How to tame the acidity of your pasta sauce
You’ve heard about how you need to add sugar to tame the acidity of your pasta sauce? Use baking soda to tame the acidity and sugar to balance acidity while maintaining it.
Sauce
Sauce
Bechamel sauce – Marco Pierre White
White is an old hand at whipping up bechamel sauce. He uses this foolproof recipe when making one of his daughter’s favourite meals, mac ‘n’ cheese. “The perfect bechamel sauce is very simple,” he says. “It’s the method that is important.” The Great White Sauce 30 g plain flour 30 g butter 50ml double cream …
Carbonarra
While you might have seen carbonara in Italian restaurants, the real deal is nothing like the one you get there. In a pan render some bacon (you can also use pancetta or guanciale) until very crispy at low heat. Strain the bacon fat off and reserve. Cook your spaghetti as usual but stop short of …
Fish Sauces
I watched him finish off a sauce by throwing in a segment of pink grapefruit and breaking it up with a whisk so the fruit infused the sauce with a perfect balance of acidity (always finish a fish sauce with citrus or vinegar). Marco Pierre White
Sauce Out of the Pan’s Brown Bits (a.k.a Fond)
In the universe of cooking, fond is the dark matter. Undetectable in a finished dish, these concentrated brown bits may seem small, but the impact they have on flavor is huge. Fond, quite simply, is the stuff that sticks to your pan after browning meat or vegetables on the stove top, or at the bottom …
Making Gravy Extra Tasty
Chef and owner Alan Cohen (aka AJ), a WCC graduate and the former owner of the Original Wedge Inn, told us the secret to his tasty and fabulous gravy. He roasts root vegetables in the pan with the turkey as many of us do. Instead of straining out the vegetables, he blends them with the …
Selecting the right pasta sauce
The longer and finer the pasta, the lighter the sauce should be. The thicker the sauce, the shorter the pasta – a chunky sauce needs a short chunky pasta.
Ketchup
Ketchup originated in China, the first recipe on record dates back to 544 A.D. It was originally a fish sauce called ke-tchup, kôechiapor kê-tsiap in Hokkien Chinese. In the early 18th century, the sauce had made it to what is now Malaysia and Singapore. The Indonesian-Malay word was kecap (pronounced “kay-chap”). English explorers took the sauce to the …
Aioli
True aioli is an emulsion created with just garlic and extra virgin olive oil. In fact, the name aioli translates to “garlic oil.” Garlic does not have strong emulsifying properties like egg yolk, so it takes a great deal of elbow grease to emulsify olive oil into the garlic, especially when using a mortar and …
Tomato sauce 2
Add a couple anchovies to boost the savoury/umami flavor (it really doesn’t make it taste fishy!) Beth Bates
Guacamole
Add lime juice to guacamole. Christopher Stanton
Tzatziki sauce
Red wine vinegar in tzatziki sauce for a depth of acid that lemons alone will not deliver. Christopher Stanton
Tomato sauce
When I make tomato sauce I add some unflavoured alcohol like vodka, to enhance the tomato flavour. Arie Litman
Seasoning a sauce
Seasoning a sauce comes at the end, if at all, and never during the process of making it. “By reducing [a sauce], it will become saltier. You can always add more salt in the end when your sauce has reached the proper consistency.” Chef Alex Ageneau of Paris Club
Saving burnt gravy
If you are making gravy and accidentally burn it, just pour it into a clean pan and continue cooking it. Add sugar a little at a time, tasting as you go to avoid over-sugaring it. The sugar will cancel out the burned taste.
Liquids
In recipes that call for milk or water, try substituting more flavourful liquids. Try adding some stock instead of water, or even the water your cooked veggies in. Sour cream, buttermilk and yoghurt make good milk substitutes. Changing up the liquids in your recipes can add nutrition, while livening up a standby dish.
Emulsification
Unless you’re looking for something specific, repackaged salad dressing is an unnecessary expense. With a few ingredients you probably have anyway and an understanding of emulsification, you can go from spending money on salad dressing to making your own healthier, tastier dressing at home. Over at Gilt Taste, you can find a detailed explanation of the …
Worcestershire sauce
Worcestershire sauce, sometimes known as “Worcester sauce” is a savoury sauce that is often added to meat and fish dishes or, if you like your alcoholic beverages, the Bloody Mary cocktail. It may (or may not depending on how much you research your sauce choices) surprise you to learn that it’s literally made from fermented …
Make pasta sauce stick
After you drain pasta, while it’s still hot, grate some fresh Parmesan on top before tossing it with your sauce. This way, the sauce has something to stick to. Giada De Laurentiis
Thickening a sauce without flour
Corn starch, potato starch, agar agar, tapioca starch, gelatin, egg yolks…the list goes on. Reduction, however, is something I must warn against. It’s not always the best option, especially if your sauce is already pretty strong. Plus, you may not have fond or protein in your sauce, and in that case, reduction will do nothing. …