Creating this thread based on John Konrads suggestion. Anyone feel free to share your favorite sauce recipe. The mother sauces are welcome of course, but I am going to be working on sauces for flavor of a dish.
Here is the first one-
GARLIC BUTTER SAUCE (This isn’t beurre blanc)
ingredients-
Unsalted cold butter
1 or 2 tbl Crushed garlic
1 cup heavy cream
Juice of 1 lemon
Salt to taste
Pepper (you can use white, black, or cayenne)
Parsley (fresh chopped if available) you can also use dill or cilantro.
There are a lot of options for the ingredients. Some people will start by sweating the garlic and some shallot or red onion.
I start by adding the lemon juice to a pan on medium heat and then adding the garlic. Sweat the garlic a few minutes while reducing the lemon juice a bit. Then add one cup of heavy cream and increase temp to medium high. Stir often. The cream should reduce by about half. Start adding cold butter a couple chunks at a time. I’ve never had it separate but supposedly if you add the butter too quickly it could. Once you’ve added all the butter, add salt and pepper to taste. Add some chopped parsley.
I am serving something similar to this over sockeye salmon tonight. The only major difference is I’m going to be adding some white wine (pinot grigio) which is new for me because I never got to cook with alcohol at work.
The picture above is the sauce I made for some sockeye salmon I barbecued last night.
Started by sauteing some garlic in butter. Once the butter was mostly cooked off I began adding wine. I added it twice. Then added the lemon juice- maybe up to the juice of 1 lemon. Let it cool down and added 1 cup of heavy cream. Increased the heat to medium high. Reduced the cream down to about half. Then began adding cold butter in chunks while continuing to stir. Took it off the heat towards the end. Added a handful of chopped fresh parsley.
Turned out good although I probably added more wine to the sauce and the person cooking the sauce than I should have.
This is supposed to be beurre blanc, but it’s hard to find white shallots in the US, so since it comes out pinkish I go with it and use rose instead of white wine. Here’s the proportions for two medium servings of fish:
2 tbsp rose wine
2 tbsp white vinegar
2 tbsp water
1 large or two small shallots, peeled
4 tbsp unsalted butter. I prefer Kerry Gold because it melts so easily. This is about half the butter in the original Simon Hopkinton recipe but both my wife and I found that version to be way too rich.
Put the shallots and the liquids in the food processor and pulse until the shallots are minced. Transfer to pan and cook the mixture down until it’s mush, almost no liquid left.
Now this is where it get’s tricky. Heat a separate pan to just barely warm. You want to melt and heat the butter without cooking it. Watch it, the transition point comes on in a hurry. When the butter is right, add the shallot mush, stir to distribute, and serve immediately.
Look forward to trying this one Earl. Do you think you could keep the red theme going with some red onion? Are you using shallots because they break down easier, or is it flavor? I’m always curious about substitutions.
I think red onion would be too strong, but you’ll only know if you try it. I use the shallots for the flavor. I’ve also done it with dried shallots, not quite so good but still adequate. (I swear by Penzey’s stuff).
I was actually looking for a beur Blanc tonight to go with some fresh halibut and gave this a try. Really good. I added some fresh peach to ring in the summer and contrast the salty crust on the fish.
For anyone who would like a bbq sauce for the 4th of July and doesn’t want the number one ingredient to be high fructose corn syrup. I just made a batch of this sauce. It is fairly close to sweet baby Ray’s. This will keep for a week or 2 in the fridge-
1 bottle organic ketchup 24 oz
1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1.5 Tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
2 teaspoons onion powder
1 Tablespoon dijon mustard
2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon liquid smoke (you could add more if you prefer a smokier BBQ sauce)
1 teaspoon black pepper
Whisk it all together and simmer it for 5 minutes. The longer you simmer, the thicker it will be.
Here’s another bbq sauce. This is a white sauce for bbq chicken-
Alabama White Barbecue Sauce
1 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons drained prepared horseradish
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Hot pepper sauce, such as Tabasco, for seasoning
John requested I post a chipotle sauce recipe. I’ve been procrastinating because when you talk about that sauce it’s easy to get into the weeds. John, I will post a recipe, but first the weeds.
So I’m no pepper expert, but chipotles are a smoked dried jalapeno. (The reason I’m not a pepper expert is because they give me terrible heart burn.) Apparently back in the day, Mexican villages would grow more than they could use or they were just putting some up if next years harvest was bad.
The weeds part 2-
A primary ingredient in chipotle sauce is adobo sauce. So there is Filipino adobo and Mexican adobo. According to Wikipedia, (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobo ), it comes from Spain. There is also a Portugese version.
Most of you have probably heard of, or eaten, something like chicken adobo (or adobo chicken). It’s a marinade, made differently depending on where it’s used in cooking.
Sometimes the chipotle peppers you buy will be packed in an adobo sauce. Usually you can find it in the Asian section of the supermarket. I’ll post at least one version of adobo sauce on here as well.
Adobo. Sorry I just like saying it.
Here are a couple versions of chipotle sauce. You can make a pretty good chipotle mayonnaise yourself. It goes well with the Gordon Ramsey Pork Butt recipe on page 139 of my book. If the ingredients are hard to come by, the aisle of the supermarket with regular mayonnaise, mustard etc. usually has some that’s premixed. It probably won’t taste as good but it will keep longer.
First version- ingredients include
2 cups sour cream, 1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, 2 tbl chopped chives, the juice of 1/2 lime (fresh is always best), and salt and pepper to taste.
Put in food processor or blender on pulse.
2nd version (more like the chipotle mayo)
Ingredients are- 1/2 cup plain yogurt, 1/2 cup mayo, 2 tsp pureed chipotle peppers in adobo sauce.
Mix well. Serve chilled. Great to spread on tacos, pork, etc…
