How to Make Pan Sauce

Edible Exercises

Your first task is to make a batch of Dark Chicken Stock (see recipe below). You can try making a few pan sauces with store-bought stock; however, you just won’t get the same fantastic results. Remember that store-bought stock can contain quite a bit of sodium, so it will be difficult to control how salty your sauce will be after you reduce the stock. Also, they are often not as gelatinous as homemade stocks and will not provide the sauce with the same body/mouth feel. These are important factors to keep in mind.

Cook a steak and make a simple red wine sauce by following the video below.

Practice another pan sauce by making Chicken Marsala (recipe below).

Practice making pan sauces by cooking a few of the Rouxbe recipes below. Pay attention to the process because you will begin to see the patterns in cooking.

BONUS CHALLENGE:

Once you get the hang of making a couple of pan sauces, have some fun and create your own sauce all by yourself…without a recipe – yes, without a recipe! You can do it! Just follow the process as described in the lesson. Get out your homemade dark chicken stock and slice some skinless chicken breasts like we do in Step 1 of the Chicken Saltimbocca (see below).

Next, pick your favorite cuisine and think about the flavors you like from it. If it’s Italian, think of things like garlic, red wine vinegar, lemon juice and fresh basil. How about French? Try shallots, white wine, cream and fresh tarragon. How about some Asian flavors? Add ginger and garlic, deglaze with rice wine vinegar, season with soy and garnish with fresh cilantro. Pan sauce combinations are endless. Experiment with different flavors and ratios and when you find a winner, enter it in Rouxbe's Test Kitchen. Before you realize it, you’ll be cooking without a recipe!

Practice Recipes