Article: The Secret to Making Great Sauces at Home

[Sara Noel]

Have you ever tried to recreate at home those incredible, rich, velvety brown sauces you get served at your favorite fancy restaurant? They are typically served with tender filet mignon or a big juicy veal chop with a side of mashed potatoes.

Or how about a spectacular cream sauce from your favorite seafood restaurant served with sea bass?

If the answer is "yes" but the result was not so great, you may be asking yourself, "Is it possible for a home cook to make those same sauces in their own kitchen? "

The answer is "yes" and the good news is they are not difficult to make if you have the right ingredients.

What is the secret to making great sauces at home?

The secret to making restaurant quality sauces at home is using the same ingredients professional chefs use in their restaurants. And the good news is most of these ingredients are easy to find in your supermarkets.

For example, you can make sauces with condiments like mustards and chutneys, vegetables including garlic and onions, fresh or dried herbs, dairy products like cream or yogurt and the list go on.

Another group of ingredients includes stocks and stock reductions. Professional chefs typically have a big pot of beef or chicken stock on their stoves for soups and sauces. You can make them at home too; it's not that difficult to make a good beef or chicken stock.

Or you can find a decent commercial stock in your local supermarket. Just be sure to look at the ingredients closely so you aren't paying for salty water with a little chicken flavoring.

Finding good stock reductions like demi-glace, chicken glace or fish glace, all important ingredients for making classic sauces served in high-end restaurants, may be a little more challenging but not impossible to find. Again, you can make them yourself at home but they take a lot of time and effort. However, the results are well worth it.

More good news - all these ingredients are now available to home cooks who don't have hours needed behind their stoves preparing them. There are a number of companies now producing commercial products for both professional chefs and home cooks. Do a seach on your favorite search engine for "demi glace" to find on-line sources.

How Easy Is It To Make A Restaurant Quality Sauce?

Take a classic recipe like Steak au Poivre, which translated means steak with peppercorn sauce. You can make this sauce in less than 20 minutes if you have a shallot, some butter, peppercorns, parsley, and a little demi-glace.

What is demi-glace?

Demi-glace is a rich concentrated brown stock that is carefully reduced until it forms a deep meaty flavored glaze. Considered one of the "Grand Sauces" or "Mother Sauces", get your hands on some and you won't have to go out to dinner for a gourmet meal.

What about a cream sauce for grilled or roasted fish?

Again, you can make an amazing sauce that will impress anyone you serve if you have a little butter, half & half, Parmesan cheese, some fresh herbs and a little fish or lobster stock reduction. Except for the stock reduction, everything else is available at your local grocer. The fish stock you can make or find on the Internet.

The Myth

The big secret to making restaurant quality sauces at home isn't HOW to make them but WHERE to find the key ingredients. Now that they are readily available to all of us, don't be afraid to try your hand at Chateaubriande Sauce, Veal Marsala or Seafood Sauce for salmon.

Copyright (c) 2004 GatewayGourmet


Discover GatewayGourmet's new eCookbook, How to Make Restaurant Quality Sauces at Home…in as little as 20 minutes. Filled with over 75 recipes for making classic sauces, soups and pasta sauces, find it at http://www.gatewaygourmet.com

[SusieJD]

Thanks Sara - lots of good info here! I make my own stock, usually using broth from chicken or beef. I also put small cheesecloth bags of spices into the broths.

One of my secrets to making smooth sauces is - butter blended in with flour! Makes a very rice smooth sauce!

Susie in MN