Sauces play an integral and central role in home cooking, and it’s a good idea to therefore make sure that you have some of the most essential ones under your belt. As long as you do that, it’s going to make so many dishes easier to make, and the end results are going to be significantly more delicious as well. With that in mind, we are going to take a look at some of the sauces that you could try at home, particularly if you enjoy French and Italian cuisine. These sauces can be used in a variety of dishes that will be sure to please your family and guests.
White (Bechamel) Sauce
This is one of the fundamental sauces in cooking, and once you know how to make this you are going to be in a better place with regard to making so many meals. It starts by melting some butter in a pan over a low temperature. Once it is melted, stir in a tablespoon or two of flour. Cook that for one or two minutes at most, and then you can start adding your milk. Add it in slowly, whisking as you go, until you have enough for the desired consistency.
Then you need to season it, add perhaps a little grated nutmeg, and leave it to cool slightly, whereupon it will thicken to the appropriate texture. Then it’s ready to use in whatever way you are using it. Done right, it’s a very creamy and delicious sauce, and one with many applications.
Spaghetti Sauce
Having a good spaghetti sauce under your belt is definitely a good idea too. This is usually a kind of bolognese, and that’s a great sauce to know well so that you can incorporate it into a lot of meals, from chilies to lasagne and beyond. A simple spaghetti sauce can be thrown together with just some mince, tomatoes, and the right herbs and seasoning. Beyond that, there are all kinds of things you can do to get your sauce just right, and you can of course alter it depending on the final dish that you are making it for.
For an easy spaghetti sauce that is nonetheless quite delicious, you might want to use spaghetti noodles to serve. This can help with capturing the texture of the sauce, and it makes a huge difference to the final product.
Hollandaise
This is another sauce, like the bechamel above, that is a really essential part of the chef’s utility belt. Again, it’s very simple, but it can be hard to master. Nonetheless, as long as you work hard to perfect it, you are going to find that the results can be truly amazing, so that is something that you might want to bear in mind here.
So how do you actually make a hollandaise sauce? Melt a little butter in a saucepan, and then keep it warm. Meanwhile, put some egg yolks, white wine, and a little salt with some ice-cold water in a bowl, and whisk it all up together. Put the bowl over a simmering pan of water, and whisk for around 5 minutes without stopping.
Then remove from the heat and whisk in the melted butter slowly and carefully. You then have your hollandaise sauce, and now you just need to season it with a dash of lemon juice and some cayenne pepper, if you like. And there you have it – a truly delicious sauce.
Parsley Sauce
Parsley sauce is not as well known as the others on this list, but it’s actually quite a simple and comforting sauce to pair with dishes. To make it, you again need to start by melting some butter in a pan and then mixing it with some flour. Then you continue with wishing in milk, as you would for the white sauce above.
Once that is done, it’s then just a case of adding in some parsley to finish it off. And there you have a delicious parsley sauce that you can use for a roast or for many other occasions. It’s very simple and really delicious, so it’s definitely a good one to know about if you don’t already.
Those are some of the main sauces that you should learn how to make. As long as you have those figured out, you are already going to feel like much more of an accomplished cook.
