Cooking Stack Exchange
Cooking Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [sauce]

A separately-prepared cooking liquid or condiment served with other food.

Broadly, a sauce might be defined as almost any liquid food. Please use this tag only for those requiring preparation and generally served or mixed with a different, solid food.

Avoid using the tag for any of the following:

  • Soups, stocks, and broths; use the , , or tag instead, even if it is intended to be used as a sauce.
  • Well-known preparations generally referred to by other names (e.g. , ).
  • Jams, jellies, and other preserves (use or a similar corresponding tag).

Please do consider adding a sub-tag if referring to a well-defined sauce or category of sauce - for example, or .

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How close are store bought broths and stocks to the real thing?

Many of the sauces I wish to make require broth or stock. I quite fear the preparation which requires lengthy cooking and dedicating more precious storage space for the finished ingredient. Is using store bought broth or stock a good alternative?…
Bar Akiva
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Non-alcoholic substitution for dry white wine in bolognese sauce and other tomato sauces?

What is the purpose of dry white wine in a recipe like bolognese sauce? I need to substitute something non-alcoholic for the wine and while I've found many great lists of possible substitutions, the actual selection depends on the role the wine…
fitzhugh
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What is the difference between tomato puree, paste and sauce?

I was looking for a recipe for an Italian tomato sauce when I came across an old cookbook from an American Creole Chef I like, but I'm really confused about the terminology he uses for some of the ingredients and wondered if someone could clarify…
spiceyokooko
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why add a shot of vodka to a cream sauce?

I don't understand what reason there would be to add vodka to a cream-based pasta sauce. Vodka is allegedly tasteless, and the alcohol burns off. So why? Is it to make the recipe 'nouveau' or something?
Doug
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What does to deglaze a pan mean?

A friend of mine described a recipe to me, and she said she deglazed the pan (I think I understood correctly). What does that mean?
apaderno
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What causes curdling and how can you prevent it?

Some sauces are more at risk to curdle than others. What exactly (ingredients, techniques, temperature...) causes this curdling? What can you do to have the curdling risk at minimum? I'm not asking for ways to fix this, that's already asked here.
Mien
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Is it safe to add garlic powder to sesame oil?

I am making a Korean BBQ meat marinade sauce that requires 0.5 teaspoon of garlic powder and 1 teaspoon of sesame oil. I read that garlic combined with oil causes botulism. However, cannot find anything about garlic powder. Would garlic powder be at…
Botad
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Ways/techniques to make things "fluffy/foamy" like whipped cream?

In general, if you want to make something fluffy like whipped cream, what ingredients/techniques should you use? Basically, I want, when you put it in your mouth, to almost be like eating flavored air. Like eating the foam on a hot chocolate or…
confused
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How can I remove whole peppercorns from a sauce after cooking?

I've heard that whole black pepper is put in sauces for flavour, but it is not supposed to stay there in a finished dish, because it's quite unpleasant to bite on one during a meal. But how does one remove all of it from a sauce / gravy, especially…
Andrew Savinykh
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How do you reduce a cream sauce?

My wife made a cream based sauce last night and the recipe said to "reduce" it. The cream sauce was comprised of some white wine, couple cups of heavy cream and chicken broth (my wife substituted water for the broth) I looked up how to reduce a…
Ovi Tisler
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Why specifically use Passata, rather than tomatoes, in Ragu?

When making real Ragu, what really is the specific difference between using tomatoes (so, for say 1kg of meat, a big pile of tomatoes, chopped and cooked-in for many hours as the last step) using Passata (so, for say 1kg of meat, a few cups of…
Fattie
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How to make a sauce based on tea

I have some pu-erh tea, and I love the smokiness of it. I was thinking about trying to incorporate it into a dish somehow. Specifically, I was thinking about using something like pacific cod. Then I could potentially create a sauce or a rub for it.…
user2920
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Do tomato-based sauces change/enhance flavour when left in the fridge?

I cooked some green beans in a tomato-based sauce then ate some and left the rest in the fridge 3 days ago. I tasted it today, and it was better than I remember: is this a known phenomenon or am I not remembering right?
Ahmad Hani
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Why do BBQ sauce recipes specify that you must cook the sauce?

Most BBQ sauce recipes specify that you cook them, why is this? Would it not suffice to just mix the ingredients together as they will be cooked when you use the sauce on the grill anyway?
seeker
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What is the advantage of a roux over a raw flour slurry, in sauce?

My standard Bechamel sauce recipe used to be: Stir together flour and oil into a paste Fry for a short while Add a small amount of milk Heat and stir until incorporated Repeat steps 3-4 with increasing amounts of milk, until the mixture is a thick…
slim
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