The Wheeling Gourmet by Nicolas Steenhout

Sauces often make the dish. Sauces are often intimidating to novice cooks. If you understand some basic principles, you can make some really successful dishes without too much trouble.

A good sauce does not have to be complicated, although many classic French recipes seem to complicate the process tremendously.

In a classic French commercial kitchen, there would be one chef in charge of sauces. This man, the "Saucier" would often guard his secrets jealously. Well, I don't believe in secrets!

In this series I will cover some basic sauce-making techniques that you can use to build your own variations, some of the classic French sauces, and other sauce concepts.

Articles in the Sauces series:

Brown Stock

Home-made stock is simple to make, as well as cheaper and better than purchasing at the supermarket.

Monter au Beurre

Describes the classic French cooking technique used to thicken a sauce with butter.