/ck/ - Food & Cooking

[Anonymous No.8705878]

How do you guys spice up your depressing single guy dinners?

I subsist on endless variants of 'meat and two veg' meals and its getting boring.

How easy are sauces to figure out?

[Anonymous No.8705943]

>>8705878
Sauces are easy bro. You can make a chinichurri real quick to put on your meat. Put some freah parsley, fresh oregano, garlic, either fresh chile peppers like finger/thai chile or pepper flakes, oil, and whatever vinegar you want. Blend it up until its a pesto consistency.
Or sear your meat in a pan to get a crust then finish it in the oven. Keep the pan warm and deglaze it with some beer or wine, add soy sauce, hoisin, and some mirin. Let that reduce until the alcohol has cooked out and the sauce has thickened slightly.
Sauces are pretty easy once you start making them. Like anything in cooking you gotta experiment to get it right.

[Anonymous No.8705966]

Why not just put different spices and herbs on the vegetables and roast them?

Garlic powder, Onion Powder, Thyme, Rosemary, Chili Powder, Cumin, Turmreric, Smoked Paprika, Ginger, Oregano, Basil, Parsley.... ever heard of them?

[Anonymous No.8706016]

>>8705878
To quote your ol buddy Chef John: being able to make a pan sauce is a hallmark of a good home cook. Check out some of his stuff. The instructions are all pretty easy to follow. There's playlists for side dishes too. I get some entertainment trying to make something I've never tried before too. I'm still lonely, but at least dinner turned out well.

[Anonymous No.8706017]

Depends what you want, my lonely squire.

Most sauces are easy to do, it's a matter of reducing x liquid and adding butter. Let's run through some simple ones known as mother sauces. They're called this because they 'give birth' to other sauces. They're a base, essentially.

1. Bechamel sauce.
Nothing more than melted equal amounts of butter and flour cooked until it's golden (roux), then add milk. Whisk until thick. Traditionally you're supposed to make an onion pique by studding it with cloves and adding bay leaves to the mix, but folk don't really do this anymore. It's entirely optional.
This is your base for cheese sauces, but the roux itself can be used to thicken any sauce. More on that in a moment.

2. Veloute sauce: This is basically meat stock thickened with the roux mentioned earlier. You can use any stock, it makes no difference. You can also use two or more different flavoured stocks providing they contrast well. For instance, you could use fish and chicken stock together, but you couldn't use fish and beef stock together. Add whatever you like to the sauce once it's combined. For example, you could make a fish veloute and add paprika to make a hungarian-esque sauce.

3. Hollandaise sauce: A little more complicated, Hollandaise relies on tempering eggs yolks with butter. You get a double boiler (or use a pan if you're brave as fuck) and sit a bowl on top, add your egg yolks, whisk them like a motherfucker and add melted butter slowly. This can then become the base for tarragon sauce, bearnaise sauce, vin blanc for fish, etc etc. Whilst people insist you should put lemon or lime in the mix, I'd suggest against it unless you're making plain hollandaise, because the derivatives often include using some type of vinegar, so acidity balance should be dealt with at the end, not half way through.

4. Tomato sauce. I don't think I really need to explain this to you.

>cont.

[Anonymous No.8706018]

y'alls be needin some bbq sauce

[Anonymous No.8706032]

>>8706017

5. Espagnole sauce: Very similar to a veloute, except you cook the roux longer, until it's brown. You then add stock and tomato paste, creating the base sauce for classic dishes like beef bourguignonne (essentially a beef stew)

6. Reduction sauces:
6a. Jus: Once again are quite simple. You're taking the pan you used for cooking whatever meat, deglazing it with wine, using a spoon to get all the good shit that's stuck to the pan and then reducing it until it's thick. Add some butter to emulsify and add a nice shine.

6b Creme: This simply relies on reducing cream until it's thick, then adding butter. You can make several sauces from a simple creme reduction, common ones being white wine sauce and peppercorn sauce.

This should get you going. Just remember you're making bases, so feel free to experiment with various flavours once you get the bases mastered.

[Anonymous No.8706070]

>>8706017
>>8706032

This is good shit, thanks Anon.

[Anonymous No.8706085]

>>8706070
No problem dude.

Remember: If at any time you feel these sauces are too annoying to make and you just can't grasp it...

...There's always bisto.

kek