Session III, Stocks, Soups and Mother Sauces
SESSION III. STOCKS, SOUPS, MOTHER SAUCES, PAN SAUCES
A word on stocks and broths Making your own homemade stock is a great way to use up leftover food while imbuing your foods with fresh, seasonal flavor. It 's actually not as hard as you think. Check out these tips ….
Having soup stock on hand is an easy way to add a little punch of flavor to a multitude of dishes whether you are braising or making a sauce from scratch or simply deglazing a pan.Your stock can be kept fresh for up to 7 days, or can be frozen so it's ready at a moment's notice. You can also put them in ice cube trays to store and then transfer them into freezer bags.Preparing to make your own stock
There are four main types of stock: vegetable, chicken, meat and fish. It's usually best to stick with the stock that goes with what you're cooking. If you're making a chicken dish, use chicken stock .Making vegetable stock
Poultry stock
You can buy inexpensive chicken or turkey parts (like backs and necks) to make stock, or use the bones that are leftover when you debone poultry. You can also use a leftover cooked chicken or turkey carcass instead of fresh raw meat to make stock.You'll probably want to use vegetables in your protein stocks for extra richness. Use the same veggies we used in the vegetable stock, just fewer of them. If you want a darker, richer stock, roast your poultry, poultry bones and vegetables in a 450 degree F oven for about 40 minutes before adding them to your stock pot.Meat stock
With meat stock, you'll want a dark, rich stock, so roast your meat, bones and vegetables for about 45 minutes in a 450 degree F oven before adding them to your stockpot and adding water.Seafood Stock
Seafood stock comes in handy for many recipes. You can use any inexpensive white fish scraps, bones and trimmings (your seafood market or grocery store probably sells fish packaged for just this purpose). You can also use crab, shrimp and lobster shells to add flavor. Be careful what vegetables you use. You won't want as many, as they may overpower the fish.Not only do you save money because you don’t have to buy boxed stock, the stock itself is so much healthier for you because of all the iron, collagen, and vitamin-rich marrow from the bones.Let the stock cool before freezing. Stock should last a week or so in the fridge, and several months in the freezer.
WORLD OF SOUPS
MAKING ROUX
A roux is nothing more than flour and fat cooked together to form a flavorful thickening agent for cooking. Roux are used to thicken gumbos, stews, fricassees and is the soul of hearty Cajun dishes.Making Roux Step by Step
There are four varieties of roux: white, blond, brown, and dark brown. The different colors are a result of how long the roux is cooked; white is cooked for the shortest time, while dark brown cooks the longest. White and blond roux are the most common, used to thicken sauces, soups, and chowders. Brown and dark brown roux have more flavor, but less thickening power than white or blond roux. Dark roux are primarily used in Cajun and Creole dishes like Gumbo and Jambalaya. SAUCES SAUCES
It's a knowledge of the five French mother sauces that will prove essential. They may seem intimidating, but they are not.. With a few simple ingredients (mostly flour, butter, and a liquid) and a couple easy techniques, these five sauces, will serve as the starting point for a great many sauces.Once you get the feel for these sauces, you’ll be able to whisk them up whenever you want to get fancy. And soon enough, you'll feel confident enough to break tradition and take that Mother Sauce somewhere she’s never gone before. Here's what you need to know about the building blocks of sauces: Beyond flavor, the most important element of any sauce is its ability to smother and cling to whatever it gets drizzled, dolloped, or poured on. That means making the sauce thick and stable, which is accomplished with three techniques: a roux, an emulsifier and a reduction (liquid that's slowly cooked down until thick). Four out of the five mother sauces start with a roux. Roux is a fancy name for flour mixed with fat. Equal parts butter and flour get cooked over medium heat, then a liquid gets added. This mixture then boils, thickens (reduces), and becomes the base of your sauce. The last mother sauce is a product of emulsification.Here are the basic formulas of the five mother sauces:Bechamel (traditionally milk or cream)
Veloute : Roux + White Stock (traditionally chicken but also vegetable or fish)
Espagnole: Roux + Brown Stock (traditionally veal or beef )
Tomato: Roux + Tomatoes (or, go the Italian route, my favorite by skipping the roux and simply reducing tomatoes over medium-low heat until thick)
Hollandaise : Egg Yolks + Clarified Melted Butter + Acid (like lemon juice or white wine)Now that you know the basics, let’s talk about each Mother Sauce (and what to pair them within the guidelineBechamelIf you’ve eaten homemade macaroni and cheese a classic croque madame, or lasagna, chances are you’ve experienced the rich creaminess of Bechamel. It can be made in its most basic form by just combining roux and cream, or it can be mixed with other ingredients to create new sauces: Mornay is made by adding Gruyere or Parmesan, and mustard sauce is made by adding—you guessed it—mustard.Here are some other ways to use Béchamel:Veloute.Like good old Béchamel, Veloute begins with a white roux, but then it gets mixed with white stock made from fish, chicken, or veal. Technically not a finished sauce, it's used as a flavorful starting point for gravies, mushroom sauces.Espagnole Espagnole proves that dark roux is great too. . Also known as brown sauce, Espagnole begins with a Mirepoix (carrots, celery, and onions), beef stock, and deglazed brown bits (fond) from beef bones. From there, tomato paste and spices may be added.To make a demi-glace, a rich French brown sauce, combine the Espagnole with more beef stock; to create Bordelaise, a red wine sauce that pairs well with steak and mushrooms, mix the demi-glace with red wine and herbs.
However, that demi-glace gets its characteristic dark color from the reduction and concentration of brown stock which itself is colored mainly through the browning of the bones that are later simmered for a long time to extract the collagen and other proteins from the bones. However, if the bones themselves are not roasted, or if the original sauce that is used to make the demi-glace was made using store-bought broth or stock that may not have been made with roasted bones (or any bones at all, for that matter), the abbreviated method may result in a demi-glace that lacks the deep color you probably want.
Tomato Probably the first mother sauce you ever tasted, tomato sauce is often a mixture of just onions, garlic, and tomatoes. Although some traditionalists may start with a roux, most tomato sauces merely rely on a tomato reduction to build flavor and create thickness.
SAUCES YOU MUST HAVE. WHY ??
Below are a few. Go through them and decide which are a MUST HAVE and WHICH runs second place. A sauce makes something lousy EDIBLE. It makes something edible PRETTY GOOD. It makes something pretty good SUPERB. It makes something SUPERB downright EXCELLENT. Ps. Providing the SAUCE IS EXCELLENT TO START WITH.
You will be making some of these
Homemade Sweet Chili Sauce White Barbecue Sauce Homemade Chimichurri
Kansas City-Style Barbecue Homemade Teriyaki Homemade Harissa
Homemade Sriracha Creamy Chipotle Mayo Homemade Curry Paste
Pesto Calabrese Creamy Sun dried Tomato Pesto Buffalo Hummus
Almond & Cilantro Pesto Balsamic Whiskey Steak Marinade Rtd Garlic & Cilantro
Spicy Lime & Garlic Marinade Sweet & Sticky Chicken Marinade Honey-Garlic Salmon Marinade
Lemon & Herb Marinade Aioli Salsa
PAN SAUCESOne of the simplest sauces for sauteed and roasted meat, poultry, or fish is a quick sauce made by deglazing the saute pan or roasting pan. Deglazing is the technique of adding a bit of liquid to the hot pan after the food has been cooked to dissolve the caramelized juices stuck to the bottom of the pan. Follow these guidelines for quick sauces that require few ingredients and provide a wonderful depth of flavor:BASIC RULES TO FOLLOWSear the Meat
•
Before deglazing, r so of spices (such as yellow mustard seeds or crushed black peppercorns) if you're so inclined. Cook, stirring to keep things moving, until the vegetables are softened and the spices have bloomed, about 4 minutes.•
Now’s the time to add liquid AND DEGLAZEI Deglaze by adding wine (red, white, or fortified), good stock, vinegar, cider, beer, brandy, or water to the hot pan. Use enough liquid to cover the bottom of the pan—1/3 to 1/2 cup for a medium saute pan, more for a roasting pan.OTHER TIPSMushroom Pan Sauce:Mustard Pan Sauce:Whiskey Pan Sauce:Lemon-Herb Sauce: AAnother Route for Steaks …......Rich and HerbyCreamy and EarthySharp and LemonyHERE IS A TRICK AND A SIMPLE TRUTH **** A restaurant worth its salt makes flavor-packed stock whereas at home, most folks are using store-bought stock which is pretty much worthless. Reducing good stock gives you concentrated good flavor while reducing bad stock gives you concentrated bad flavor.The Science of Emulsions
A pan sauce is essentially a butter and water emulsion. Sure, there are trace amounts of other things in there that give it flavor, aroma, and brightness, but that rich, mouth-coating texture? The creamy body it gets? That's from the emulsion. Mayonnaise, Vinaigrette, Aioli are samples of emulsions not made in a hot pan.
Forming a butterfat-in-water emulsion is not as easy as just melting butter and water together. As we all know, emulsions are a just-barely-stable mixture of two things that really shouldn't get along under normal circumstances. In this case, water (broth and wine are essentially water), and fat.An emulsified pan sauce should have the texture of heavy cream. The problem is, even with very, very vigorous whisking, it's difficult to actually get those fat molecules small enough to form a stable emulsion. To get there, you need a bit more help, which takes us to the gelatin.Restaurant stocks are rich with gelatin that are extracted from the bones they're made with.BRINGING IT HOMEChicken Breast and White Wine-Fines Herbs Pan Sauce, Step By StepGather Ingredients BUT Remember the basic elements are always the same elements
Element 1 : Aromatics. Sauteed aromatics. Ingredients that hit the pan first and are generally cooked in a bit of fat before adding the remaining ingredients. This often includes garlic, shallots, and onions, and can also include spices that need blooming or toasting.
Element 2: Your liquid. Broth or stock are the start of nearly every pan sauce. Oftentimes wine or another alcohol-based liquid will be added as well for complexity and brightness.
Element 3: Butter. Butter is added after your liquid has reduced and concentrated in flavor. Butter helps round out the sharp edges of the flavor while also thickening the sauce to a creamy consistency (assuming you get a good emulsion, which, using these techniques, you will!)
- Element 4: Finishing flavors. These are the things that go in right at the end. Fresh herbs, a squeeze of lemon juice if the sauce needs acid, and for me, a splash of soy sauce or fish sauce because umami.
And that's about it. In this case, my liquid is chicken broth and white wine, my aromatics are shallots and garlic, and my finishing flavors are fines herbs (a mixture of parsley, tarragon, chervil, and chives), and a splash of soy sauce. The rest is just technique.Chicken
Sear Chicken
Flip ChickenAdd AromaticsAdd Stock and Wine, and Scrape!!!ReduceAdd Butter and Soy SauceAdd Finishing HerbsSlice Your Chicken
I like to slice my airline chicken breasts on a sharp bias so that I can fan out the pieces. This is partly for presentation. TIME TO EAT .WHY SPEND ALL THIS TIME ABOUT PAN SAUCESLet's start with chicken stock which is a must have. Now you have the base for many pan sauces when you add aromatics , plus, plus. The quickest , most versatile and less time consuming path to sauces that you can use with meats, fish, shellfish etc.Lets add a Mother Sauce. Tomato Sauce ( keep on hand ) which can give you many derivatives from Italian to Spanish.Lets add another Mother Sauce. A Bechamel which is a cream sauce which again gives you other choices. The Bechamel you only make when you need to.Let's Pick a couple of YOU MUST HAVE like Pesto, Chimichurri, Aioli, Vinaigrette, Teriyaki , Sweet Chili Sauce, A Chipotle base, A Sriracha scented, a Carbonara or Alfredo and a couple or so of Salsas.This is all based on your preferred tastes.WORLD OF SALSASalsa is any one of several sauces typical of Mexican Cuisine also known as salsa fresca, hot salsa or salsa picante, particularly those used as dips.. Salsa is often tomato-based, and includes ingredients such as onions, chilies, and herbs. It is typically piquant/spicy, ranging from mild to extremely hot. Though many preparations are called salsa in Spanish, in English, it generally refers to raw or near-raw sauces used as dips.Well-known salsas include:Pico de gallo (Salsa cruda, "
Salsa taquera,
Salsa ranchera, "
Outside Mexico and Central America, the following salsas are common to each of the following regions; in Argentina and the Southern Cone, chimichurri sauce is common. Chimichurri is "a spicy vinegar-parsley sauce that is the salsa (and leading condiment) in Argentina and Uruguay, served with grilled meat. It is made of chopped fresh parsley and onion, seasoned with garlic, oregano, salt, cayenne chilies and black pepper and bound with oil and vinegar In Costa Rica, dishes are prepared with salsa Lizano, a thin, smooth, light brown sauce. In Cuba and the Caribbean, a typical salsa is mojo. Unlike the tomato-based salsas, mojo typically consists of olive oil, garlic, and citrus juice, and is used both to marinate meats and as a dipping sauce.In Peru, a traditional salsa is peri peri or piri piri sauce: "The national condiment of Peru, peri-peri sauce is made in medium to hot levels of spiciness—the more chili, or the hotter variety of chile used, the hotter the sauce. Original peri-peri uses the African bird’s eye chili (the Swahili word for the chili is peri-peri). Milder sauces may use only cayenne and serrano chilies. To a base of vinegar and oil, garlic and lemon juice are added, plus other seasonings, which often include paprika or tomato paste for flavor and color, onions and herb—each company has its own recipe. It is also used as a cooking sauce.At its most basic, salsa is simply chopped tomatoes, chiles, onions, and cilantro, flavored with salt and brightened with a squeeze of lime juice. But the beauty of salsa is its versatility and adaptability.Here are seven insights for making exceptional salsas.Leave your ingredients rawCook the salsa,Layer in flavor, color, and texturePlay around with the primary herbs.Trade the tomatoesBalance flavors; add salt, vinegar, lime juice, bottled hot sauce, and pinches of sugar, tasting frequently, until you achieve the perfect balance of sweet, savory, salty, sour, and spicy.Chop some, process some.A food processor makes short work of herbs and garlic;
For most other ingredients, chopping by hand gives more control over the size and shape of the pieces -- and the finished product will look nicer.
- Dice the onion by hand: food processors tend to pulverize onions, releasing so much juice that the flavor becomes overpowering.
*** AS YOU CAN SEE I provide extensive guideline for all the sessions, COOKING is hands on deck BUT you need to have a background as to WHAT AM I DOING THIS plus a general knowledge of culinary world. So, you read the guidelines a few times just like reading a book DON'T MEMORIZE ANYTHING and then concentrate on that which you want to make your world. Ps. I am here to guide you and support you while you do your thing.
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