PART 5 - SAUCES

SAUCES - Introduction

Wikipedia definition:

Sauces are an essential element in cuisines all over the world. A sauce is liquid or semi-solid food served on or used in preparing other foods. Sauces are not normally consumed by themselves; they add flavor, moisture, and visual appeal to another dish. Sauces need a liquid component, but some sauces (e.g. pico de gallo, salsa or chutney) may contain very little liquid.

MY COMMENTS:
Many sauces in this web site are recognizably variations on French cuisine recipes, but very few are made by the French book. A few are from other regional traditions and I probably have invented or rediscovered a few of my own too. Dessert sauces are particularly under-represented. I rarely make desserts.

IMPORTANT:

All soups can be converted into a sauce by reducing or thickening the liquid; and the other way around: All sauces can be converted into soup. If you're looking for more sauce ideas, don't forget to check Part 1 - Soups.
Sauces may need to be thickened. See THIS PAGE for various techniques.

For an interesting list of sauces from many countries, see Wikipedia by type or country.
For this website, I made a different one.

French Cuisine

My opinion about the classic French cuisine sauces?

Needlessly complicated, invented by people who had way too much staff, time and resources, mostly unrealistic for regular use in average home-cooking for lack of both time and ingredients.

I find the distinction between white and blond sauces highly artificial.
- Meat and fish sauces are in the same velouté category, but they insisted that milk should be excluded from that group. That doesn't make sense to me.
- The only difference between béchamel and velouté is milk vs. some other liquid and that the roux for milk 'must' be white, while the others can color some.
  1. I often cross that line by adding milk to velouté sauces and/or by adding broths to béchamel sauces.
  2. I don't much care if my béchamel roux colors somewhat. That color disappears completely when I add milk anyway.
- If we consider milk as just one of many possible broths, and/or when you mix milk with other broths, the 2 groups merge.
Hollandaise a mother sauce?
What working family makes Hollandaise instead of mayonnaise, other than that one time for bragging credits? I've made it twice, and imo Hollandaise is nothing more than liquid mayo. I don't care to drink my mayo. Vegetable oil is so much simpler to work with than melted butter. Anything Hollandaise-based can be made so much easier mayo-based, without the hassle of having to keep it warm all the time. Since I generally prefer olive oil over butter anyway, it doesn't matter to me.
And that brings me of course to the French fascination with butter, even though all too often they think butter is not good enough and needs to be clarified. Why not use a liquid oil to begin with? It's one thing to recognize historical roots of availability, it's completely a different one to remain stuck in the Middle Ages when so many alternatives are easily accessible nowadays.

Enough ranting. Revenons à nos moutons like the French say. Back to the issues at hand.

I don't underestimate the importance of sauces in French cuisine. Yes, many classic French sauces are delicious (as well as overly rich,) but a lot of them—especially some derived sauces—are imo not suitable for day-to-day home cooking. The need for a dedicated saucier in large hotels and restaurants clearly shows how much time goes into these French sauces.

That having been said, I prepare béchamel sauce with some variations quite regularly. That one is simple and delicious.

la cocina Mexicana

The Mexican kitchen is very different from the French.
Sauces are even more important in the Mexican tradition and everyday campesino life.

According to Chef Frank Johnson, Mexican dishes are all about sauces and salsas:
“Any time you’re at a traditional Mexican meal, you’ll see many different condiments and several kinds of salsa on the table. Everything is fresh, and the idea is to use all those flavors together. There’s something great about a fresh, chunky pico de gallo and a zesty, smooth tomatillo sauce coming together in one bite of a taco.”

I was able to experience that myself when I was living in Mexico in 2016. The Mexican kitchen is just as rich and diverse as French cuisine, but with a completely different—and imo a much healthier—foundation. Above all, let's not forget that peppers, tomatoes, potatoes and so many other vegetables are New World products that were domesticated and cultivated by the American indigenous people for thousands of years before colonization brought them to Europe. That is why I classify tomato sauces under the Mexican tradition instead of the French.

The only reason that French sauces get 2 chapters, while Mexican sauces only get one is because I grew up with the French tradition and am more familiar with it. I came to know the Mexican kitchen only as an adult when I lived in Mexico in 2006.

Mexican people could compile a classification that is just as impressive as the French one. So could just about every other regional kitchen around the world. French cuisine just had better PR historically. Thanks to the internet, that no longer is the near-monopoly it used to be.

In conclusion

These are recipes that I have prepared in my home kitchen. Most of them were not made 'according to the (French) book.' As always, my response to criticism in this context is: I couldn't care less. As long as it tastes good, I'm OK with it.

I have only 2 classes for the French sauces: watery sauces that are starch-thickened and oily emulsions. As stated earlier, tomatoes belonged to the Mexican kitchen long before the French saw their first tomato.

Sub-categories

recipe page links

sauces - intro ( = this page)

Chapter 5.1. emulsions

vegetable oils vs. animal fats
Every sauce based on one oil or fat (e.g. butter) can be made with any other oil/fat.
I'm not saying it will look the same or taste as good, only that it will be different.

vegetable oils vs. animal fats
extra virgin olive oil
- vs. clarified butter
oil, parsley & garlic sauce
- vs. parsleyed garlic butter sauce = beurre à la Bourguignonne
oil in water emulsion e.g. milk
- vs. beurre monté
...
- Creole sauce (butter + spices only)