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Gentlemen, lend me your sauce.
MegaMan001
CRNARochester, MNRegistered User regular
CRNARochester, MNRegistered User regular
After recently moving out, I've put it to my mind to eat healthy and work out. One thing I've been exploring is stir fry, various pastas, grilled chicken, and steamed vegetables. Things have been going well, but one thing I'm having trouble is creating nice sauces. I was checking out side dishes at the grocery store, mostly misc. vegetables / rice / pasta with sauces, but was dismayed to see the levels of sodium in those things. Now, they're not all that complicated, basically a rice / vegetable / pasta with some measure of sauce on the top. It shouldn't be too difficult to recreate.
So my question to you all, what sauces do you enjoy? Garlic butter sauces on vegetables or pasta? Herb creamy sauces for pastas?
So my question to you all, what sauces do you enjoy? Garlic butter sauces on vegetables or pasta? Herb creamy sauces for pastas?
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* tablespoons butter
* 2 tablespoons flour
* 1 cup milk
* salt
* white or black pepper
PREPARATION:
Melt butter in a saucepan over low heat; stir in flour. Stir and cook for about 2 minutes. Do not brown. Gradually stir in milk and continue cooking over low heat, stirring constantly, until sauce begins to thicken.
There's your basic white sauce. The salt and pepper called for it are your decision, I usually use a pinch of both. You can use it for just about anything, veggies, pastas, meats, whatever.
I'm also fond of using a standard veloute (stock) with some low sodium chicken stock or homemade fish stock (just ask a local butcher for the bones from larger fish like salmon and then boil them down), a touch of flour and butter and salt and pepper to taste. I typically mix that with some white wine or a light sherry and some lemon juice as a sauce for for seared salmon or tuna steak, but it would also work as a light pasta sauce.
Sorry for not giving any exact recipies, I tend to play things by ear when cooking. Which can sometimes backfire, but usually works out pretty good.
(note: I roomed with a sous-chef for awhile, hence the lingo)
~ Buckaroo Banzai
tomato sauce is fairly simple, the key is a little sweet red wine.
a good stir fry sauce is as follows. crushed garlic, dark soy sauce, rice wine vinnager, seseme seed oil, honey, crushed red pepper, black pepper, hoison sauce.
a good rahm sauce is as follows. melt some butter, saute with it shallots, mushrooms and peppercorns. when its good and sauted, add in a good bit of brandy light on fire and cook the alchohol out letting it move. add preferable a good brown sauce, but stock will do. if youre using just stock, also add in some sort of thickener. a roux will do nicely,to make a roux, in a seperate pan, just cook one parts flour and one parts butter till the flour cooks and you have a paste. add the roux to the sauce,at the end add heavy cream and presto.
I put a hotsauce, Cholula, on basically everything. See if you can find it at a dennys or ihop. Its perfect, for me.
As far as vegetables, you dont need a sauce really. Just put them in a bowl while still hot with a little bit of butter, salt, and pepper and swirl it around.
For pasta I love making white onion cream sauce. Basically saute onions until cooked, put in some stock. Reduce down to half or a fourth. Then add some cream to thicken it a little bit more and give it color, then salt and white pepper till taste. But seriously. That sauces book will guide you.
One that is dry aged (parmigiana reggiano, romano pecorino, etc...), or one that has had a most of the whey pressed out of it. They are better for melting down and going into sauces, as they run less of a risk of thinning the sauce out (working with softer, wetter cheeses can sometimes cause a lot of liquid to flood the sauce as it melts down forcing you to use more thickener, which can effect consistency and/or flavor), IMO.
Although if you're doing something like a lasagna or a filled pasta, then something with a lot of the whey still in it like a ricotta, mozzarella de buffala, etc... would work just fine.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
Thin/chunky sauce - For a thin or chunky tomato-based sauce (sometimes people like thin sauces for their pasta, though I'm not one of them... you can also use this as the base for a soup or even a tomato-based chili), start with a can of diced, whole, or crushed tomatoes. You can then use a blender and/or food processor to get them to the desired consistency, and add spices such as basil, cumin, chili powder, or even just pepper and salt to make a delicious and extremely simple sauce.
Thick sauce - If you're a fan of thick pasta sauces, or would like a tomato sauce for creating your own pizza/enchiladas/tomato-based curry, start with a can of tomato sauce (or even tomato paste, but that's *REALLY* thick) and add the same ingredients mentioned above.
Basil will give you a sweeter tomato sauce. Chili powder will give you a spicy one. The others can be added or adjusted to taste. It's hard to go wrong with a tomato-based sauce.
A tomato sauce will also be much healthier for you than most white/cheese based sauces, just to note.
EDIT: Also, a good thick sauce can be the beginning of an INCREDIBLE Jambalaya. You don't need to use any of the fattening components usually found in Jambalaya either (like sausage). Even just a thick tomato sauce (spicy), rice, and whatever veggies you want to throw in makes an incredible meal. Let it burn just a little bit as it cooks in the pan. Damn it's good.
Also, going to the store and reading ingredient labels may give you some ideas for your own sauces or dishes.
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Chicken soup stock also makes just about everything tasty and is significantly less retarded to eat than a cream sauce. Add a bit to your tomato sauce, add a bit to your stirfry, substitute it for some of the water when you're cooking rice. The possibilities are wide open and if you get a low fat one it's one of the healthier ways to add flavor.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
OK wait. Take diced tomatoes with cheap red wine, crushed garlic and onions with some olive oil and add that to noodles? That sounds really tasty.
EDIT: Do you drain the tomatoes first?
I bet it'd depend on how soggy you like it. Some people (God help them) like soggy sauce.
Personally, I like mine THICK. my fork should stand up in it. If you're like me, you'd drain it... or even drain it, press it, and drain it again.
But it definitely sounds like a tasty sauce. And I second the "cream sauce isn't healthy" comment. May be tasty, but you can't count it in the healthy bin.
I love thick sauce, is there any trick to 'thickening up' a sauce?
Also, never doubt the power of a potato masher and a couple of diced tomatoes.
If you're going to add other herbs, like basil or oregano, when you add should be determined on whether they're fresh or not. If they're not, you can get away with adding them early. If they're fresh, dice them and only add them after you've finished cooking. Stir them into the still simmering sauce, remove it from the heat, and let it sit for a minute. You'll lose a lot of flavor otherwise.
And invest in a box of kosher salt. It's the best tasting salt by far and you can add it to everything. Including this sauce.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
Take a pan, pot, whatever. Put some fresh chopped garlic, shallots, onion, or whatever you'd like in there over a medium-low heat. Get them nice and brown (especially the garlic, because if your garlic is undercooked, it can make for a very bitter sauce).
Then add A wine that you would drink. It doesn't have to be expensive or anything, but you should enjoy the taste of it by itself (this is also a great excuse to go out and try more wine!). Also, avoid cooking wines. They are usually crap (and oversalted). Add a couple cups of it to the pot (for higher quality wines, you can use less), and bring it to a low boil, then reduce it to a gentle simmer (this helps cook the alcohol flavor out of the wine). Add Salt and Pepper to taste. If it is really acidic when you taste it, then you can add fruit to compensate. If it is not acidic, then don't bother, unless you want to, I guess.
*Once the wine has reduced to the point you want it (you can figure this out by tasting it - if you enjoy the concentration of flavor, then it's good), then you can add some stock (go for good quality stock here, it can make-or-break the sauce), depending on what you're using the sauce for - Beef stock for beef, chicken stock for chicken, fish stock for fish, etc. Not really rocket surgery there. Add a ladle or two of it to start, let it reduce for a minute, and taste to see if you're happy. Season to your likings here, too.
Now, this is where it gets neat. You can add different things at pretty much any step in the process. Usually, if you're adding herbs (Thyme, Rosemary, Bay Leaves), you add them at the end of the process (as Pheezer said), let them simmer with the sauce for a minute or two, then strain them out. Always try to use fresh herbs, as they have approximately 300 trillion times more flavor than the dried stuff (and they are easier to get out). You can add veggies like carrots, celery, peppers, broccoli, etc, to the sauce itself. Want it sweetened? Add some sugar! There is a lot of room for exploration with this guy.
Then pour it over whatever you want, and eat it. Not only will it be a delicious sauce, but it is pretty healthy, too.
*This part is optional, you don't need a stock, but it adds a wonderful dimension to the flavor
Also, know your cheap wines, they'll save you a lot of money when you start cooking with wine. If you're up here in Canada, I recommend Nero (red, cabernet sauvignon I believe) and Sola Nero (white) for cooking or also for getting drunk if you're a wino.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
If you have a wine store nearby somewhere, just ask them what they'd recommend for a cheaper cooking wine, or just ask around with friends/family for what they consider a decent, cheap wine you can get there.
There are a few things you can do to get accustomed to wines, just like you would get accustomed to coffee, tea, or beer. First, I recommend a sweet blush wine, like a White Znfandel. Safeway usually sells a huge bottle of Sutter Home White Zinfandel for under ten bucks and it was a great introduction to wine for me, though I can hardly stand the sweetness of it now.
For any of the wines you drink you can water then down by adding water or adding ice cubes. This is mostly for reds which tend to be more bitter than white and it helps you become accustomed to the taste. The ice has a numbing affect on the tongue similar to bar drinks which poor hard alcohol directly over ice to decrease the tongues ability to taste the booze. Just float a few on top of a full glass of wine and as you drink the glass the taste will get stronger. After doing this a few times you should be able to enjoy the wine undiluted.
Of course other people may have better ideas...
And you all have really good sauce ideas, I shall go home and attempt to make some of them!
One can of Campbell's condensed Cream of chicken, celery or perhaps, mushroom. (if you're making a large enough quantity, don't be afraid to mix two of those.) If you're trying to be careful about sodium, see if you can't find equivalent products that are low in sodium. Just remember that this is easier if you start with condensed soups, as the reduction step is much shorter.
White wine (I would recommend something dry, and not oaked. Dry Riesling or something Sauvignon Blanc-based would work well.)
A couple of cloves of garlic (in this case, you're not looking for a heavy garlic flavor. You could even skip the garlic, especially if it's already present in the condensed soups you're using)
A few Shallots / green onions: this has a "fresher" flavor than plain old onions, which works well for our purposes.
Parsley, to taste
Thyme, to taste
Olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste.
In a saucepan, heat up enough olive oil to coat the bottom. Cook the shallots and garlic until they turn transparent and start to brown. Immediately pour in some wine, about a cup's worth (you gotta do this by eye.) Let the wine soak up all the flavor from your shallots and garlic, and let the alcohol boil out. This only takes a few minutes.
Pour in your condensed cream of whatever you picked. (When combining, I've found that chicken and celery taste great once mixed with the white wine.)
Add in the parsley and thyme. Add in any other herbs you feel might work. For instance, sage tastes great with turkey and chicken.
Just mix everything and let it simmer until it has the consistency you're looking for. If it's too thick, add some more white wine, and let it simmer to cook the alcohol out.
In particular, this tastes great on something that's called, in French, "Coq au porc", meaning it's a piece of pork (usually fillet, but any piece that could also be used in a roast works) wrapped in chicken breasts, sometimes wrapped in bacon. When served with white pasta, rice, or mashed potatoes, the sauce tastes great on that as well.
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Another type of seasoning that's already mixed and can be the basis for all sorts of sauces: pesto! There's your basic pesto, which is essentially basil, parmesan or romano cheese and olive oil (anyone who knows better, please correct me, here, I may be missing one crucial ingredient!)
There are other types of pesto. I've had pretty good success with a sun-dried tomato pesto I use, for instance.
If you're making a tomato-based sauce, you could do a lot worse than to replace plain old tomato juice with V8 or some other vegetable juice mix. Clamato works great here, too, and it mixes well with the sun-dried tomato pesto I just mentioned.
Lastly, if you want to make things spicy, but keep some measure of control, I recommend using Frank's Red Hot sauce: it's not as hot or concentrated as Tabasco (my own experiences tell me it takes about four drops of Frank's to approximate the hotness of one drop of Tabasco) so it's easier to control the amount you're putting in. You'll also get to taste its actual flavor more.
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Garlic. And sometimes pine nuts, though I usually prefer it without pine nuts.
White Zin is a good way of easing your way into the wine world, though you'll want to be careful not to get too used to the sweetness. The stuff is basically alcoholic sugar water. A step up (and it's a very small step) would be to move onto Yellowtail, which is basically the Coca Cola of the wine world. As far as white wines go, German rieslings are also very easy to drink, but you'd probably want to avoid using them in sauces as their natural sugar concentration increases as you go up in quality. (Unless you want some sweetness in your sauce, of course.)
I did a stint as a wine salesman, and the most success I've had in getting people to open up to red wine was having them taste the big new world red zins and shiraz's from Australia and California. Plus the QPR for good new world reds from those areas is very easy on the wallet (10-20 bucks can get you some nice ones), so you can get some complex flavors into your sauce while enjoying some quality wine. Though if that's still outside of your budget range for a throwaway cooking wine, 4-buck chuck from Trader Joes is actually better wine than people give credit for.
I'll second that pinot grigio recommendation for a cooking white wine. Light, crisp, fruity, hint of sugar, and you can buy them magnum size for 8-10 bucks. And if you want to avoid oakiness, stay the hell away from California chardonnays.