Sauce 1 – Velouté Sauce

Velouté is a base for many popular soups and sauces. This recipe will make around 1 quart of sauce. These are the basic instructions:

Ingredients:

4 tablespoons butter or margarine (preferably clarified)
7 ¼ tablespoons flour
5 cups white stock, cold (chicken, veal, fish, or vegetable)

Directions:

Mix the flour and butter over medium heat in a heavy sauce pan. Cook, stirring frequently, until you’ve made a blond roux. Gradually whisk in COLD stock, stirring constantly to avoid clumps. Bring to a boil then reduce to simmer. Simmer until mixture is reduced to 4 cups (approximately 20 minutes). Strain, if necessary.

Notes:
There’s no need to season velouté… this sauce is a base for other sauces so it should be seasoned according to the small or compound sauce specifications.

Bercy Sauce

The Bercy sauce, named after a district in the east of Paris, is a finished sauce for fish and seafood dishes. It’s made by reducing white wine and chopped shallots and then simmering in a basic fish velouté. This recipe will make about 1 pint of sauce.
Ingredients

1 pint fish velouté
¼ cup white wine
2 tablespoons chopped shallots
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
1 tablespoon butter or margarine
Lemon juice, to taste

Directions:

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, combine the wine and shallots. Heat until the liquid boils, lower the heat a bit and continue simmering until the liquid has reduced by a little more than half. Add the velouté, then lower heat to a simmer and reduce for about 5 minutes. Stir in the butter and chopped parsley. Season to taste with lemon juice and serve right away.

Sauce Normandy

The Normandy Sauce is a classical sauce for fish and seafood made by flavouring a fish velouté with chopped mushrooms and then thickening it with a mixture of egg yolks and heavy cream called a liaison (click here for information on liaisons). This recipe will make about 2 cups of sauce.

Ingredients:

2 cups fish velouté
¼ cup fish stock
½ cup chopped mushrooms
½ cup heavy cream (or non-dairy creamer)
2 egg yolks
1½ tablespoons butter or margarine

Directions:

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, melt 1 Tbsp of butter and sauté the mushrooms until soft, about 5 minutes. Add the velouté and the fish stock to the mushrooms. Bring to a boil, then lower heat to a simmer and reduce by about one-third. In a stainless steel or glass bowl, beat together the cream and egg yolks until smooth. This egg-cream mixture is called a liaison. Slowly add about a cup of the hot velouté into the liaison, whisking constantly so that the egg yolks don’t curdle from the heat. Now gradually whisk the warm liaison back into the velouté. Bring the sauce back to a gentle simmer for just a moment, but don’t let it boil. Strain, swirl in the remaining butter and serve right away.

Sauce Allemande

The Allemande Sauce (which is also sometimes called “German Sauce”) is a finished sauce made by thickening a veal velouté with a mixture of egg yolks and heavy cream called a liaison. This recipe will make about 2 cups of sauce.

Ingredients:

2 cups veal velouté
¼ cup heavy cream (or non-dairy creamer)
1 egg yolk
Kosher salt and freshly ground white pepper, to taste
Lemon juice, to taste

Directions:

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, heat the velouté over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil, then lower heat to a simmer and reduce for about 5 minutes or until the total volume has reduced by about a cup. In a stainless steel or glass bowl, beat together the cream and egg yolk until smooth. This egg-cream mixture is your liaison. Slowly add about a cup of the hot velouté into the liaison, whisking constantly so that the egg yolk doesn’t curdle from the heat. Now gradually whisk the warm liaison back into the velouté. Bring the sauce back to a gentle simmer for just a moment, but don’t let it boil. Season to taste with Kosher salt, white pepper and lemon juice. Strain and serve right away.

Sauce Suprême

The Suprême Sauce is a finished sauce made by enriching a chicken velouté sauce with heavy cream. This recipe will make about 1 quart of sauce.

Ingredients:

1 quart chicken velouté
1 cup heavy cream or non-dairy creamer
1 tablespoon butter or margarine
Kosher salt and freshly ground white pepper, to taste
Lemon juice, to taste

Directions:

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, gently heat the heavy cream to just below a simmer, but don’t let it boil. Cover and keep warm. Heat the velouté in a separate saucepan over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil, then lower heat to a simmer and reduce for about 5 minutes or until the total volume has reduced by about a cup. Stir the warm cream into the velouté and bring it back to a simmer for just a moment. Stir in the butter, season to taste with Kosher salt and white pepper and just a dash of lemon juice. Strain through cheesecloth and serve right away.

Mother Sauces – Day 1

So thanks to last Friday’s post about pasta, it got me thinking about sauces. There are literally thousands of different types out there, but there is a root to most of them. What is this root? The Mother Sauces – five classic french sauces that act as the base for an unbelievable amount of variations. So this week, I will be going through each of the Mother Sauces, and giving you the recipe for the main sauce and some of the variations off of it. This is in no way a complete listing of each sauce’s potential, as there are both classic variations and those that are being created as we speak (or type or read, you get the idea).

Today’s sauce is the Velouté (veh-loo-tay) and it is one of the five mother sauces of classical cuisine. It can be made with any white stock, but the most common version is the chicken velouté, which is made with chicken stock. There’s also a veal velouté and a fish velouté. Note that the velouté is not itself a finished sauce — that is to say, it isn’t typically served as is. You could, however, simply season it with salt and pepper and use it much as you would a basic gravy. All the chicken and turkey gravies your mom or grandma made would fall into the velouté category, along with these sauces:

• Bercy = shallots + white wine + fish stock + velouté + butter + parsley
• Normandy = fish stock + fish velouté + mushrooms + liaison
• Allemande = veal/chicken velouté + liaison
• Suprême = chicken velouté + cream

Check out today’s recipes to get the details on the variations above! And tomorrow’s sauce? Béchamel!