Green Chile Makes a Meal

Here in Colorado you can rarely order a burrito or chile relleno or enchilada without it being smothered in green chile, and that’s a good thing. Once you’ve drenched your cheesy Mexican food in green chile there’s no turning back. As much as I enjoy green chile, I’ve never bothered to master a recipe, and… Continue reading Green Chile Makes a Meal

Your Kitchen Needs Blow Torch Excitement

A blow torch brings drama to the kitchen…in a good way. How else you can get that perfectly caramelized sugar in seconds flat? During my recent blow torch adventure I was a little hesitant at first. It seemed scary! But the truth is that once you master your flame, cooking with a blow torch is… Continue reading Your Kitchen Needs Blow Torch Excitement

How to Make Vegetarian Espagnole Sauce

In it’s simplest form, espagnole sauce is a meat-based stock thickened with a roux. You make beef stock by slowly simmering beef bones and trimmings in herbs for several hours. It’s a time intensive process that requires one hefty stock pot. I have not endeavored to make a beef stock, but I have made vegetable… Continue reading How to Make Vegetarian Espagnole Sauce

Comparing Barbecue Sauces

There’s a whole world of sauce connoisseurs devoted to barbecue sauce. In fact, you can find a number of food blogs devoted to the culture, including this, this, and this one. Barbecue sauces tend to fall under different categories based on the main ingredient, which might be tomato, mustard, or vinegar. Then there’s the barbecue… Continue reading Comparing Barbecue Sauces

What Not to Do When You Make Sauce

If you’re like me, you don’t like being told what to do. “Nobody puts Baby in a corner…” Right? (Miss you, Patrick Swayze.) But when it comes to learning how to make sauce, there are some rules you just can’t ignore. In today’s post on sauce (the fourth post in a series of epic posts… Continue reading What Not to Do When You Make Sauce

Who’s Your Mama? Fall in Love with Mother Sauces

This is the third post in my series of epic posts on sauce. So far, we’ve talked about the basic history of sauce, the basics of mother sauces, and now we’re about to talk about why you should even care about mother sauces. No, scratch that. This is why you should LOVE mother sauces. One… Continue reading Who’s Your Mama? Fall in Love with Mother Sauces

In the Beginning, There Was Mother Sauce

Mother sauces: The base sauces in the French culinary tradition of which all other [secondary] sauces are made; sometimes called grandes sauces, standard sauces, or classic sauces. In theory, once you learn the technique for making each of the mother sauces, future sauce making will be a breeze. Okay, maybe not always a breeze (whatever… Continue reading In the Beginning, There Was Mother Sauce

How I Made Marsala Mushroom Sauce

I recently took a sauce class at Denver’s Seasoned Chef Cooking School and learned all kinds of wonderful sauce-making tips, but my favorite aspect of the class was the recipe for marsala porcini sauce they gave us. One evening not long ago, I re-made the mushroom sauce (with my own touch) along with a few other… Continue reading How I Made Marsala Mushroom Sauce