If you're serious about taking your cooking to the next level, mastering the art of sauce making is a must.
In fact, one of the biggest divides between the amateur and professional chef comes from the latter's ability to make a multitude of amazing sauces that can elevate a dish to the next level.
Anyone with a good probe thermometer and a little practice can pan roast or grill a steak mid-rare, but the accompanying sauce that transforms that steak into a high end entree seems like a daunting task to the uninitiated.
To learn sauces, you must first start at the beginning, and understand the framework laid out in western culinary schools today; The Five French Mother Sauces.
Admittedly, these five mother sauces and their derivatives are extremely old school, and their popularity has been in steady decline for a few decades. But this doesn't mean they're useless, or understanding them is a waster of time.
In the above video, I give you an overview of the Five French Mother Sauces. This video will serve as a jumping off point for the next lecture in this series; my technique based approach to sauce making that when combined with flavor structure, will allow you to make any sauce you could ever imagine.
Watch The First Two Videos In This Series
An Introduction to Flavor Structure
The Secrets of Salt Explained
The Five French Mother Sauces | The Mother of All Resources
Stella Culinary's original mother sauce resource page. This simple page organizes the mother sauces by hierarchy, allowing you to break down the base, thickening agent, secondary sauces, seasoning, and recipe of each mother at a glance.