Secret: Sauce

The Secret Weapon to Great Cooking

In my experience I find most homecooks focusing on the wrong things.

Just hop on Twitter and you’ll find people obsessing and flexing over cooking ribeyes, filets, strip steaks, flanks… or steak in general.

Yes, no one wants an overcooked steak. (well, a few do I guess 😂 ) but to be honest these cooks are giving most of the attention to the protein and missing out on the real gamechanger for flavorful cooking

SAUCES

You can cook a ribeye like 3 ways (generalizing but you get the idea), but you have near limitless options to make 100’s of sauces to turn that same ribeye into a new eating experience every time.

Did you know that back in the day, the most skilled and revered cook in the French brigade was the Saucier (sauce master). The OG grand chefs knew that you can teach someone to cook a ribeye near-perfect in about 10 tries.

But saucework takes nuance. Especially the old school mother sauces where stocks, herbs, reductions and emulsions all come into play.

The good news there are plenty of sauces that require minimal-to-no-cooking and can be whipped up in under 5 mins.

No lie, hand to God 🙏

Last year I wrote a whole Substack on 3 such herb sauces that can run the gamut of pairing with fish, beef, pork and poultry (Sauces that Slap 👋)

I’m adding on to that today by introducing an Italian sauce that might be the most versatile because of the base elements and ingredients that pair well with anything.

I’m going to add a quick technique as well that is basically foolproof because many times we make cooking too hard which compounds if you’re using crappy recipes to begin with. We’ll be using your most under-utilized appliance: your oven.

So here’s a quick technique and a sauce that can be made in under 5 mins flat… which means “I don’t have time to cook” is never an excuse again…

Oh, and you’ll be eating better than 90% of the restaurants out there. 😉