Corduroy Orange

The first three: Using a roux

In Classical cooking, there are five sauces that get emphasized over all others because they serve as the basis for hundreds more. These are the Mother Sauces: Bechamel, Veloute, Brown Sauce, Hollandaise, and Tomato. Sure, there are sauces (such as alfredo, beurre blanc, or a simple reduction) that fall outside of the maternal five. But, as a starting point for an accompaniment to any meal from macaroni to mutton, if you know the basic five, you’ll always be able to have a sauce to match your meal.

Because the mother sauces are such a large part of any good chef’s sauce-making potential and I want to give each sauce its due, today I’m just going to cencentrate on the first three (Bechamel, Veloute, and Brown) because these are the sauces that require a roux.

If you’re from Louisiana, chances are making a roux is second nature to you; if not, the prospect might seem a little scary, but it shouldn’t. Fat and flour is all you need. The fat can be any of your choice: oil, butter, or lard. Mix with approximately an equal volume of flour and stir constantly over mediumish heat with a wooden spoon in a pan that’s not made of aluminum (an aluminum pan will have a tendency to turn your roux grey). Many—myself included—prefer to use cast iron when possible.

The basic technique of making a sauce with a roux is generally the same no matter what. Once the flour has been sufficiently toasted, whisk in about one generous cup of liquid per ounce of roux (tablespoon each fat and flour). Using a whisk for this step helps to incorporate the roux into the liquid so it doesn’t cook into dumplings at the bottom of the pan. Use your wooden spoon to search out the corners of the pan for roux that’s stuck there that the whisk can’t reach, but then switch back to the whisk to incorporate it into the sauce. Let the sauce simmer gently for about twenty minutes to make sure that the flour cooks into the sauce; otherwise, it will tend to have a bit of a grainy texture and, depending on how dark of a roux you make, a raw-flour taste. How long you cook the roux will affect what color your sauce will become: the lighter the roux, the lighter the sauce.

The first of the mother sauces, Bechamel, calls for a very light roux, because it is a basic white sauce. To make it, simply whisk milk into a light (barely toasted) roux. Season with some salt and pepper. Many people often let a bay leaf, a clove, and a partial onion simmer with the sauce and then remove them before serving it. I like to add a little pinch of nutmeg much of the time.

From a Bechamel sauce, you can make:

• Cheese sauce by whisking the grated cheese of your choice into the finished sauce (off heat) until it melts. Use about 6 ounces of cheese (by weight) per two cups of sauce. if you’re making a blue cheese sauce, use one part blue cheese to three parts milder cheese. Pour your cheese sauce over macaroni cooked al dente, put in a casserole dish and bake (with hot dogs or tomatoes if you so desire) and stop relying on the blue box when you make mac and cheese.
• Mustard sauce by whisking in about 1/4 cup of prepared mustard at the end. Goes great with brussels sprouts, and don’t dismiss the possibility because they’re actually a delicious vegetable when properly cooked. Just don’t overcook the sprouts because once they get mushy there’s nothing palatable about them.
• Black pepper gravy for a breakfast of biscuits and gravy. Stir in enough freshly cracked black pepper until it’s well-speckled and has the taste you’re looking for.
• Dill cream sauce, which goes great with salmon. This is another sauce that I make on instinct, adding dill until it looks and tastes right… which is the beauty of using a mother sauce. Once you have the basic sauce made, you can work with it to fit the taste profile you’re looking for.

The veloute sauce uses a slightly darker roux: one that has been toasted until the flour turns a nice golden brown color (for which reason it is often called a blond roux), and a white stock, often chicken or fish, depending on what it’s being served with. Again, use about one generous cup of liquid per ounce of roux. From the veloute, variations include:

• Mushroom sauce by sauteeing mushrooms and stirring them into the finished sauce.
• White wine sauce by reducing a couple of ounces of white wine by half and then stirring in two cups of finished veloute sauce. Adding straight white wine to the sauce will not achieve as good of a result because the alcohol will not cook out as efficiently and the flavor of the wine will not be concentrated. This is great as a compund sauce with the mushrooms: add the wine to the pan in which you’re sauteeing the mushrooms to deglaze it. Then, add mushrooms and remaining wine into the sauce.
• Aurora sauce, which I’ve never made, but ought to sometime because it shares its name with my wife. Add three ounces tomato puree to two cups of veloute and season to taste. I suppose it would probably go quite well with rosemary roasted chicken. Maybe I’ll try it sometime.
• Herb sauce by finishing the veloute sauce with minced fresh herbs to taste. Be careful if using sage; a little dab’ll do ya.
• Anything else you think of that would match well with your meal. If you want a spicier sauce, add some hot pepper in with the roux and toast it a bit before adding your liquid. If you want some onion flavor, chop up part of an onion and saute it, same as you’d do for a mushroom sauce. If you’re looking for a grapefruit sauce to go with your halibut, reduce grapefruit juice the same as you’d do with white wine.

Brown Sauce takes a dark roux with a brown stock. To make the roux, be careful and don’t divert your attention: a burned roux will ruin your sauce and there’s no way to correct it except to do it again. Because toasting the flour this long greatly reduces its thickening power, you may want to use slightly more roux than you would otherwise to achieve the same thickness of sauce, perhaps along the lines of 2 ounces of roux (2 tablespoons each fat and flour) per generous cup of stock.

As for the stock, making a brown stock involves roasting bones and vegetables with tomato product (often tomato paste) and then simmering them for several hours before straining. You can fake it (for the purposes of this sauce) by adding some tomato paste in with the roux as it reaches its blond stage and stirring it around to caramelize the tomato with the roux before you add the stock. By doing so, you achieve the same source of flavor and color as is used in making a brown stock correctly from the beginning, so in terms of fudging results, it’s a pretty good method.

Once you have your completed brown sauce, other sauces you can make include:

• Demiglaze by reducing the sauce by half.
• Horseradish sauce by adding a teaspoon or so of grated horseradish root to the roux and toasting it just briefly before you add the stock. Adjust horseradish quantity later if you want a stronger taste. Alternately, stir in prepared horseradish to taste toward the end of the simmering time. A pinch of mustard powder is a nice touch to this sauce, and it goes great with roast beef.
• Burgundy by reducing a couple ounces of red wine by half and then stirring the sauce into it, same as you’d do with veloute for a white wine sauce. Add some cracked pepper, some shallots, some thyme, and a half bay leaf in with the wine while you’re reducing it, and once you add the brown sauce you’ve got a classic Bordelaise sauce.
• Mushroom by following the directions included for adjusting a veloute sauce.
• Again, half the technique in using this sauce is thinking of variations to match the meal that you’re making. So, if you need something to go with ribs, you might whisk in some hot sauce at the end. If you want a garlicky and slightly spicy accompaniment to your steak, saute some garlic and crushed red pepper, then add to the sauce (perhaps deglaze with red wine first for a Garlic Burgundy Sauce). Or, start the roux off with strips of bacon cut crosswise (parallel with the short side of the strip) and stir the flour into that for a nice match to your bacon-wrapped filet mignon.

Once you know how to make the mother sauces, you can use them as a jumping point to get to anywhere you want to. Your meals will never go sauceless again.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 20th, 2006 at 4:25 pm and is filed under Cast Iron, Cooking Tips, Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.