Here are a few sauce making tips that may help you
when you are making your next sauce at home.
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1. Have all your ingredients ready before you
actually start cooking. Professionals call this mise en place (MEEZ ahn plahs).
Nothing complicates sauce making more than trying to do too many things at one
time.
2. Use the proper sauce pan. Your saucepans
should be made of materials that conduct heat effectively throughout the
entire pan. You want it to have a heavy bottom so your sauces don't burn. For
sauce making, stay away from non-stick pans. They are great for cooking
omelets, but prevent the essential caramelized "fond" from forming
after browning meat in the pan.
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3. Reducing a sauce means to simmer the sauce
until it reaches its desired thickness. When it is thick enough to coat a
spoon it is ready. You don't want it to boil during this process because it
can burn the sauce, make it foam up, and/or spill over the top of the
pan.
"Reducing by half," means to reduce
the amount of liquid in the pan by half. You don't have to measure it out,
just make a rough guess to what half would look like.
4. Add a tab or two of unsalted cold butter at
the end. This is called "mounting" and adds flavor, smoothness and
additional shine to the sauce.
5. Don't walk away from the saucepan. If you
don't want to burn the sauce or have it congeal on you, you want to stay close
to the stovetop keeping your eye on the sauce. That doesn't mean you can't do
anything else to get the meal served, but you want to be close enough to stir
or lower the heat if necessary.
Copyright (c) 2004 GatewayGourmet
About the Author:
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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