Recipes for Sauces & Marinades

We all love cauliflower at this point, don’t we? It has certainly come a long way. We’ve tried it as rice, couscous, pizza crust, and cake. We regularly blend it into a mashed potato substitute and roast it until it becomes nutty and sweet — no longer over-steamed and scarred with an overwhelming cabbagey taste. We are eating it tossed with grains, featuring it in salads, and treating it like a steak.

Are you making a traditional lasagna filled with layers of creamy béchamel? Maybe you are cooking a quick beef and Chinese broccoli stir-fry for dinner with a sauce that’s loaded with ginger and garlic? Or perhaps you’re considering making a sweet, thick vanilla pastry cream to fill a fruit tart this weekend? In most cases, the secret to a thick sauce (or filling) that coats food evenly is starch, whether plain flour, cornstarch, tapioca starch, or even arrowroot starch.

I’ve always found Worcestershire sauce such a funny ingredient — how exactly do you pronounce it? And did you know it’s not vegetarian Regardless of its funny quirks, it always has a place in my refrigerator door, especially since it’s one of the key ingredients in my husband’s grilled steak marinade. But what else can this fermented, pungent condiment be used for?

There’s nothing better than a homemade tomato sauce, but nothing worse than having to clean splashes of tomato off the backsplash or the wall behind the stove. So, what makes tomato sauce so explosive? Tomato sauce is a thick fruit mixture made up of water and also chunks of crushed tomato fruit and/or purée with all the natural sugars, acids, fiber, pectin, etc. from the fruit.

Q: I just bought a food processor, and it’s heavenly. But, I’m having problems with my pesto. I used to make it by hand and the consistency would end up chunkier, like a gremolata. I’ve been reading different pesto recipes, and I just realized it’s supposed to be creamier, more spreadable! So my question is, how do I achieve this? When I’ve attempted to do this I can only get it to a certain consistency, which is very dense. Do I use more oil? Add water?

When we want to enhance a dish, warm, rich sauces like hollandaise and béarnaise will always do the trick. A small spoonful has the power to make a steak completely luxurious, and it puts the perfect finishing touch on eggs Benedict. These two traditional French sauces share quite a few similarities, but there are some distinctions in how they’re made and used that set them apart. Do you know the difference between hollandaise and béarnaise sauce?

On our first official date, I cooked a simple meal for the man I would marry: Chicken Parmesan over spaghetti. I used canned sauce, and, like my mother before me, I broke the spaghetti. It was the first test of our relationship. My mom always broke the spaghetti because that’s the way my dad liked it. I didn’t know that. I thought that was how you were supposed to make it. I couldn’t understand why this cute guy’s jaw dropped open as I split the handful of noodles in two.

Most recipes use flour or cornstarch to thicken gravy, but a number of years ago there was an interview on NPR with cooking guru Shirley Corriher who mentioned that her mother used to thicken their Thanksgiving gravy with uncooked stuffing. And not only that, it was also the best gravy she remembered eating. Is it really possible to use stuffing to thicken gravy? And, does it taste good? We decided to test it and find out!

A good gravy is really what ties all the elements on the Thanksgiving plate together. It can rescue dry turkey, liven up mashed potatoes, and perk up bland stuffing, so there’s a lot riding on the gravy turning out well. Here are four tips to help you rescue a gravy that isn’t quite perfect! Here are the four typical problems you can encounter when making turkey gravy and solutions for fixing them!

Cranberry sauce is the bright little gem on an otherwise rich, savory Thanksgiving menu. Even if you only eat it once a year, it’s hard to imagine a plate of turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes without that dollop of sweet-tart sauce on the side. And while you can just buy and open a can of the stuff, cranberry sauce is hands-down the easiest thing to make from scratch from Thanksgiving, and you don’t even need to use a recipe. Here’s how to do it!

So gravy is just another type of sauce, and sauces would logically be made in saucepans, right? Well, in the case of making gravy, a saucepan is not the ideal piece of cookware to prepare it in. Instead, I prefer to make gravy in a large frying pan or sauté pan, and here are three reasons why! Gravy-making often starts with making a roux — a cooked fat and flour mixture.

See that smooth turkey gravy above? Don’t you want to just drizzle it over sliced turkey and mashed potatoes? While I know gravy isn’t really that hard to make and is usually made from the drippings of your roast turkey at the last minute, let me convince you why it’s actually worth making ahead of time. I was testing a turkey recipe recently, so I turned the bones into turkey stock and then subsequently made gravy, which I then froze.

One of our favorite ways to eat this time of year is veggie bowl style: cook some brown rice or lentils, pile on stir-fried greens from the farmers market, and top with a dollop of zesty, nutty Happy Sauce. Wait, you don’t know about Happy Sauce? Let us introduce you! Watch the video; it’s only 15 seconds long, and it’ll show you everything you need to know. See? Doesn’t that look happy?

Q: I have always made a great, simple tomato sauce based on roasting tomatoes, hot peppers, onion and garlic in the oven at 350°F for an hour, and then simmering the puree of the roasted veggies with a teabag full of Italian spices and a cup of chicken stock. It’s rich and savory and very spicy and a little sweet and I love it.

As someone who doesn’t eat peanut butter or bread, jam has little significance in my life. Yes, I’ve eaten the occasional dollop mixed with yogurt or oatmeal. Or straight off the spoon — because you only live once. But to risk sounding like a total hater of preserved berries, jam just isn’t my jam. But jam has a new trick for me these days and this is bringing it back to my table.

Pesto is such a perfect summer sauce — basil’s abundant and cheap, there’s no cooking involved, and it’s versatile enough to toss into pasta, spread on bread, or toss with grilled vegetables. The one downside is that it loses its vibrant green color quickly if it’s exposed to air, but supposedly blanching the basil leaves first will keep the pesto keep its color. Does this actually work? We tested it to find out.

There’s something a little magical about a really good gravy. From drippings, a little flour and some stock comes a bubbling pot of liquid gold, ready to be poured over turkey, mashed potatoes and everything in between. But have you ever wondered what’s going on inside the pan when you make gravy? We turned to chef and Harvard food science instructor Wylie Dufresne for a scientific explanation, as well as his advice for making better gravy on Thanksgiving and beyond.

Busy weeknights don’t have to mean boring dinners. Keep these international pantry essentials on hand and you’ll be able to quickly and easily transform simple ingredients into a meal to savor.• 1 Black Bean Garlic Sauce – This savory Chinese sauce is made from salted, fermented black beans. Add it to stir-fried vegetables and meats, noodles, and marinades for an umami kick. A little goes a long way.

Chimichurri is that wonderful, fresh sauce that brightens anything it comes in contact with. Traditionally made with olive oil, lots of fresh parsley, lemon, garlic and shallots, it’s most often used as a sauce on grilled meats and fish, but I’ve found that keeping a little container of it in the refrigerator allows you to dress up even the most basic of leftovers.

I am an impatient cook. If I’m going to make a sauce or gravy out of the liquid I just used for braising, I want to do it right now. I don’t want to laboriously skim the fat off with a spoon or wait for anything to cool. Fat separators are all well and good, but what about using a tool I already own? Enter the turkey baster.Here’s what I do: squeeze the turkey baster bulb, insert it into the liquid below the fat line, and let go.

If you like cooking Asian food at home, then you should have a bottle of ponzu in your cupboard. It is an essential condiment and marinade with a wonderful, zingy flavor that pairs well with vegetables, seafood, and meats. Sadly, it’s very little-known outside of Japan and it deserves more widespread knowledge.Ponzu is a citrus-based sauce used in Japanese cuisine as a marinade or an addition to soy sauce. It is made with rice wine, rice vinegar, bonito fish flakes, and seaweed.

Sometimes a sauce will break no matter how attentive you are to its whims and needs. (See our post here with the most common reasons why emulsified sauces break.) It’s frustrating and discouraging, especially if guests are at the table and waiting for your finishing touch.But never fear! You can still pull off a fantastic sauce without missing a beat.If your sauce is just starting to break, little droplets of fat will start to form around the edges of the bowl.