Gettin Saucy

We barely touched on sauces before. Now slave wishes to show you how these can come in handy. For Eggs A'la Goldenrod we made a white sauce with Wondra flour (it always works). However you should know how to make this with the cheaper all purpose flour.

white sauce is often called a Bechamel Sauce

Without getting too technical, the French list five sauces as the “Mother” Sauces.

Brown sauce: Think gravy, ever make that from pan drippings? We will!

Tomato sauce: We made that for the pizza.

Emulsions: Usually an egg white base. It is a way of suspending oil in a liquid. Think Mayonnaise or Hollandaise sauce.

Veloute: Some sort of white or clear stock as a base and thickened with a roux (rue)

Bechamel Sauce: This always uses milk as the base and is thickened with a roux. These are: white sauce, cream sauce, cheese sauce.

OK: What is a roux? Equal parts of flour and butter. This is cooked while stirring so that it doesn’t turn dark brown. It is then added to hot milk or other stock and boiled so that it thickens the mixture.

For some reason, slave has always had problems with a cooked roux, unless it was to make brown gravy. So that's why the use of Wondra flour is preferred. However all is not lost! A new character comes along to save the day: Beurre manie !

Beurre manie: kneaded butter (Burr mahn-YAY)

Take a stick of real butter, chop it in large pieces in a bowl. Add ½ Cup flour. Now stick your hand in there and work this all together. Unlike margarine, butter will soften by being “worked”. Keep your hand wet, this helps. Don't tell me this is the first time your hand was covered with something greasy!

Once the flour is well incorporated into the butter, roll it to the size of large marbles. Cool in the refrigerator until they are firm then transfer into freezer bag.

Now when you need a white sauce or really any kind of thickening, Heat the stock (milk) drop in a couple of these marbles and stir! You will never have to worry about floury lumps again!

Hope this was not too technical for you. Slave wanted to let you in on the secrets of these basic sauces. Armed with that you are free to create all of the wonderful meals you can think of.

So lets put some of this to work and slave shall show you how handy they are.

socialslave