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Ready-Made Sauce: This Is How You Refine Dishes Quickly And Easily

Roast sauce, pasta sauce, hunter’s sauce, béchamel sauce, green sauce: there is a wide variety of practical companions for your meal. This can lead to a confusion of tastes. We reveal which goes with what and how to refine ready-made sauces.

The right ready-made sauce for your dishes

Preparing the perfect sauce can be a real culinary art. Getting the ideal texture and well-rounded flavor takes time and experience. But there is another way: ready-made sauces can be prepared quickly and easily. Noodles with sauce or the roast with a fine mushroom sauce are on the table in no time at all with the help of the practical bag or canned products. If you value a healthy diet or have a food intolerance, you should take a look at the ingredients. For example, sugar is an unfavorable ingredient in diabetes. And if you don’t tolerate the gluten protein, it’s better to use the gluten-free ready-made sauce. Thanks to the variety of products, there is now the right solution for every dish and diet.

Light or dark sauce?

Most ready meals come with the sauce, so you don’t have to worry about which accompaniment goes with the dish. The situation is different if you cook fresh and only choose the dips and sauces in the finished version. A sauce for fish has a different character than a sauce for roasts. Rule of thumb: Dark, rich sauces go well with meat, while light, creamy sauces are a good choice for fish and vegetables. Both usually go well with side dishes: a light herb sauce or a mushroom sauce can be used as a ready-made sauce for rice. Tomato-based sauces are also popular here, especially with pasta dishes.

Simply refine the ready-made sauce

If you prepare a ready-made sauce, you can spice it up with simple means. A dash of red wine, some cream or a fruity addition ensures a finer taste. Poultry dishes in particular benefit from the latter – with our duck breast with sauce, for example, the sauce is rounded off with pomegranate juice. Asian dishes with rice taste delicious with exotic fruit such as mango in curry sauce. Vegetables such as asparagus or broccoli are at their best with a creamy accompaniment: the classic is the hollandaise sauce. Butter-based sauces also pair perfectly with fish fillets and white, lean meats like chicken breasts. If you simply add a piece of butter to a light ready-made sauce, you will clearly taste the refining effect.

How do you make the perfect gravy?

If you want to make gravy yourself, you first need fresh gravy, as well as meat stock, flour and fat. You will also need salt and pepper for seasoning. Save the roast juices and crusts from the Dutch oven you prepared the roast in. If you do not have enough liquid available, remove the roast stock with meat broth. The broth should match the type of meat being stewed.

Put everything in a bowl and wait until the fat has settled on the surface. Skim it off and check how much fat you have. You need the same volume of flour. Melt the fat in a pan or saucepan and sweat the flour in it over low heat.

When the roux turns brown, add the cooled meat juices or broth. Then stir everything together until you have a smooth gravy and let it simmer for another 10 to 15 minutes to cook out the floury taste. If you don’t have enough fat from the meat, you can use butter instead. Finally, season the finished gravy with salt and pepper.

You can thicken gravy with starch instead of flour. You do not have to prepare any roux for this, but mix the starch with cold liquid and only then mix it into the boiling meat broth with the fat.

If you have leftover meat bones, you can roast them in the oven at 200 degrees Celsius for around 30 minutes together with peeled, roughly chopped onions, carrots, and celery. Then add bay leaves, juniper berries, and cloves, and let the sauce and the broth simmer for 1.5 to 2 hours. From time to time, use a slotted spoon to remove the foam that forms on the surface. In this way, the gravy gets an even more intense flavor.

The gravy can be varied further, for example by stirring in tomato paste or deglazing the roux with red wine, sherry, Madeira, or cognac. In addition, you can add mushrooms or other vegetables or refine the sauce with various herbs and spices.

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Written by John Myers

Professional Chef with 25 years of industry experience at the highest levels. Restaurant owner. Beverage Director with experience creating world-class nationally recognized cocktail programs. Food writer with a distinctive Chef-driven voice and point of view.

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