Introduction to Restaurant Quality Sauces

What Restaurant Quality Sauces Is All About

How to Make Restaurant Quality Sauces at Home Table of Contents

How often have you gone to a restaurant and wondered how they make the amazing sauces, dressings and gravies that accompany a great meal?

At mid-level chain restaurants, many sauces are shipped in, ready made. But at small, stand-alone restaurants as well as stand-alone fine dining restaurants, those phenomenal sauces are made by chefs, cooks and sauciers (the cook in charge of sauces) right there in the restaurant kitchen.

While some of these talented cooks and chefs attended culinary school, many did not. They learned their craft from others with more experience. And now, you too, can learn the secrets of making restaurant quality sauces at home.

You will be able to make sauces just like the professionals do it in restaurant kitchens.

They often say that the best example is a non-example, so, this is what this book is not:

This is not an exhaustive compendium of sauces
This is not a technical discussion of sauces

If you are looking for encyclopedic knowledge of sauces, there are many wonderful books out there on the topic, including James Peterson’s Sauces, Raymond Sokolov’s The Saucier’s Apprentice and Saucing Foods by Deirdre Davis that I can highly recommend.

The goal of this book is to demystify sauce making, bringing it out of the restaurant kitchen into your kitchen.
You will learn

kitchen sauce staples
common sauce terminology
the building blocks of sauces
common sauce making techniques
how to prepare classic and everyday sauces

With solid technique under your belt and quality ingredients in your pantry, you will have the confidence to make sauces that rival, and even exceed, the taste and texture of your favorite restaurant sauces. You will have the knowledge that professional chefs and cooks have passed down right at your fingertips.

No longer will you have to wonder how those chefs make wonderful sauces. You will know, and you’ll be able to make them for yourself and your family, right in your own kitchen.

You absolutely do not have to go to culinary school in order to be a great cook and a great saucier. Learn how to reduce, emulsify, make a roux and mount butter, and you will be making restaurant quality sauces before you know it.

But all the techniques, vocabulary and instruction in the world cannot take the place of actually cooking. If you’re nervous, that’s understandable, but take this book with you into the kitchen and just get started.

With repetition comes competence, and from competence comes greatness. So what are you waiting for? Let’s get in the kitchen and make some sauces!