The Three R's of Sauce Making

I learned to cook the hard way. As a bachelor, there was only me. As a married man, well, she was good looking but her cooking was pitiful. So I was the cook. After years of cooking on my own, I developed a well-rounded list of menus. People that drop by, enjoy my offerings. Judging by their comments, the real reason they like my dishes is the sauces

Being southern, I learned early on to make brown gravy. Brown gravy just uses the drippings from the main course you are preparing with flour and stock. It is a staple of southern cooking. The starting point of this sauce is blended oil and flour that is toasted in a skillet then liquid is added. This is a roux based sauce most Southerners just call gravy. Fat plus flour plus stock equals gravy. Making gravy requires an eyeball. You add about the same amount of flour to the amount of oil and let the flour toast. How much you let the flour toast depends on your taste or the recipe. Light blonde, blonde, dark blonde, new penny, old penny and burnt are all ways to classify the toasting process. Most Southern gravies start with dark blonde to old penny colored roux.

Here is a good way to judge the scale. Heat the oil or fat in a saucepan or skillet over medium to medium-high heat. When you first stir the flour in the hot oil call that white blonde. While stirring and heating you will see the roux slowly change color. That first color change you notice is light blonde. The next color that stands out if you keep going is blonde. Keep going and the next color is dark blonde. Next is light penny, (look at a new penny), then dark penny (that would be an old penny, if you are not from the USA, a penny is our one cent copper coin). Finally there is burnt.

Anything darker in color than an old penny I consider burnt. If you were on the phone and ended up with an ebony glob in the skillet that can't be moved with a sledgehammer, it is burnt! That would be hopelessly burnt, time to order take out. If the roux is very dark but still pliable, it may be salvageable, don't panic just take it off the heat. Then add a cup of water and stir, getting all the crunches loose. You probably won't be able to use the mess, but at least you can clean the pan. With the water added sometimes a darker roux might look a little more appealing. Give it little taste before pitching it.

Once you get the flour toasted to the color you like or the color you can live, with add the stock. Chicken broth/stock is the most popular with beef broth, water, wine, beer, veal stock, pork stock, milk and vegetable stock following in that general order. They all make great gravy. You want to add about four parts stock per part of flour for medium gravy. Let us review, one part flour, one part oil/fat, toast flour and add four parts liquid (stock of some kind normally).

If you cook it just the way I said, you will end up with the blandest tasting crud you have ever put in your mouth. But this is the base of a brown gravy. If you add salt and black pepper to taste, you have the simplest southern gravy. Add mushrooms, salt and pepper, you have Southern mushroom gravy. Add onions, mushrooms, garlic, salt, pepper, and a touch of Adobo seasoning in with the roux while it is toasting finishing with chicken broth and you have gravy I make a lot of the time. Add lots of stock and crushed tomatoes, then reduce and you have an Espagnole sauce. You have just learned to make what I call The Mother Sauce. In French cooking there are four mother sauces, I think there are only three personally. The mother sauces are Espagnole (Spanish), Bechamel (white sauce), Veloite, and Allemande (German sauce) because they were defined as mother sauces by a 19^th century French Chef Antonin Careme. Here is why I think there are only three mother sauces.

In your saucepan, melt ½ stick butter, add 1/8th cup flour and stir over medium heat. When the flour is lightly toasted, the light blonde color, add two-cups milk and stir until the milk thickens. This, while overly simplistic, is the start to a Béchamel sauce. Using the light blonde butter roux add two cups chick broth or stock. This is the base of a Velouté Sauce. Veloute, Bechamel and Espagnole Sauces all have the same root, a roux. The fourth mother sauce in French cooking is Allemande. Sauce Allemande is made using a sauce Veloute. To the sauce Voloute, you add egg yolks to thinken and lemon juice. Now I've linked all the standard mother sauces to one I call The Mother Sauce. So where are the other two sauces I mentioned?

Reduction sauces is the second in my opinion. They are extremely flavorful and some require a great deal of time to make. I include light starch thinken sauces in this group. Cornstarch, arrowroot and others can be used to thinken basic stocks that have any oil or fat making a wonderful sauce. For example, in a hot pan or wok, add approximately two tablespoons of peanut or canola oil and stir fry about one cup beef strips to medium doneness. Remove the beef to a bowl leaving the oil in the pan or wok. Add a little oil if needed and stir fry approximately two cups mixed oriental vegetables or just bell peppers and onions. Add the beef and the juices in the bowl back to the vegetables then add approximately one cup beef broth. Blend equal parts cornstarch with beef broth (one tablespoon of each) and add to the pan stiring gently until thickened. It is best to season at each stage of cooking. Salt, Pepper and ginger are perfect. This is the simplest sauce in what I call the reductions.

Another reduction sauce I make is Mango Glaze. This is very complicated. Place one cup or one can of mango juice in a small sauce pan. Add ¼ teaspoon curry power (optional but I like it). Simmer on medium to medium low heat stirring ocationally until the sauce reduces to ¼ to1/3 its original volume. This is great drizzled on spicy grilled fish or poultry. Almost any fruit juice will make a good glaze. Orange juice with a shot of orange liquoir and a bit of mint. Just be creative. Make one of these fruit glazes and get the blender out. They a great for making frozen drinks.

The majority of bottled sauces you buy are reduction sauces, Worchestershire, Barbeque, Ketchup, Teriaki are all reductions or have a reduction as a major component.

Reactive sauces is my third mother sauce category. The combination of oil and acid is the most common reactive agents. Mayonaise is a reactive sauce. Olive oil, lemon juice and egg white blended creates a basic mayo. While this is considered a cold emulsion, it is only a stable emulsion due to a chemical reation. Hollandaise, is also a reactive sauce. The proteins in the egg yolks combined with the lemon juice and fat in the butter, to create a warm emulsion. I do not make many reactive sauces, per say. I do like wilted salads like wilted spinach salad. When you combine vinegar with bacon drippings and a little sugar you are making a dressing that is really a reactive sauce, vineiagrette.

The four mother sauces are still the mother sauces, I am not trying to change the culinary world. I just feel that dividing sauces into Roux, reduction and reactive is a good way for new cooks to understand the basics of how to make a good sauces. The intent of this article is not to teach you how to make sauces, it is to teach you how to learn to make good sauces. Once you master the basic elements, you can master sauce making. I am still learning to make sauces and I hope I always will. That is the joy of cooking to me, learning new techniques.