How would one make his own sauces?

[Damien87]

hi all im looking to make my own sauces to try and cut the cost of eating down, i eat 5 full pasta/rice with casserole/curry/stew meals a day to keep weight up while i train at the gym, my food bill is way into the 100s permonth and thats just for a single person and ive just got my self a slow cooker and im finding my food is quite dried out, and lacks sauces once i get to work and have to reheat it, last month i spent alittle over £410 on food just for my self not including 140 on supplements to keep cals intake up

now ive tried packet powder sauces and even if i double up on the amount of packs they still dont create alot of juices to keep it from being dry

can someone help me make my own select of sauces that work out cheeper than 2-4jars perday i use at current


sauces id like

multipul curry sauces
spagbol / pasta style sauces
sweet n sour style sauces

basicly as many styles as possible to keep my diet varied


thankyou
damien

 

[no mayonnaise]

Here are a couple pasta sauces to start you off.

http://www.discusscooking.com/forum...il-pasta-awesomesauce-w-variations-80205.html

http://www.discusscooking.com/forums/f76/my-perfect-marinara-80191.html
Tomato sauce has a long shelf life, so in it sounds like it would be helpful in your situation to make a big batch and keep in the 'frige or freeze it in single-portion containers, ready to thaw and use.

A mornay sauce would be good to learn, you can do a lot of stuff with it for pasta. It's basically:

1 1/2 Tbsp butter
1 1/2 Tbsp AP flour
3 cups whole milk, room temp if possible
Salt+Pepper
And any additions to the base sauce (explanation below)

Over medium-low heat, melt the butter and allow some of the water to cook off (until it mostly stops sizzling, but hasn't begun to brown). Add the flour and whisk over medium heat for a minute or two, don't let the mixture brown but you want to cook out the raw flour flavor. Add the milk, salt, and pepper plus any other spices or herbs you want all at once and whisk to mix. Maybe toss in a clove-studded onion or a smashed-but-still-whole clove of garlic. Slowly bring to a boil, whisking often. Once it's boiling, it's done. You can remove from the heat and add cheese like parmesan or cheddar or whatever you like. This sauce can go in any baked pasta dish, or for that matter, most casseroles. You could also add in some marinara sauce for a creamy tomato sauce. Always add a touch of nutmeg to the sauce if it's going to have a white color in the end.

Does any of that help?

I'm not sure what a sweet n sour style sauce is... If it's like the stuff at American Chinese restaurants, I'm pretty sure it's just ketchup, pineapple juice, water, and cornstarch that's bought up to a boil. Probably MSG and sugar added, I'm sure.

 

[Dawgluver]

Good advice, No Mayo!

Some cheats: Low sodium V-8 juice will help with marinara or other tomato based dishes. Good ol' Campbell's Cream of something soup (mushroom, chicken, celery, etc.) makes for good chicken with addition of other stuff like rice, onion, celery. Also good with other meat. Knorr makes excellent hollandaise and bernaise sauces in a packet that you could add. Sauerkraut with rice, browned ground beef, and a can of Campbell's tomato soup is really tasty.

Fix It and Forget It by Ranck and Good is a great CP cookbook. I highly recommend it. It's been around for awhile and should be pretty cheap.

 

[buckytom]

in one's kitchen.


what us spagbol. spaghetti bolognese?

if you want high calorie sauces, go french (despite the paradox. avoid red wine and being polite) or indian. lots of cream and butter.

 

[Gravy Queen]

Yes spagbol is spaghetti bolognese.

Damien - prob the best way for you is to invest a bit of time in the kitchen when you can and cook and freeze sauces for when you need them. Wouldnt bother with packet sauces - your own home cooked ones will be much nicer.

You can make a quick creamy pasta sauce using Campbells condensed soups - thats a quick cheat. For high cal fresh sauces you can go the whole hog with cream or full fat creme fraiche for a carbonnara type creamy sauce. This is an easy carbonnara recipe too:
Spaghetti alla Carbonara - Italian - Recipes - from Delia Online

For pasta, I make a ragu - and you can freeze this in batches to use when you want. Here is a link to the Delia recipe I use, you can add things to it, such as mushrooms. Once its prepped it sits in the oven quietly for hours and it will be the best sauce ever .
An Authentic Ragu Bolognese - Italian - Recipes - from Delia Online

For curry sauces, another cheat is to use Pataks pastes, they are concentrated so you only need a couple of spoonfuls, add tinned tomatoes, herbs, anything else you fancy really. Lovely over rice.

 

[Margi Cintrano]

Buonasera,

I have uncountable pasta dishes in the Pasta and the Ethnic Sections, including; Bolognese, Ligurian Basil Pinenut Pesto, and a Gorgonzola Blue vein cheese plus Puttanesca ...

I hope you find these classic recipes of interest.

Have nice wkend,
Ciao, Margi Cintrano.

 

[Claire]

It sounds, too, like you're not putting enough liquid in the pot to begin with. These kinds of meals are braised and/or stewed, and require the meat to be in enough liquid to be at least 1/3 up the side of the meat. In a slow cooker, if you leave it all day and come home from work, as a general rule, there is actually more liquid than there was when you left the pot. You need to have enough liquid so that you are just adding flavor to a stock you've already created.

Another things is that you might be using TOO lean cuts of meat. The leaner the meat, the tougher and dryer the meat will be.

Try putting in the vegs, then the meat, then almost covering with water/broth/stock. Put in some basic seasonings. Leave to cook all day, then take the vegs and meat out, chop. Adjust the seasonings your broth, put everything back in the pot.

Then make up some pasta, rice, or mashed potatoes, and put in deep bowl, then pour the curry/stew over the starch.

 

[Mel!]

Hello Damien

My suggestion is that you have sauces that you can make very basic with few ingredients and that same sauce has various additions that can be added to it to make it more complicated. Then you can let your sauce depend on what is available an in season and inexpensive at the moment.

A very inexpensive basic pasta sauce would be.
Garlic, and/or onions chopped and fried in oil or butter.
Add a few spashes of vinegar and some sugar and salt. Then take off the heat, and add cream.

To take this sauce to its next stage when you have more stuff available, you could do something like,
Have fresh herbs to sprinkle on top of it after cooking.
or
Roast some veggies to serve with it. You could also whizz the roast veggies and add them to the sauce, after the vinegar and sugar.
But, it does not have to be roast veggis, herbs or anything in particular. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of combinations you could use to make your sauce more sophisticated.

Maybe the next stage to making this sauce more complicated would be to add something like cooked chicken. Maybe it could be boiled, so you could use the stock in the sauce.

etc
etc
etc

Mel

 

[Dawgluver]

I just discovered McCormick's Original Country Style Gravy Mix in a huge container at Costco. Used it on a rotisserie chicken dinner with mashed potatoes and corn last night. It is delicious! You just mix it with water. Bet it would work well with chicken in the CP.

 

[Greg Who Cooks]

I just discovered McCormick's Original Country Style Gravy Mix in a huge container at Costco. Used it on a rotisserie chicken dinner with mashed potatoes and corn last night. It is delicious! You just mix it with water. Bet it would work well with chicken in the CP.

I do the same from a packet sauce made by Williams (brand) available practically everywhere. Can be mixed with water, or for a richer sauce can be mixed with part or all milk. Mix in a sauce pan and simmer until it has reached desired thickness. It's pretty tasty for something that comes out of an envelope, although not IMO "gourmet." I like to use this country gravy sauce on roasted chicken thighs or roasted turkey thighs, would be great on chicken fried steak (although the latter particularly can be made into its own gravy if you're willing to spend the labor).

The Williams Country Gravy packets make enough sauce for about 2 generous servings (over everything) to 4 reasonable servings. I usually split the packet when I'm cooking for one.

 

[MostlyWater]

I don't think that making your own sauce is a cheap way to live, unless you can get very cheap ingredients. Why not look for cheap sauces at bargain stores ?

 

[CWS4322]

I don't think that making your own sauce is a cheap way to live, unless you can get very cheap ingredients. Why not look for cheap sauces at bargain stores ?

The key is the source of the ingredients. Because we grow sooooo many tomatoes, it makes sense to make my own tomato sauces, paste, and to dry/freeze/can tomatoes. The only ingredient that I don't pull from the garden are mushrooms. I pick those up on special year around and dehydrate them so I can add them to my spaghetti sauce come sauce making time. If one doesn't have a reliable, reasonably priced source of ingredients, than yes, making sauce would be more expensive than buying it. The added benefit of making one's own, however, is one can control salt, seasonings, etc.