Saucing is a cooking method in which a certain dish, which consists of pieces of solid food, is mixed in a base of mashed or processed liquid or semi solid food. This thickened condiment which adds flavor and zest to the dish is called ‘sauce’. A sauce is not consumed as a standalone food, but as a base or condiment for other food items. It also adds visual attractiveness to the dish. Examples of sauced recipes are Indian curries and Italian pastas. For saucing dishes, the cook may use ready-made sauce purchased from the market, like soy sauce, or freshly prepared sauce like Bechamel sauce, which is prepared just before serving. Salad dressings are sauces used for saucing salads.
Popular Sauces
Here are some commonly used sauces for various sauced recipes-
• Curry is a spicy base used for saucing Indian, Chinese and Middle Eastern main course dishes. It is hot and has a strong smell, and is used for saucing dishes made from vegetables, chicken, pork, beef, lamb, etc. Indian curries got exported to Europe from India in the eighteenth century by the British colonials.
• Marinara is a popular Italian sauce made of tomatoes along with herbs and spices. It is often used for sauced recipes like spaghettis and other kinds of pastas.
• Mole sauce is a sauce from Mexico that contains a large number of ingredients. Mole recipes vary across Mexico and US. It is used for sauced recipes for chicken, beef, lamb and sausage.
• Mayonnaise is a cold sauce made with eggs and olive oil.
• Brown sauce is made by cooking meat stock for many hours.
• Béchamel is a French sauce consisting of roux and milk, with nutmeg flavoring.
• Velouté is a French sauce made of roux and butter.
Popular Dishes prepared by Saucing
Here are some popular sauced recipes that use different types of sauces as base:
• Chicken Curry: This is a Punjabi dish from India that is popular in South Asia as well as U.K. and U.S. It consists of chicken pieces in a sauce base, which consists of onions, tomatoes, yoghurt and lots of herbs and spices like garlic, ginger, chilies, cumin, cinnamon, cardamom, etc.
• Tuna salad: This is a salad consisting of tuna, celery or relish, and a mayonnaise sauce base.
• Ham: This is a dish made of the thigh of some animals. It is traditionally cooked in tomato sauce.
Advantages of Saucing
Saucing adds flavor, zest and visual appeal to a large number of dishes.
Here are some examples-
• Saucing is used to prepare various kinds of salads which contain sauces like mayonnaise.
• It is also used in making fast food like sandwiches and chips.
• It helps form a base for cooking the food in various sauced recipes, for example ham and bacon is cooked in tomato puree. Various meat and vegetable dishes also use tomato sauce to act as a base and enhance taste. Besides this, saucing also helps make food more easily digestible by virtue of the digestion-friendly ingredients the various types of sauces mostly contain.
Saucing Trivia
Saucier is a cook specializing in making sauces.