The Eatdown

Next week I’m going to get more into different techniques of cooking and working with meats, which is why this week I want to cover sauces. That way when I get to meats, you’ll know how to pair it up with things other than A1 if you wish. Just for this week, I’ll post every day, starting today and ending Saturday. Normally, I’m going to shoot for Thursday updates though. This is a special “sauce” week, and I’ll try to refrain from making any puns along the lines of “getting sauced.” Bear with me.

So back in the day, there was this dude. Let’s call him Carême. He came up with four sauces that he felt were pretty universal. Later on down the line this other dude came along. Let’s call him Escoffier. Escoffier realized that one of these sauces was a little redundant, and in its place, he came up with two more sauces that he felt were pretty universal. These five sauces are what we know today as the five “mother sauces.”

Now normally I would say not to bother with mother sauces if you’re first starting out. However, knowing these sauces fits along my theme of teaching “basic” techniques and is another way to open up a lot more creativity. The idea behind mother sauces is that most sauces come from one of these. For that reason, they’re actually pretty bland. You add other flavorings and ingredients to them to give them flavor. Only two are passable to eat as is- sauce tomate (“tomato sauce” in case you couldn’t pick up on that) and hollandaise.

Depending on the sauces, they can be kind of tricky at times so don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t work out right away. My first week of my first cooking class at culinary school covered sauces, and I had a hard time with them at first. I would say from personal experience, the biggest challenge of cooking sauces is “heat control.” Certain sauces like hollandaise not only can break if they get too hot, but they can also break if they get too cold. It just takes practice to know what temperature is good for which sauce.

The first thing you should know if you want to get into sauces is what’s called a “roux.” A roux is used as a thickener, and it’s basically equal parts of flour and any sort of fat (butter, animal fats, oil), measured by weight. You heat it up in a pan, and the longer it’s in a pan, the darker it gets. This is why you might see roux further classified as white, blond, or brown roux. White roux isn’t pure white. It’s more an off-white/light yellow. Blond roux is a much darker yellow, more golden looking, and brown roux is obviously pretty self-explanatory.

Today’s mother sauce is pretty easy to start off with: béchamel. Béchamel is basically milk thickened with a white roux. Here’s how it’s made:

1 qt whole milk
4 oz whole butter (measured by weight)
4 oz ap flour (measured by weight)
½ yellow onion (peeled)
2 whole cloves
1 bay leaf
AN kosher salt
AN white peppercorn, ground

Note: I use ounces a lot as measurement. 8 oz are in a cup, which means 4 oz are half a cup, etc. Two tablespoons are in an ounce. Three teaspoons in a tablespoon.

In one pan, make the roux- remember it’s a white roux. In another pan, heat the milk at about a medium high. You can pin the bay leaf to the flat side of the onion with by using the cloves as “pins.” You want bring the milk to a simmer. A simmer should have gentle bubbles at the top. Once the milk is at a simmer, add the roux a little bit at a time, whisking until you get the right thickness. The roux needs to simmer for a bit to thicken completely so don’t add it all at once, or you might make it too thick. If you’re worried that it has become too thick, you may thin it down some with milk. Toss in the onion. Let it heat around 20 minutes or so. You don’t want a floury taste. When it’s cooked, remove the onion and strain if there are too many lumps. Season with salt, pepper and a touch of nutmeg.

And there you go. I should note that I put down white pepper because classically, the French have this thing where white foods get white pepper, and you only use black pepper when you’re not going to see it in the food. They both have completely different flavor profiles so honestly I think this is dumb, and the world’s not going to be destroyed if you use black pepper in your béchamel.

So the theory is that you can now take this sauce and add things to it to get the flavor you’re going for. Here are just some of the small sauces that come off béchamel:

Sauce Crème

8 oz béchamel
4 oz heavy cream
AN kosher salt
AN white peppercorn, ground

Reduce the cream no more than by half at a medium temperature. Reducing just means you put it in a pan, turn on the heat, and let it evaporate until the amount you want. In this case, no more than half of what you started with. Add this to béchamel, and whisk it in. Season with salt and pepper.

Congratulations. You know what you just made? A basic white gravy like the kind you get with chicken fried steak, or at Denny’s.

Sauce Soubise

8 oz béchamel
4 oz yellow onion, chopped in the small dice range
AN white peppercorn, ground
AN kosher salt

Sweat the onion in a small amount of butter. Sweat is basically the same thing as sauté, but sauté implies that you want color on the items. You just want the onion to be cooked through (soft, not crunchy) and look sort of translucent. Add the béchamel to this. Season as needed.

Mornay Sauce

8 oz béchamel
3 oz gruyere cheese, grated or microplaned
2 oz parmesan cheese, grated or microplaned
AN kosher salt
AN white peppercorn, ground

Take your béchamel. Have it heated on a low flame. Stir in the cheese as needed to taste, and whisk it constantly as it’s melting. Season as needed.

Note: these two types of cheese both can have a salty taste to them so I would skip the salt and pepper stage of the béchamel until after you get as much of the cheese flavor as you’d like.

Cheddar Cheese Sauce

Same as the mornay, but substitute cheddar for gruyere and parmesan. Again, this is too taste. So you can start off with 5 oz, but you might not need all of it, and you might need more. Season as needed. A dash of dry mustard and Worcestershire sauce can complement this well.

Nantua Sauce

8 oz béchamel
3 oz shrimp or other shellfish (traditional crayfish is used)
3 oz whole butter
2 oz heavy cream
AN kosher salt
AN white peppercorn

Shell the shrimp and devein them. You can see how to do that: here. Save the shells, and in a pan, toast them in butter and a little tomato paste for color. Add enough water to cover the shells. Take the shrimp and chop fine. Add that to the mixture, and let reduce. The shrimp should be cooked through. Strain the sauce into a small bowl. You want only the liquid. Everything else can be tossed in the trash at this point. Add chunks of butter to this sauce. The consistency you want is softened butter, and the color should be a soft coral. Take out a small piece of parchment paper, and roll the butter into it. Place in the fridge and allow it to harden back up. Once hardened, cut this compound butter into chunks and swirl a chunk at a time into heated béchamel until you get the flavor you like. Season as needed.