Time to Make Your Own Chicken Stock

A whole chicken from the grocer costs less than four chicken breasts. Did you know that? I didn’t know that, and I was pleasantly surprised when I bought a completely gutted and ready-to-go chicken for a batch of chicken soup I made recently. I’m not crazy about canned chicken soup. In fact, I don’t like… Continue reading Time to Make Your Own Chicken Stock

Horseradish Stinks.

But horseradish tastes good once you get past the burning in your nostrils. Last week I wrote about the best French dip and au jus of my life, and you may remember me mentioning the horseradish. Is it only me or is a meal not complete without some kind of topping, spread, sauce, or dip? Horseradish is… Continue reading Horseradish Stinks.

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

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