Sauces are a great way to make your supper club meals special. Somehow, many people have the perception that it is hard to make a great sauce. The truth is that there are easy ways to make a really good sauce.
Cheating a little isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For this sauce I use a package of Knorr’s Béarnaise sauce, follow the instructions on the package and add two tablespoons of tomato paste and voila. This sauce tastes great and is almost foolproof. Real Béarnaise sauce is not stable as you risk having the butter separate. The packaged version can be made ahead, sit cooling on the stove for an hour and then be reheated whisked and voila.
This sauce works well with all kinds of proteins, steak, rack of lamb, chicken, fish etc.
Using a packaged sauce is not kosher with real chefs. I love Anthony Bourdain’s story about sneaking a commercial culinary sauce base into culinary school and getting rave reviews from the instructor for his sauces. He knew a trick of the trade from working in restaurants prior to culinary school. Cheating works when the results taste great.
There is nothing simpler than whisking together 5 ingredients. Again, a beauty of this sauce is that it is so stable and foolproof. It is served at room temperature and can be made days in advance. The only downside is that when people find out how simple it is their opinion of it wanes.
This sauce works well in a variety of applications. I serve it with quesadillas, Shrimp, French fries etc.
What makes this sauce even simpler is that you have already made the base for this sauce with Southwestern sauce. Again you whip together mayonnaise, sour cream and prepared horseradish and voila.
This sauce is killer with a prime rib, but works well with a variety of beef dishes. One of my favorites is adding this to sandwich after it has sat in the refrigerator for a few days.
This sauce is not as simple as the first three, but isn’t all that hard and really tastes great. With very little practice you get really good at making this sauce. I usually make it an hour or two in advance, let it cool on the stove top and then reheat, whisk and serve.
The recipe calls for making it with chicken, but it works equally well with fish shrimp, pasta etc.
They say that the reason the French historically made such great sauces is that the quality of their proteins was not great and you needed a good sauce to cover-up off flavors. Whatever the reason, great sauces make for great meals and memorable supper club events.
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