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Sauce and Soup Magic - Class Handout
Sauce and Soup Magic - Class Handout
@ Sandy Bosch store, October 19, 2011, Rhonda Hair Page numbers are from Chameleon Cooking: Cooking Well With What You Have http://www.theprovidenthomemaker.com
Cheese Sauce
Stir in cup shredded cheese until smooth. Also good with a little mustard or hot sauce. If its too thick, stir in a little more milk. Serve over broccoli, baked potatoes, or chips for nachos; with olives, chilies, chicken, and a little oregano or chili powder if you want. Pour over sliced potatoes with a little sliced/chopped onion, and bake 1 hour at 350 degrees to make scalloped potatoes. Ham or bacon is good in that, too.
Cream of Chicken Soup -Substitute for a can of condensed soup. Double the amount of
flour or cornstarch in the recipe above, add 1 chicken bouillon cube or 1 tsp. chicken bouillon granules, and tsp. sage or poultry seasoning. Stir in c. chopped chicken if you have it.
Sausage Gravy: Cook 1 small patty (about 2 oz.) sausage in a small skillet. When browned,
crumble it, then mix in the ingredients for Quick Gravy. Bring to a boil, to thicken it. Serve over biscuits, rice, toast, or mashed or baked potatoes. For a different flavor, substitute a can (or cup) cooked chicken, or tuna, beef, or thinly sliced deli meat.
Other liquids can be used in place of milk; water, fruit juice, or broth work the same. Examples of fats include butter, margarine, oil, bacon drippings. Melt fat in a saucepan, or in a pan you just cooked meat, to get the yummy brown bits (called fond) for flavor and color. Stir in flour and salt. Add milk and whisk together. Heat over medium until thick and bubbly. For another cooking method, see Quick Gravy, pg. 35. With white sauce, the concept is that flour or cornstarch will thicken things. The thicker you want it, the more you use. The only tricks are in knowing which amount of thickener to use and knowing how to avoid lumps (stir thickener with an equal amount of water to make a smooth paste or cook with fat, above- if it ends up lumpy, blenders and fine-mesh sieves are your friends!). 2 Tbsp. flour per cup of liquid gives a good medium sauce consistency, so go down or up from that depending on what you want. Serve over meat, rice or other grains, pasta, spaghetti, potatoes, or toast. -Add any herbs or spices that sound good (use The Sniff Test!- pg.10) -Add in c.-c. sliced/chopped/crumbled meat (tuna, chicken, beef, sausage, etc.) or hardboiled eggs (good on toast for breakfast). -Mix in a skillet with fond to make gravy. -Add any chopped veggies you want (olives, mushrooms, celery, broccoli, spinach, artichokes, tomatoes, capers). -For Sweet and Sour Sauce, skip the fat, use ratios from Thin White Sauce. Saute one sliced onion, then top with the juice from a can of pineapple (or orange juice) for part of the liquid, an equal amount of vinegar and sugar (i.e. c. juice, c. vinegar, c. sugar), the flour or cornstarch, tsp. garlic powder, 1 T. fresh grated ginger (1 tsp. if dried). c. ketchup is good in this. Serve with the canned pineapple chunks over rice and chicken or other meat. Make Lemon or Orange Chicken by using orange or lemon juice, and increasing it to cup, reducing vinegar to c. Add c. toasted sesame seeds (opt.) -Make Teriyaki Sauce adding Asian flavors to a sweet thin white sauce: 1 Tbsp. flour, c. soy sauce, c. sugar, 2 Tbsp. vinegar, 2 tsp. fresh grated ginger (3/4 tsp. dried), 1/8 tsp. red pepper flakes (opt.) -Use cornstarch instead of flour; you only need half as much (1T. cornstarch= 2T. flour) Arrowroot, potato starch, or other flours will also work. Arrowroot, tapioca, and Ultra Gel will not break down with freezing and thawing (good for make-ahead freezer meals); cornstarch and flour will.