How to Make Sauce

Roux is one of the essential building blocks in cooking and is made by cooking fat and flour together.

Roux is used to thicken liquids to make wonderful soups, stews and sauces. It is also used to thicken stock when making velouté…and milk or cream when making béchamel.

Many home cooks have likely made a roux at one point or another but have not recognized that they have done so; nor do they understand roux’s full potential in the kitchen.

In this lesson, you will learn what roux is. You will learn how to make a white, blond and brown roux and the differences between them. Knowing how to make a roux and determining how far to cook it opens up a world of sauces and dishes. Once you learn how to properly make this important building block, you will be able to create a variety of sensational soups, stews, gravies and silky sauces.

Béchamel is one of the five mother sauces. Appreciated for its subtle flavor and neutral color, a well-made béchamel is rich, creamy and silky-smooth. It is an essential component in many lasagnes, cream soups, gratins and in an authentic Mac n’ Cheese.

In this lesson, you will learn about béchamel sauce and the ingredients used to make it. You will learn two different methods for making béchamel and how to prevent lumps. You will learn how to infuse the sauce with various flavors and how to adjust the consistency to suit the dish you are making. Finally, you will learn how to finish, store and reheat this extremely versatile sauce.

By knowing how to whip up a simple béchamel , a variety of interesting sauces, soups and mouthwatering mains will be at your fingertips.

Note: Béchamel is properly spelled with the following accent: béchamel.

Velouté is one of the five mother sauces which is made by thickening a flavorful stock with a roux.

As its name implies, its velvety and smooth texture is what makes a velouté sauce so special. Not only can velouté be used to create many delicious sauces, it can also be used to make a variety of soups and dishes from almost every cuisine. The importance of a velouté is that once mastered, it teaches you exactly what to look for in a perfect sauce, especially in terms of consistency and mouth feel. Once you have grasped the technique and concept of a velouté sauce, no other sauce allows you to play and experiment with different combinations of aromatics, herbs and spices and pastes.

In this lesson, you will learn about velouté sauce and the components used to make it. You will learn the steps to make a basic velouté sauce and how to season, enrich and store it. Finally, you will learn how to vary a basic velouté sauce to compliment the flavor profiles of the many dishes you will be able to create.

Tomato sauce is one of the most important mother sauces and is an indispensable staple in many kitchens around the world. In Italian cuisine, tomato sauce is everything and there is absolutely no option but to make it from scratch. Once you know the fundamental skills for making an authentic version, you will understand why. This sauce – when properly made – WILL greatly affect the way you cook. It not only opens your mind to respecting ingredients but also to proper cooking techniques.

In this lesson, you will learn how to make tomato sauce using just a few quality ingredients. Once you learn how to choose and prepare these ingredients, you will learn the very simple techniques necessary to build a sauce that has a rich and pure tomato flavor. A delicious and healthy tomato sauce is very easy to make and is extremely versatile. By having this tasty staple on hand, you will be able to build your favorite pizza, use it in dishes such as chicken parmigiana and as a base for a variety of pasta dishes. It can even be used to top your morning breakfast. We guarantee that the first time you make tomato sauce from scratch, you are sure to be converted.

Pan sauces are à la minute sauces made in the same pan in which ingredients, especially meats, have been sautéed, seared or pan-fried. Wise cooks know that the tasty brown bits, also known as sucs, that are left on the bottom of a pan, are as good as gold. By learning how to take advantage of these delicious, caramelized bits, you will be able to create quick and highly flavourful pan sauces, which will take each dish that you make to a whole new level.

In this lesson, we will show you how to properly develop sucs and how to utilize them to build delicious pan sauces. We will also show you how to integrate your own personal twists to build both simple and complex sauces with many layers of flavor. You will learn how to safely and properly deglaze the pan and how to achieve the proper sauce consistency. We will also show you how to enrich and finish pan sauces in order to balance their flavor and give them a beautiful, glossy sheen.

Knowing how to make a delicious pan sauce is one of the differences between an average cook and a skilled chef. That is why the saucier station in any high-end restaurant is a well respected and often sought after position.

Butter sauce is also called a beurre blanc sauce (“white butter”) or sauce blanc. It is a classic French butter sauce that is often served at fancy restaurants. It is considered by some to be a bit more challenging sauce because it has a tendency to split. Beurre blanc or butter sauce goes well with many vegetables and lean meats and is especially delicious in fish recipes and seafood recipes.

In this lesson, we will show you how to prepare a basic beurre blanc. You will learn how to serve and hold beurre blanc and how to fix it if it happens to split. Finally, we will show you how to vary this elegant sauce to make many other delicious sauces.

How to cut, dice, slice or mince anything with a chef's knife is one of the most important cooking skills you can learn. This video teaches how to cut any type of onion.

This instructional cooking video on What is Roux? , is part of the Rouxbe Cooking School.

This cooking video is taken from the lesson on
How to Make Roux.

This instructional cooking video on Intro to How to Make Bechamel Sauce, is part of the Rouxbe Cooking School.

This cooking video is taken from the lesson on
How to Make Béchamel Sauce.

This instructional cooking video on One-Pot Method for Making Bechamel, is part of the Rouxbe Cooking School.

This cooking video is taken from the lesson on
How to Make Béchamel Sauce.

This instructional cooking video on Deglazing Pan Sauces, is part of the Rouxbe Cooking School.

This cooking video is taken from the lesson on
How to Make Pan Sauce.

Smooth and silky velouté simply consists of roux and stock. Many different sauces and dishes can be created from this classic, French mother sauce.

Just a few simple ingredients: olive oil, onion, garlic, quality tomato paste and tomatoes make up this healthy and very flavourful sauce.

Pork tenderloin medallions are pan fried until tender and golden. They are smothered with a rich morel cream sauce that has a hint of Calvados.

Pan-seared scallops served with truffle beurre blanc make up this elegant and sexy appetizer.

An elegant, yet simple dish. Pan-fried beef tenderloin is served with a delicious sauce made with shallots, red wine and dark chicken stock.

Classic beurre blanc infused with pink peppercorns. Serve over pan-fried tilapia or any other type of white fish.

All canned tomatoes are not created equal. Many cans contain preservatives and a lot of salt. Here we will show you how to choose the best canned tomatoes so you can enjoy the best tomato flavor.

To simmer is a cooking technique in which foods are cooked in a hot liquid which is kept just below the boiling point but above the poaching temperature range.

Emince is a culinary term referring to a type of knife cut that means to thinly slice.

Once you have learned how to make stock, it is easy to reduce. By simply reducing any stock down before storing or freezing it, you will not only concentrate the flavors and thicken the liquid, you will speed up the reduction time later when adding it to a pan sauce or other recipe. Reducing a stock also saves storage space, as water can be added to expand the stock to its original volume during cooking.