Serves: 5

Sauces, whether a simple butter sauce, savory barbecue sauce or an extra-special bordelaise sauce, often make a dish special. They make plain dishes sing and more complex dishes dance with flavor. Sauces shouldn’t mask the other ingredients in a dish, but rather, they should enhance them. And sauces aren’t just for savory dishes. Here are some super saucy ideas:

- Mix with food: Italian Tomato Sauce layered in lasagna or White Sauce as a creamy soup base.
- Top food: Hollandaise Sauce spooned over steamed asparagus and Eggs Benedict or Pan Gravy over Garlic Mashed Potatoes.
- Serve on the side: Sweet-and-Sour Sauce with chicken kabobs or Cranberry Sauce with roast turkey.
- Pool or drizzle on a plate just like they do in restaurants, magazines and cookbooks: Fresh Tomato Sauce under a slice of Meat Loaf or Dill

Sauce under Broiled Fish Fillets.

Mixing Sauces
Lumps, be gone! To prevent lumping, use a wire whisk to mix sauces. Also, before you add flour to thicken a dish such as stew, mix it separately with a little bit of cold water first to keep the flour from clumping. The same goes for cornstarch.

A roux, a cooked mixture of fat (usually butter) and flour, is the most common way to thicken savory sauces. White Sauce, Velouté Sauce and Brown Sauce are some examples of roux-based sauces. When you’re making a roux, stir the fat-and-flour mixture as it cooks, letting it bubble before adding the liquid. That bit of cooking does away with any raw flour taste, and the sauce will thicken the way it should.

Another way to thicken sauces is with cornstarch. As they cook, cornstarch-based sauces become clear, almost shiny, so they’re perfect for sparkling
fruit sauces.

You can also thicken sauces with egg yolks, but you must cook them thoroughly, to avoid bacterial contamination, and at low temperatures, to avoid overcooking them.

Sauces will thicken by reduction, too. Reductions boil the liquid until some of it evaporates, thereby concentrating and intensifying flavors as it thickens the sauce. You can speed up reduction by using a skillet with a large surface area instead of a saucepan.

Storing and Reheating Sauces
Put leftover sauces in covered containers and refrigerate immediately. Follow storage directions given in the recipe.

When reheating sauces, use a saucepan just large enough to hold the sauce to prevent too much evaporation, and stir the sauce frequently. If the sauce starts to stick to the pan, reduce the heat, stir more frequently and/or add a little liquid.

Not all sauces can be reheated the same way--some require different temperatures.
- Unthickened sauces (barbecue sauce): Reheat to boiling over medium heat.
- Flour- or cornstarch-thickened sauces (White Sauce): Use low or medium heat.
- Egg-thickened sauces (Hollandaise Sauce): Use low heat so they won’t separate.

To reheat sauces in the microwave, a heatproof glass measuring cup works well. Choose a power setting similar to the one you’d use on the stove-top. Stir the sauce at least once during heating and again before serving.

From "Betty Crocker's Complete Cookbook, Everything You Need to Know to Cook Today, 9th Edition." Text Copyright 2000 General Mills, Inc. Used with permission of the publisher, Wiley Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

More Recipes from the Betty Crocker's Cookbook, 9th Edition Cookbook:
Apple Butter
Blueberry Freezer Jam
Brown Sauce
CONDIMENT BASICS
COOKING WITH SPICES AND SEEDS
Corn Relish
Cranberry Sauce
Cranberry-Orange Relish
Cream Cheese Spreads
Creamy Herb-Mushroom Sauce
Cucumbers and Tomatoes in Yogurt
Fajita Marinade
Fresh Tomato Sauce
Garlic Marinade
Golden Fruit Chutney
HERB CHART
Herb Vinegar
Herbed Butter Sauce
Herbed Oil
Hollandaise Sauce
Italian Tomato Sauce
Jamaican Jerk Seasoning
Lemon Curd
Lemon-Herb Marinade
Pan Gravy
Peanut Sauce
Pesto
Prune-Almond Sauce
SAUCE BASICS
SEASONING BASICS
SEASONING CHART
SEASONINGS
SEED CHART
SPICE CHART
Savory Butters
Southwestern Rub
Strawberry Freezer Jam
Sweet Butters
Sweet-and-Sour Sauce
TIPS FOR MARINADES AND MARINATING
Tartar Sauce
Teriyaki Marinade
Teriyaki Sauce
Tomato Salsa
Using Herbed Oil
Velouté Sauce
Whipped Horseradish
White Sauce