.

TECHNIQUES

A number of techniques and terms are used (and explained) throughout this book. Here's a broad overview.

DEGLAZING When you have finished cooking a roast or cutlets, you will notice browned bits clinging to the pan. These bits of caramelized protein are highly flavorful and are the basis for a pan sauce or gravy. To loosen and dissolve these bits, you must add liquid to the empty (and hot) pan. (Keep a skillet over the flame, or put a roasting pan over two burners, as shown in figure 3.) Because the pan is so hot, the liquid immediately starts to boil. This process is called deglazing since the liquid in effect loosens the layer of browned bits and provides a medium into which they can dissolve.

REDUCING Many sauces, especially those made with stock, depend on the concentrated flavor and improved texture developed by means of the prolonged simmering of liquids. Most recipes suggest reducing sauces by a specific amount. This is meant to be a general guideline—you should eyeball the sauce rather than pouring it into a measuring cup. Thus, if a recipe calls for adding one cup of liquid and reducing it by two-thirds, you should simmer until there looks to be about one-third cup of liquid left in the pan.

THICKENING Thin sauces will run off foods, so sauces must generally be thick enough to cling and coat. Although reducing liquids will improve their texture, many sauces rely on thickeners to give them body.

Butter can be swirled into pan sauces just before serving to give them body and richness, while egg yolks can be used to turn liquid fat into thick, creamy sauces. For example, oil and egg yolks create mayonnaise; melted butter and egg yolks produce hollandaise.

Flour may be used as a thickener in two ways. It can be combined with melted fat in a hot pan to form a roux, which is then diluted with liquid. As the sauces simmers, the starches in the flour will thicken the liquid. The other option is to blend flour with softened butter and stir this mixture, called a beurre manié, into sauces toward the end of the cooking time. We generally prefer the roux because there's more time for the raw, bitter taste of the flour to cook off.

Cornstarch is another popular thickener. It will form lumps if it's added directly to hot liquids. But if the cornstarch is whisked with a little room temperature liquid to form a slurry and is then added to the hot liquid, it will thicken quickly and tastelessly. Cornstarch breaks down if cooked too long, so use it once a sauce is nearly finished.

EMULSIFYING An emulsion is a mixture of two things that don't ordinarily mix, such as oil and water or oil and vinegar. The only way to mix them is to stir or whisk so strenuously that the two ingredients break down into tiny droplets. Eventually one of the fluids will break entirely into droplets so tiny that they remain separated by the opposite fluid, at least temporarily. Mayonnaise is an emulsion, as is hollandaise sauce, beurre blanc, and Béarnaise sauce.

EQUIPMENT

You will need the following items to make the recipes in this book.

SAUCEPAN A saucepan is a straight-sided pan, generally ranging in size from one quart to four quarts. Since saucepans often spend quite a bit of time on the stovetop, their bottoms must be heavy enough to prevent scorching or burning. In general, we find that shiny pans are easier to work with—it's difficult to judge just how brown something is in a dark pan.

WHISK A wire whisk is the best tool for combining ingredients by hand and preventing lumps from forming. A whisk creates a silky, smooth texture that is otherwise impossible. Make sure to buy a whisk with sturdy wires and that the handle is well-constructed and firmly anchored to the wires.

WOODEN SPOON A long-handled spoon can be used to loosen browned bits from a skillet that is being deglazed, or to stir roux from the edges of the pan back into a sauce. When the thin wires of a whisk are too delicate, we turn to a wooden spoon.

FINE-MESH SIEVE A strainer or sieve covered with fine mesh (like that on a screen window) is essential for separating solids from liquids. Bits of vegetable will fall right through a colander or standard strainer, often marring the texture or appearance of a sauce.

BLENDER OR FOOD PROCESSOR When you want to turn liquids and solids into a smooth, airy sauce, a blender or food processor is called for. In general, a blender handles hot liquids better (a food processor can leak) and also whips more air into sauces, creating a lighter texture.

INGREDIENTS

The following ingredients are used over and over in this book.

BUTTER We use unsalted butter in our test kitchen. We like its sweet, delicate flavor and prefer to add our own salt to recipes. We find that the quality of salted butter is often inferior and that each manufacturer adds a different amount of salt, making it difficult to follow a recipe.

CHICKEN BROTH In restaurants, pan sauces start with veal, chicken, beef, or fish stock. In a nod to convenience, we call for canned chicken broth for the recipes in this book. If you have homemade stock on hand, use it. Stock has more body than canned broth (the former usually contains gelatin from bones) and will improve the texture (as well as the flavor) of pan sauces.

Because canned broth is reduced in so many sauces, we recommend use of low-sodium products to prevent sauces from becoming overly salty. Canned broths from Swanson's and Campbell's (which are owned by the same company) have consistently received top ratings in our taste tests. Canned beef broth is horrid. None of the dozen brands we tried had any beef flavor; use canned chicken broth instead.

WINE Wine is another essential component in many sauces. We have found that it pays to use good wine, but there's no need to spend a fortune. The so-called cooking wine found on grocery store shelves is generally harsh and unpalatable, especially when the wine is reduced and unpleasant flavors are concentrated. In our tests, we have consistently preferred decent drinking wines (priced at about $10 a bottle). Save more expensive wines for the table, where their subtlety can be appreciated.