Chef Advice

March 15 2018

What is Mother Sauce?

A Guide To The Five Mother Sauces Every Cook/Chef Should Know

What is mother sauce you ask. In this post we will take a look at what are the five mother sauces used in classical french cuisine. We will also take a look at the three types of roux used in the making of some of these sauces. This, I hope will give you an idea of what is mother sauce, how mother sauces are used and the wide range of recipes that can be made using these 5 foundation sauces.

During my time in culinary college the majority of our learning was based around french cuisine. Learning basic recipes like the delicious Croque Monsieur to more advanced recipes with rich flavorful sauces. From the very beginning of our training emphasis was placed on learning the five mother sauces. So, what is Mother Sauce?

Mother Sauces

In the 19th century the renowned French chef Mari-Antoine Carême began to organise sauces into groups based on four foundation sauces. It was later on the Chef Auguste Escoffier added one more sauce to the list and codified these recipes in his masterpiece Le Guide Culinaire.

Almost every Chef learns some, if not all of these five mother sauces when the begin their career, as these sauces are the foundation for a huge range of culinary dishes. Some of these sauces will be very familiar to you while others are less known and often less used.

The key ingredient in most of these sauces is the roux. To become a sauce you first have to thicken a liquid to the required consistency so that the liquid sticks to the food. This can be achieved by reducing the liquid until it thickens naturally or you can add some form of starch; that’s where the roux comes in.

The roux is made by cooking equal parts fat and flour by weight together. By cooking the flour in fat you cook out some of the raw flour taste and add flavour as well as a thickening agent to your sauce. The more you cook the flour the more flavour you get, but this also has the effect of reducing the thickening properties of the roux. In french cuisine there are three types of roux.

Three Types Of Roux

Depending on the sauce you are making you will be required to make one of the following roux:

White Roux – This is the first stage of cooking the fat and flour. The fat and flour are cooked lightly together for 2 to 3 minutes to cook out some of the flour taste. Cooking it for a short period of time retains the white colour and this is the visual guide you need to remember when making a white roux.
Blond Roux – By cooking the roux past the white stage for another 2 to 3 minutes you will get what is referred to as a blond roux. This is when the flour starts to caramelise giving the roux a light brown or sandy colour. This adds a little bit more flavour compared to the white roux and is used for various sauces.
Brown Roux – This is the final stage where the roux is cooked on a low to medium heat until it reaches a rich brown, almost red colour. This roux has more flavour than the previous two but has a little less thickening properties.

A roux is the base for most of the mother sauces and it is important when cooking the sauce that the correct roux is used to ensure you get the best flavour as well as texture in your sauce. So now that you know about the importance of the roux we can move onto answer what are mother sauces.

The Five Mother Sauces

Béchamel: This is made by first making a white roux then adding milk and aromats to create a thick, white sauce which is not overpowering but rather delicate in flavour. This sauce can then be used to make a number of other variations of sauces such as a mornay sauce, parsley/persil sauce, mustard sauce and more.

Velouté: This sauces requires the cook/chef to first make a blond roux then this is mixed together with a rich flavorful stock such as fish stock, veal stock, beef stock or any other clear stock. This sauce creates a light and silkily smooth sauce but can also be use as the base for a number of soup recipes such as a thick rich cream of chicken soup.

Espagnole: Cooking a brown roux then combining it with a rich brown beef or veal stock, brown mirepoix of vegetables and tomato puree. This sauce is the foundation of the classic french dish, boeuf bourguinon and is also used to make a very rich and delicious demi-glace.

Sauce Tomat: This classic sauce is similar to your regular Italian tomato sauce but it tends to have a more rich and deeper flavour. This sauce is made cooking tomatoes with aromatic vegetable and is classically thickened with a blond roux. More often in modern cooking the roux is left out as reducing the tomatoes will thicken the sauce enough while increasing the flavour.

Hollandaise: This is the one mother sauce that does not require the use of a roux to thicken. Instead, this sauce is thickened by making an emulsion of egg yolks and clarified butter. This sauce is very delicate and can be difficult to make as the process of bringing together two liquids into a stable state which don’t want to combine can be tricky. With a little practice this recipe can easily be mastered and can be used for coating vegetables such as asparagus to making the classic breakfast/brunch dish, eggs Benedict.

These are the five classic sauces which once learned can open up a whole range of recipes to the home cook or professional chef. They are the foundation for classic french cuisine but are also used in a wide variety of recipes that most would be familiar with such as lasagna and macaroni and cheese.

I hope you found this information informative and that I answered the question, what is mother sauce. Keep an eye out on my blog over the coming weeks for recipes on how to make a variation of sauces using some of these classic mother sauces.

Visit my Blog for some recipes and check out my recommended recipe books for more information.

Cheers.

February 22 2018

My Top Five List of Kitchen Items

List of Kitchen Items That Will Improve Your Time In The Kitchen

Learning to cook is one of those journeys that can develop into a deep love and passion. Gathering and cooking recipes and creating meals help build memories of spending precious time with loved ones around the kitchen table that last a lifetime. To make the process of cooking these meals a little bit easier I have created my top 5 list of kitchen items I would highly recommend everyone to have. This list of kitchen items I use regularly at home and they help speed up the preparation and cooking of meals so that I can spend more time with my family. The list below includes some recommendation on products that I find to be cost effective as well as fitting the purpose they are required for. I hope you find this list of kitchen items of use.

Stir Fry Pan

In my home this is probably the most used pan in the house. The design of the pan allows for easy stir frying but also the deep design holds a good amount of liquid. The bowl design shape of the ban distribute heat over a greater space so this is great to reduce liquids such as sauces. A stir fry pan is great for one pot cooking and this is one of the reasons I recommend this as one of the first items a person should purchase. Combined with a lid this pot become a multi tool in your kitchen and allows you to reduces sauces very fast or cook on low with the lid on for longer cooking.

Recommended Equipment: Stainless Steel Stir Fry Pan

Kitchen Hand Blender

A kitchen hand blender has multiples of uses in the kitchen and is something I regularly use in my kitchen at home. It is fantastic for blitzing soups and pureeing vegetables. This became an invaluable tool when my children were young and I preferred to make all our baby food from home. It is easy to use and you can put it directly into a pot of soup take off the heat to puree before finishing it off.

Recommended Equipment: KitchenAid Classic Hand Blender

Instant Read Meat Thermometer

For ease of mind when cooking a instant read meat thermometer is a valuable tool in the home kitchen. My wife is always concerned about the temperatures of meat and having a instant read thermometer to hand always gives her peace of mind. As a chef we can build skills up over time of knowing by time and feel if meat is cooked to the required temperature. An instant read meat thermometer cuts out the guess work and lets you cook the meat to correct temperature.

Recommended Equipment: Alpha Grillers: Meat Thermometer

Cast Iron Casserole/Dutch Oven

This one is an investment but one of the best you will make. A cast iron pot is something that will last a number of lifetimes if taken care of and can be passed on to family members after years of use. The heavy cast iron design holds heat incredibly well so you get even heat distribution when cooking. A cast iron pot can be used for cooking low and slow as it holds heat much better than other pots and is oven friendly. I regularly use a cast iron pot for slow cooking beef strews and even baking bread. Bread baked in a cast iron pot is just amazing and has to be tried to be believed.

Recommended Equipment: Enameled Cast Iron Dutch Oven

Food Processor

I’m a big fan of appliances that can be used for multiples of tasks to ensure the space they take up is wisely used and that they make many tasks easier and fast. A food processor is one tool in the kitchen that makes many jobs extremely easy and helps you save time. It can be used for bulk chopping of vegetables to speed up prep time for your weekly cooking needs to preparing dough’s for pastas and breads. A food processor is the next step up from the hand blender. It allows you to create a wider range of recipes such as healthy dips, sauces, stuffings, ice creams, sauces as well as cutting down the time on making various dough’s. It will really speed up your time spent in the kitchen if you have a busy hectic lifestyle.

Recommended Equipment: Cuisinart Food Processor

These are a list of kitchen items I think every home cook looking to improve their cooking skills or expand their cookery skills should invest in. As a home cook you want to be making the best use of your time in the kitchen as possible and I hope these items help you cook much better meals while giving you more time outside of the kitchen.

Don’t forget to check out some of my recipes and tips on my Blog.

February 8 2018

What Is The Best Kitchen Knife?

Kitchen Knives Buying Guide

What is the best kitchen knife? Here is my Kitchen Knives Buying Guide for all you budding home cooks and learner chefs.

As a chef your knife is your best friend. If you don’t treat your knife with care and respect then it can, and often will hurt you. With this in mind it is extremely important that when you are buying a kitchen knife for home use, you put a bit of thought into it.

Among many of the questions I am asked as a chef some of the most often asked are:

What knives to I need in my kitchen?
What is the best kitchen knife?
Do I have to spend a huge amount of money to get a really good knife?
Would I be better to buy a kitchen knife set?

In the following post I hope to answer the question, What is the best kitchen knife. I will also explain to you what knife/knives I would recommend for home use in every kitchen in my quick kitchen knives buying guide.

What Knives Do I Need In My Kitchen?

As a chef we are constantly making use of a wide range of knives. Each knife we use has been designed for a particular purpose, like a flexible fish knife for skinning fish or a flexible boning knife that allows us to get close to the bone and reduce wastage.

For the average home cook most of these knives would just end up sitting in a drawer with other odds and ends taking up space (yep, I have one of those drawers too) or used for jobs that they were never intended.

I always tell my friends and family that they only ever need to have three knives in their kitchen to cover every job that comes their way. The advice I give to them is always the same, that there is no need to be buying knife sets for the kitchen with 12 knives in a butchers style block. These knives may look nice, fit in with the style of your kitchen but they do a rubbish job when it comes to using them.

Forget the cleavers, butchers knife and fish knife. They may be fun to have but you won’t get much use out of them. All you need in your kitchen are these three knives which will do all the jobs and you need and you will use them every time you cook in your kitchen.

The three knives I always recommend are a 8 or 10 inch chefs knife, a 3.25 inch paring knife and a serrated 10 or 12 inch bread knife. These are the only knives you will need and they are the only knives I ever use when cooking at home.

Chef Knife

What is the best kitchen knife? It would have to be the Chef Knife. This is your go to knife. Out of all the three knives this is the knife you will use the most and is probably the first one you should aim to buy. It can be used for: slicing and dicing heavy duty meats and veg, fine slicing (chiffonade) of herbs, breaking shell on crabs or bones on a rack of lamb and even for skinning a fish. This is the knife you will spend most of your time using so you need to buy one that will be comfortable, non-slip and will keep and edge for some time.

Paring Knife

This knife is also known as a utility knife. This is the knife you will use when you just want something a little more easy to use. It can be used for pealing onions and shallots, doing very fine dice, slicing fruits and vegetables and more. It give you a little bit more freedom and ease to use than the chef knife and allows you to make very find dice on veg (until you get your knife skills up on the chef knife). It a great little knife and I often use it instead of the chef knife just so I don’t have a big blade out on the kitchen counter.

Serrated Bread Knife

A serrated bread knife is again another knife that gives you multiples of uses from cutting slices of bread to carving up a chicken breast ready to plate for dinner. This knife can be used to slice tomatoes extremely thin as well as skinning a big fish (I have an old serrated knife for skinning salmon). It is a great knife and allows you to make cutting and carving meat and breads a easy task.

Best Kitchen Knives For The Money

Investing in a decent knife that will last and allow you to get the job done in a safe and efficient manner is important. Should you buy the most expensive knife available, certainly not. There are plenty of knives on the market that are used by chefs on a daily basis that won’t break the bank. As a chef it’s a dream to have a Japanese 100 layer Damascus Steel Chef knife, but as a home cook a knife like this is overkill.

The knives I always recommend are the knives I use every day, which are:

For a chef knife a 8 or 10 inch Victorinox Chef Knife

This knife is made from stamped stainless steel, is pretty light weighing in at approx 260 grams and is extremely sharp. This is a knife that not many chefs have never used. Its non slip handle allows chefs to work with this knife with ease knowing that they can get through a lot of work without having to keep drying it. Since it is made of stainless steel it is less prone to chipping, won’t rust like the more expensive high carbon knives and is easy to keep an edge.

For a paring knife again I would recommend a 3 inch Victorinox Paring knife.

This utility knife is very affordable, will last you a very long time and you will get a lot of use out of it. I always have a number of these in my knife kit because in a busy restaurant kitchen they are always going missing. I find the 3 inch blade to be easier to use over the 4 inch paring knife. It gives me more flexibility when carving and doing fine work and allows me to grip the blade better to control the knife.

A great knife that I always have out next to the bread board is my Victorinox Serrated Knife.

This knife I used for everyday tasks at home like cutting a slice of bread to the right thickness to slicing a bread of chicken on the bias for a roast dinner. It is a great knife, very sharp and has many uses.

I have used Victorinox knives for many years and have found that for the price they are a great investment. Many chefs that I have worked with have use and still use many Victorinox knives and trust that they will get the job done in a safe and quick manner.

As chefs we understand that a blunt knife is a dangerous knife so it is great to have a knife that I can trust and which will keep and edge with a little bit of love and care.

I hope I have answered the question, what is the best kitchen knife in my Kitchen Knives Buying Guide and I hope you find the right knife for you and have many years safe use.

Make sure you check out some of my recipes in my blog. These will be update hopefully twice a week and will give you some tips on how to make delicious, easy meals.

Thanks for stopping by.