Velouté, The Second French Mother Sauce.

When it comes to mother sauces, velouté is a staple among chefs worldwide. Velouté is a savory sauce in which the name itself translates from French to “velvety.” The ingredients for our velouté sauce are very simple, and can either be prepared in advance from scratch, or bought from the local market in a pinch. Here is how to prepare and make your first velouté. Enjoy.

-What you need-

• 1 cup of room temperature light stock(a stock in which the bones were not roasted prior to making the stock, such as Veal, or Fish stock." If you get your stock from the market, get yourself the organic stocks, they work much better for these recipes.)

• A Blond Roux(as per my basic “it’s a roux” recipe)

• Kosher Salt

• Pepper(you can use either black or white pepper, but if you use black pepper, it should be freshly ground)

-How to make your velouté-

1) First things first, prepare your blonde roux, and reduce the heat to low so that you don’t overcook the roux before preforming the next step.

2) Whisk in your light stock until it is fully incorporated with your roux, ensuring there are no lumps in your sauce, and then return the heat back to medium/medium low.

3) Your sauce should come to a slow simmer, but not boiling. Make sure to keep moving the sauce as it thickens, using a spoon or spatula. ( At this point, make any additions to your sauce to create any of the daughter sauces)

4) You’ll know your sauce is ready when you you can move your stirring utensil through the center of the pan, and the sauce slowly returns to the center of the pan.

5) At this point add your salt and pepper to taste, strain through a mesh strainer and enjoy.

Velouté is a versatile sauce that you can use alone with many dishes, including but not limited to chicken, veal, veggies, or fish. Common daughter sauces made from our velouté base include a white wine sauce, which adds white wine, cream and lemon juice to the sauce, sauce Normandy, which utilizes a fish stock velouté with lemon, mushroom and oyster liquids, cream and tempered egg yolks, and sauce Bercy, to which we add white wine, shallots, lemon juice and parsley to a fish stock velouté. Any way you make this sauce, you are going to add a savory silky smooth sauce that everyone is going to enjoy.

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