Stocks and sauces

Stock

Bones or vegetables, aromatics (onion, carrot, celery), cold water, the barest simmer, and time: four hours for chicken, longer for beef, forty-five minutes for vegetable. Skim the foam, never boil it, strain it, cool it fast. Freeze it in ice-cube trays and quart bags. Stock is what makes a homemade soup taste like a restaurant soup, and it is nearly free.

Store-bought is fine. Low-sodium, so you control the salt.

The pan sauce

After you sear meat, the pan is full of brown stuck-on bits. That is the fond, and it is concentrated flavor. Pour off most of the fat, add a shallot or garlic for thirty seconds, then deglaze: pour in a splash of wine, stock or even water and scrape with a wooden spoon until the pan is clean. Let it reduce by half. Off the heat, swirl in a knob of cold butter until it is glossy. Season, add a squeeze of lemon or a few herbs, and pour it over the meat you just rested. Ninety seconds, and it works for chicken, pork, steak and fish.

The five mother sauces

French cooking sorts sauces into five families, and almost every sauce you have ever eaten belongs to one. You do not need to make them all. You need to recognize them, because then every new sauce is just a variation.

• Béchamel: milk thickened with a roux (butter and flour). Mac and cheese, lasagna, gratins.
• Velouté: stock thickened with a roux. The base of pot pie filling and a hundred gravies.
• Espagnole: brown stock, roux and tomato, reduced. The ancestor of every rich brown sauce and demi-glace.
• Tomato: tomatoes, aromatics, fat, time. The red sauce on this site is one.
• Hollandaise: egg yolk and warm butter whisked into an emulsion. Béarnaise is hollandaise with tarragon.

Emulsions

Fat and water do not mix until you force them to, and the result is creamy. Vinaigrette (oil into vinegar, whisked), mayonnaise (oil into egg yolk, slowly), beurre blanc (cold butter into a reduction, piece by piece) and hollandaise are all the same trick. The rules: add the fat slowly, keep whisking, and keep the temperature steady. If it splits, start a fresh base and whisk the broken sauce into it.

Reduce, thicken, finish

• Reduction: simmer a liquid until it is less. Flavor concentrates and it coats a spoon. Patience, not thickener.
• Roux: equal butter and flour cooked together, then liquid whisked in. Pale for white sauces, cooked darker for gumbo.
• Slurry: cornstarch stirred into cold water, added to a simmering sauce. Fast, glossy, good for stir-fries.
• Finish with the method: a knob of butter or a drizzle of good oil for body, a pinch of sugar if it is sharp, lemon or vinegar for brightness. Taste. Then salt.

When it goes wrong

The sauce split and looks oily

It got too hot, or the fat went in too fast. Start a fresh base and whisk the broken sauce into it, a little at a time.

Lumps in a white sauce

The liquid hit the roux too fast. Whisk hard, or strain it. Next time add the liquid a splash at a time.

Too thin

Simmer it longer. If you’re out of time, use a slurry.

Too salty

It was salted before it reduced. Salt at the end, and thin it with unsalted stock.

Cloudy stock

It boiled. Hold a bare simmer and skim the foam.