I've recently started making my own sauces at home, mainly very basic white and red italian sauces, and I'd like to learn more about how to make them. I am NOT asking for specific recipes: what I am asking for is information on how to construct a sauce. What ingredients are absolutely necessary? How can I make intelligent choices about how to proportion the ingredients? etc. I've read that there are three main ingredients, liquid, thickener, and seasoning. What are your favorite things to use for these basic components, and what other nice extra things can be thrown in? These are the types of things I want to know.
Google Spanish Father Sauces
>>21113512Fry diced onions in olive oil until lightly brown, the go from there.
>>21113523this is interesting. something like that would definitely need a thickening agent eventually. the only one I know is flour, but I don't see that working too well with olive oil. what other options do I have
>>21113528corn starch, xanthan gum. different thickeners will slightly alter taste profiles. you can also make or buy "dry roux" which is just toasted flour ready for thickening.
Forgot to add: you don't add a thickener to tomato based sauces since they're capable of simply being reduced to the desired consistency. Generally thickeners are added to sauces with a very low solid mass content like meat stock or milk which can't be easily thickened by cooking down
>>21113537is there a particular taste you would associate with the other flavors?
>>21113512Can never have too much cigar ash! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjH11FY5tRs
>>21113619Dark roux adds a toasted, almost burnt flavor to stews. But what I meant was more like the starches affecting how the taste gets perceived at your tongue. They don't change the taste itself as much as they change how you receive the taste. Hard for me to explain.
>>21113639that's interesting. I'll have to experiment. Would it turn out poorly if I used corn starch instead of flour in my next white sauce?
Any time you're making a sauce for pasta, try to use not much more water than you need to cover the pasta so that the starch in the pasta water gets super concentrated. Very starchy pasta water is extremely useful for emulsifying fats in a sauce and getting a nice smooth texture that coats the pasta well.
>>21113656the texture will be different. corn starch is a powerful thickener so be careful with how much you add so it doesn't end up as gravy
>>21113660that's very useful to know. If I boil off half of the water after, will that have an even starchier concentration, or will the starch stay?
>>21113512>How can I make intelligent choices about how to proportion the ingredients?Depends on what you aim for. Typically it's 1 l liquid (usually some fond) to 125-150 g roux (5 parts clarified butter to 6 parts flour). Many traditional haute cuisine recipes use tiny amounts of aromatics and rely heavily on the fonds.
>>21113664If you cook it down it should concentrate it more, but generally you're better off just adding it to your sauce and then reducing to whatever you want for your final viscosity.
>>21113512Here are mother sauces:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xniS7kMpW4Ihttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcDk-JcAnOwThere is probably some sauce infographic some where on the internet.
>>21113512>I am NOT asking for specific recipes>what I am asking for is information on how to construct a sauce. What ingredients are absolutely necessary? How can I make intelligent choices about how to proportion the ingredients?Sounds like a recipe to me cunt.
>>21113512Mother sauces, then there are Americanized sauces which used sugar chemistry, which is why sugar alternatives won't work since its being used for more then just a sweetener, its a structural component of the sauce sure you could say BBQ sauce is based off of "sause tomat" but that would be like me calling myself Italian just because someone in my family a few hundred years ago fucked a Italian chick
>>21113512do you mean like condiment sauces like hot sauce and BBQ sauce? or cooking sauces like pasta sauces? if it's condiment sauces an essential ingredient for most is vinegar. also for pasta sauces add milk, alot of people don't but it's a game changer
Time is like 90% of the game. Just let it sit for an hour longer than what you think it should and it'll turn out okay. Probably.
>>21113980I am talking specifically about marinara/tomato sauces with this advice btw.
>>21113982then follow my advice and add milk
>>21113993and not a little bit either, add it till the sauce is a pinkish colour then let it simmer
>>21113745ESL or retarded? Call it >>21113716thanks>>21113771how does the sugar chemistry play into it?>>21113966both>>21113982I would hope so lmao
>>21115108>how does the sugar chemistry play into it?Simple syrup is thick. Then they add a shot ron of distilled vinegar to balance it out. They still use some thickeners like xanthan, starch, carob bean gum etc. They also use hfcs, simple syrup, different sugars, maybe honey and many more so they can list other better ingredients first although those sauces are like basically 1/2 sugar.
