What Sauce Do I Choose?

Mantry
2 min readDec 4, 2023

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If you go to culinary school you learn about the classic French “Mother Sauces”. When any chef is in a Bouchon in Lyon, France or a great French bistro they’ll geek out over some of the ancient descendants of these sauces. Blanquette de Veau or Sauce Nantua, the type of dinosaur era stuff somebody like Tony Bourdain used to swoon over…

I learned the classics but have also been cooking for 20 years at home so here’s an updated framework to work from. This is my “street smart” saucing tips I have not read anywhere else.

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First, Some Basic Cooking Theory:

Each dish will benefit from a balance of two basic profiles:

Salt, sweet, umami, sour and bitter (the 5 flavour elements).

or

Salt, fat, acid, heat.

Incorporate just a few of these elements into a dish and you’ll be eating something delicious. So for the sake of saucing…

JUST CHOOSE A SAUCE THAT ADDS ONE OF THESE ELEMENTS.

It’s Why:

- Hot Sauce (acid, heat) is good on Chicken wings (umami, salt)

- Chimichurri (acid, salt) is good on Steak (umami)

- Hollandaise (fat, acid) is good on Lox (salt)

- Nước chấm a staple of Vietnamese food is incredible (a Vietnamese dipping sauce that is made from a blend of fish sauce, water, sugar, and citrus aka salt, sugar, acid, heat)

This is just a few examples but you get the picture.

In Conclusion:

When trying to cook without recipes, THINK OF A DISH AS A PUZZLE and what major piece can a sauce add to complete the puzzle. You don’t even have to make a sauce, add sweet chilli sauce to something with acid and umami or soy sauce to something sweet and sour, or just add butter (fat) to something that has none (asparagus). All this is often why people find Mediterranean food tasty, the “sauce” is just olive oil (fat/bitter), lemon (sour/acid) and sea salt (salt).

So next time you’re cooking, try to find the missing piece of the puzzle and add it.

Happy Cooking… What are your sauce tips?

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Mantry
Mantry

Written by Mantry

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