Mastering Sauces: The Home Cook’s Guide to New Techniques for Fresh Flavors (Susan Volland)

Hardcover edition.

The definitive cookbook on contemporary sauces that highlights fresh flavors and updated classics.

Finally, a cookbook on sauces that is fresh, vibrant, and alive. In Mastering Sauces, Susan Volland veers away from traditional lesson plans and presents sauce-making in a whole new way. She focuses on how great cooks all over the world make sauces with impromptu élan―they splash and drizzle, slather and douse. Great sauces are made by following three fundamental principles: Maximize Flavor, Manipulate Texture, and Season Confidently. Armed with these principles, you can make any sauce your way.

In addition to over 150 recipes that reflect today’s tastes for seasonal produce, international ingredients, and alternative dietary choices, there are dozens of tips and tables suggesting ways to adapt and customize sauces. There are innovative Meatless Reductions, international Sauces That Start with a Can of Diced Tomatoes, and an Endlessly Adaptable Stir-Fry Sauce. Don’t have time to make stock? Brew a quick “Mock Stock” or savory infusion. Not eating meat? Avoiding wheat? Check out the chapter called Respect Your Mother, where, alongside the classics, there are tantalizing recipes for Vegan Corn “Hollandaise” (pictured on the cover), Soy Cream Sauce, and Eggless Mayo.

In a conversational and very readable style, Volland teaches the “whys” and “hows” of sauce-making so cooks can better understand their ingredients to create the dish they want. And because she knows that even the best cooks have off-nights, she finishes with a list of Remedies for Faltering Sauces.