Making Sauces: Base Sauces Every Home Cook Should Master
- The most important types of sauces include base stocks, cold base sauces, salad dressings, warm light base sauces, warm dark sauces, vegan sauces, and dessert sauces.
- A sauce stock is the foundation for cooking a sauce.
- Sauce making is considered one of the ultimate skills in the kitchen. Each sauce has its own specific method of preparation.
- There are many different thickening agents for sauces. These include butter, flour, potato or corn starch, as well as cream, egg yolk, bread, legumes, or potatoes.
Sauces can trigger a true explosion of flavor and offer endless ways to elevate and complete a dish. From cold sauces to white sauces, dark sauces, warm sauces, dessert sauces, sauces for vegetables, or sauces for meat, the variety is impressive. Here you'll learn which sauces every home cook should master. So grab your spoon and become a sauce expert! Discover {nrEvents} cooking classes in Germany and Austria.
Want to learn how to pair the right sauces with your dishes? Then the sauce class by Jens Rittmeyer is perfect for you. The Michelin-starred chef will personally introduce you to the world of sauces. Learn a variety of ways to make sauces for fine vegetables, meat, and fish.
What Are the Base Sauces?
The world of sauces is vast. It's not so simple to fully categorize every type of sauce. Broadly speaking, we distinguish between cold and warm sauces, and savory and sweet sauces. That distinction is obviously too broad, so let's break sauces down further into more specific categories:
- Base stocks
- Cold base sauces
- Salad dressings
- Warm, light base sauces
- Warm, dark sauces
- Vegan sauces
- Dessert sauces
Among the most important 12 base sauces are béchamel, Café de Paris butter, Frankfurt green sauce, hollandaise, mayonnaise, pesto, pepper sauce (or pepper jus), tomato sauce, vegan gravy, velouté, vinaigrette, and vanilla sauce.
What Is a Sauce Stock?
A sauce stock refers to the specific base used to make a sauce, since you simply can't cook a flavorful sauce from water alone. For example, a fish stock could serve as the base for a fish sauce, but that same stock wouldn't work for a lamb dish.
How Do You Prepare the Most Important Sauces and Stocks?
Cooking sauces is the ultimate culinary skill, and good stocks and delicious sauces deserve plenty of time and patience. That said, some sauces can simmer gently on the stove without needing your full attention the whole time.
Cold sauces are usually stirred together or blended from various base ingredients and require little to no waiting or resting time.
Base stocks are easier to make than warm sauces, since they typically just need to be brought to a boil once, skimmed of impurities and proteins as they rise, and then left to simmer gently at the edge of the heat for hours.
Warm, light sauces, or white sauces, only need a quick base preparation before being filled out with the specific base stock, reduced, and typically finished with something like cream.
Warm, dark sauces for meat are among the most labor-intensive in the kitchen, since the first sauce base is usually built from ingredients like bones and vegetables, then filled out with the base stock. Here too, impurities are skimmed off during gentle heating, and the sauce is tended over several hours. Often, a second, or even third, round of the sauce base follows.
Dessert sauces can be prepared relatively quickly and usually just need to cool afterward.
How Do You Thicken Sauces?
There are many thickening agents used in sauce making, and every chef has their own favorites. The most important ones are butter, flour, potato or corn starch, but cream, egg yolk, bread, legumes, or potatoes can thicken a sauce too. In classic cuisine, sauces were once thickened with blood. In more modern cooking, algae-based products like xanthan gum are often used instead.
Tips & Tricks: What Should You Watch Out for When Making Sauces?
Every sauce deserves your full attention and time. No sauce has ever turned out well when rushed. It's best to lay out all your ingredients and tools ahead of time. Then, before you start, read through the entire recipe at least once so you can actively contribute to the sauce's success. There's almost nothing worse than realizing an ingredient is missing and having to adjust the recipe midway. With more routine and experience in sauce-making, you'll learn to compensate for this over time.
What's the Difference Between Jus and Sauce?
Jus refers to a purely meat-based "sauce," typically made from at least one base of a specific type of bone along with vegetables, alcohol, and spices. Anyone serious about making a truly deep, flavorful jus will build a second base to give it even more backbone.
What's the Difference Between Stock and Jus?
A stock (or broth) serves as the base used to fill out a jus preparation. The stock gives the jus more structure and depth. A stock can be made in a few hours, while a jus is usually cooked over the course of several days. One more key difference: stock has a completely different consistency compared to a finished jus.
Is Stock Healthy?
Stocks are healthy for us when prepared properly. For example, a classic chicken stock can help with a cold and can be consumed plain, without reducing it further.
Note: In the sauce cooking class with Michelin-starred chef Jens Rittmeyer, you'll not only learn to make delicious sauces yourself, you'll also enjoy a delicious 5-course dinner built around those sauces at the end of the class.
