Few ingredients, lots of taste: With these sauces, every meal will be delicious

2020-03-19T12:40:47.690Z

Especially when you don't have much in the pantry, it is difficult to cook really delicious food. These five sauces will help you a lot.

Do you love sauce with food and can't get enough of it?
With just a few basic skills, you can conjure up the perfect sauce for every dish.
Learn how to prepare the five mother sauces.

Basically there are only five basic sauces from which you can conjure up the right sauce for every dish. The idea goes back to Marie-Antoine Carme, who is said to have laid the foundation for French gastronomy. There are five basic sauces :

Béchamel
Veloute - velvet sauce
Espagnole - Spanish sauce
tomato sauce
Hollandaise

If you master these five nut sauces, you can cook the perfect sauce for every dish *. Thats how it works.

1. Béchamel

With this sauce, a classic roux is mixed with milk, creating a thick, white sauce.

You need:

25 g butter
500 ml of cold milk
30 g of flour
0.5 tsp salt
freshly grated nutmeg

How to prepare the béchamel correctly:

Melt the butter in a saucepan.

If the butter is completely liquid, stir in the flour.

Then gradually stir in the milk with a whisk until you have a creamy sauce.

Season them with salt and nutmeg.

The béchamel goes well with vegetables, eggs and chicken . For example, you can refine it with mustard and serve it with boiled eggs and potatoes . But the béchamel is also used in a lasagna and in other casseroles.

2. Velouté - velvet sauce

The base of the Velouté is also a classic roux, which is mixed with a light background.

You need:

40 g butter
40 g flour *
500 ml cold stock (veal, poultry, vegetables or fish)
Salt, pepper, lemon juice to taste

How to prepare the velouté correctly:

Melt the butter in a saucepan.

If the butter is completely liquid, stir in the flour.

Then stir in the cold stock (it must be cold so that no lumps form).

Let the resulting sauce simmer for about 20 to 30 minutes so that the starch taste of the flour disappears.

Season the sauce with salt, pepper and lemon juice. White wine and nutmeg also round off the taste.

Depending on which stock you use to prepare the velouté, it goes with different dishes: fish, poultry, veal or vegetables. It always works and can be refined as desired, so it always tastes different.

Read more: Gravy in stock - You will never run out of sauce with this tip

3. Espagnole - Spanish sauce

For the Spanish sauce, stir the dark stock into the roux. Tomato paste is also used here.

You need:

40 g butter
40 g of flour
1 l dark veal or beef stock
150 g soup vegetables (celery, carrots and onions)
1 herbal bouquet (bay leaf, parsley and thyme)
1 tbsp tomato paste
Salt pepper

How to prepare the espagnole

Cut the soup vegetables into small cubes.

Melt the butter in a saucepan and sweat the vegetable cubes in it.

Dust the vegetables with the flour.

Continue roasting the vegetables until the flour is browned.

Add the tomato paste *, stir well.

Then pour on the stock and put the bouquet of herbs in the sauce.

Let the sauce simmer without a lid for about an hour. During this time, you should reduce by about half.

Then pour the sauce through a fine sieve to remove the vegetables and herbs and season the sauce with salt and pepper.

This dark, spicy basic sauce goes well with many meat dishes and can be modified in many ways. With shallots, wild mushrooms and wine you can make a hunter's sauce out of it in no time .

4. Tomato sauce

For the tomato sauce of classic French cuisine, you only need tomatoes, tomato paste and a few ingredients that you probably always have at home.

You need:

750 g tomatoes
1 onion
1 clove of garlic
3 tbsp tomato paste
3 sprigs of basil and thyme
1 bay leaf
1 pinch of sugar
olive oil
Salt pepper

How to prepare the tomato sauce:

Quarter or halve the tomatoes.

Chop the onion and garlic finely.

Heat the olive oil in a pan and sauté the onions and garlic in it for about five minutes.

Now add the tomatoes and let them steam as well.

Add the tomato paste, herbs, salt, pepper and sugar and let the sauce simmer on low heat for about 30 to 45 minutes until it is really thick. Stir the sauce occasionally.

Then pass the sauce through a fine sieve to remove all coarse ingredients.

This sauce goes well with pasta , of course, but vegetables, veal and chicken also taste great.

Also interesting: little stock? You only need three ingredients to make the best tomato sauce in the world

5. Hollandaise

This sauce is a little more complex. You need to whip egg yolk and butter over a water bath until they emulsify creamy.

You need:

250 g butter
3 eggs
4 tbsp white wine
1 tbsp lemon juice
Salt, white pepper

How to prepare the hollandaise properly:

First clarify the butter. To do this, put them in a saucepan and let them melt over medium heat. Then let the butter simmer for about three minutes until foam settles on the surface. Warning, the butter must not brown. Skim off the foam. If the remaining butter bubbles only slightly or not at all, it is ready and you can set it aside.

Separate the eggs and put the yolks in a bowl.

Whisk the egg yolks with the white wine and lemon juice and season with a little pepper and salt.

Now bring some water to a simmer in a saucepan.

Place the bowl with the egg yolk mixture on this pot and whisk the egg mixture with a whisk. The water in the pot must not become too hot, otherwise the egg yolk will clot. Beat until the mixture becomes frothy and then creamy.

Then remove the bowl from the saucepan and whisk the clarified butter under it until it combines to form an emulsion.

Now you can taste the hollandaise again with lemon juice, salt and pepper. When it has become cold, you can briefly warm it up again using water vapor.

The hollandaise is mainly eaten with asparagus , but the fine sauce also tastes great with other vegetables, Eggs Benedict, fish and grilled meat . Always prepare the hollandaise fresh. It is not suitable for storage.

Read also: Pickle Sauerbraten yourself - This is how you succeed with heavenly sauce

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