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The Secret to Making Great Sauces at Home
by GatewayGourmet
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.
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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
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