Make Amazing Sauces from What You Have In

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You can really enhance your family meals when you make amazing sauces. And the really great news about these is that you will often have everything you need to make them. It’s just knowing how and when to apply the right amount of sugar, salt, and fat to take dishes to another level.

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Oils and Citrus Fruits

Fruity oils are nothing new in cooking and have, in fact, been around for thousands of years. You will, of course, have heard of olive oil, sesame oil, and infusions. Any of these are excellent when cooking your food and help caramelize the proteins in meats for masses of flavor. Learn how to make grilled chicken tenders and master them with the very simple addition of olive oil and lemon juice. This dish is a perfect example of how you can marry oils and citrus together.

Wine and Vinegar Make Amazing Sauces

There’s nothing quite like a wine reduction to make a dish stand out. When done properly, the acid that wine and vinegar add to a dish can stimulate all of your flavor senses at the same time. You can savor bitterness, sweetness and sourness, and saltiness together. The trick with wine is to never use wine in your food that you wouldn’t drink. But you should also use wine to deglaze the pan, which removes any hard bits from the surface that contain tons of flavor.

Aromatic Bases for Flavor

For many cuisines, such as French, a good dish starts with aromatics. And these will often also be the base for your sauce at the end. Easy examples of this include onions and garlic, which are often used in Italian, French, and Spanish cooking. But of course, you can try variations of these, such as shallots or chives. And other cuisines swap out members of the same family. For instance, Asian cooking mainly uses scallions over onions because they are more fragrant.

Spirits are Good for Glazes

Like wine, you can use any number of spirits to make excellent sauces. Many spirits have a high sugar content and will reduce into syrupy and sticky glazes. Here are some great examples:

• Bourbon is excellent with darker meats with charred flavors, such as a thick steak.

• Sherry makes a wonderful BBQ sauce for chicken wings with brown sugar and honey.

• Rum makes an excellent base for sugared sauces applied to fruit cakes and dishes.

• Double the fun with an amaretti glaze on your amaretto biscuits.

• Try beer for fish batter or deglaze a pan of fresh apples with cider for apple sauce.

Wine isn’t the only great alcoholic drink for cooking with. Spirits reduce well and make amazing glazes when combined with sugar. Keep an eye on them, and be careful not to flambé yourself.

Good Quality Stock, Of Course

Stock is the foundation of many dishes, not only sauces. But the quality of the stock is what really matters. When you make a dish that relies on stock, such as soup, your final dish is only as good as the stock you use. For this reason, you must learn how to make stock first. Homemade stock is always far superior to any store-bought stock, even the most expensive ones. From there, you can use stock for creamy sauces in dishes such as risotto and stews.

Make Amazing Sauces from Milk and Cream

Like eggs, wine, and flour, milk and cream are pantry staples, so you should always have these stocked in. And if you are vegan or have issues like lactose intolerance, you can get plant-based and lactose-free variants these days. The rich and velvety texture of milk and cream makes them wonderful in sauces. The best examples include cheese sauce bases, stroganoff recipes, and dessert sauces such as brandy cream, which we enjoy at Christmas.

Elevate them with Seasonings

You might be forgiven for thinking that salt and pepper are the only seasonings. These are important and are not all made the same. But there are others. And finding some alternatives to salt and pepper is tricky. However, you can elevate your sauces with a few different ingredients. For instance, you can ruin a curry with salt and pepper since spices often contain salty flavors. You can substitute salt and pepper with herbs, which should be fresh and used at the end.

Summary

Once you learn how to make amazing sauces yourself, your dishes become more than just something to eat. They become something you can really enjoy and savor. You can use bases such as olive oil and citrus, make glazes from spirits and mix them up with natural seasonings.