Professional chef and culinary instructor Frank Proto demonstrates how to make five sauces that every chef should have in their arsenal: Béchamel sauce, Tomato sauce, brown sauce, pesto, and hollandaise.
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00:00 I'm Frank Proto, professional chef and culinary instructor,
00:02 and today I'm gonna show you how to make five easy sauces.
00:05 Bechamel, tomato, brown sauce, pesto, and hollandaise.
00:09 Having these five sauces in your culinary tool belt
00:12 will make you a better cook.
00:13 This is how to make five easy sauces.
00:15 Most of these recipes today are modeled on mother sauces
00:21 that we teach our culinary students.
00:23 They're a great base or a jumping off point
00:26 for other sauces.
00:27 So when I take my bechamel, I add cheese,
00:29 I have a Mornay sauce.
00:30 When I take my hollandaise and I add tarragon,
00:33 I have a Bernays sauce.
00:35 So these mother sauces are jumping off points
00:37 for like thousands of different sauces.
00:40 Mine's not the exact version
00:41 or the French version of everything,
00:43 but we're gonna hit all the high notes.
00:44 Bechamel is a basic white sauce.
00:46 There's only four or five ingredients in this.
00:48 I don't know how you can beat that.
00:49 Let's make the bechamel.
00:50 We're just gonna start on a kind of medium heat
00:53 and we're gonna add our unsalted butter.
00:55 The start of this sauce is a roux,
00:57 and basically what a roux is,
00:59 some sort of fat and some sort of flour.
01:01 And it's what we use to thicken things.
01:03 You'll start to smell the flour cooking.
01:05 It'll smell like baking bread.
01:07 Just cook that raw flour flavor out.
01:09 Now that our roux is cooked,
01:11 you can see that it kind of has that nice wet sand texture.
01:13 I can add my milk.
01:14 If you add hot milk to hot roux, it tends to get lumpy.
01:17 So cold milk, hot roux, and I'm gonna whisk it in.
01:20 You wanna make sure you're always whisking or stirring
01:23 so this doesn't stick to the bottom.
01:25 At this point, we're gonna whisk constantly
01:27 or use our rubber spatula to scrape along the edges.
01:31 I kind of use them in tandem.
01:33 And bay leaf just gives a nice kind of background flavor.
01:35 You're not gonna taste bay leaf.
01:37 I'm gonna add just a touch of salt now.
01:39 Black pepper might be controversial.
01:41 You're having a white sauce, you're adding black pepper,
01:44 and most French chefs will be like,
01:45 "Oh, you used the white pepper."
01:47 I don't use white pepper.
01:48 I don't like it, so I use black pepper.
01:50 I'll deal with the spots, it's okay.
01:52 Whisk as you go.
01:53 You'll have a nice silky sauce.
01:55 And once it starts to thicken,
01:56 I'll get in there with my spatula, scrape the sides,
01:59 and I'll just kind of use these both together
02:01 until I have a nice creamy sauce.
02:03 When I do this, it flows off of my spatula.
02:07 If you hear plopping, it's a little too thick.
02:09 Depending on what you're gonna use this sauce for
02:11 really determines the thickness of the sauce.
02:13 So if we're using it for something
02:15 like a croque monsieur or croque madame,
02:17 you want the sauce to be thicker,
02:18 so we'll add a little less milk.
02:20 But if we're gonna use it for mac and cheese,
02:21 we want to add a little more milk.
02:24 Good, and I'm gonna season it really well right now
02:26 because I'm gonna use this in a lasagna
02:28 and I want it to be at its full flavor.
02:30 If you have any lumpiness and it's not super smooth,
02:33 you can strain it through a fine mesh sieve.
02:34 But for our purposes today, I'm putting a lasagna.
02:37 I don't need to strain it.
02:38 It looks great, it tastes great, nothing to be strained.
02:41 Four ingredients, less than 10 minutes.
02:44 That is a bechamel sauce.
02:46 I think that we can see this in its final dish.
02:49 It is time to taste.
02:50 Let's get in there.
02:53 Match made in heaven.
02:54 What's great about the bechamel in the lasagna
02:56 is when you cut into this, you get this nice creamy bechamel
03:00 and you get the bits and bites
03:01 of the vegetables and the pasta.
03:03 It's the glue that holds your lasagna together.
03:05 Bechamel is one of the easiest mother sauces to make.
03:08 You can use it for dozens and dozens of different recipes,
03:11 especially this lasagna.
03:13 [upbeat music]
03:15 So we're gonna make my tomato sauce.
03:17 All these ingredients are fairly simple
03:19 and it's gonna create a nice full-bodied
03:21 and rich tomato sauce.
03:23 My pan is preheated.
03:24 I'm gonna add olive oil and then I'm gonna add my pancetta.
03:27 Pork and tomatoes is a match made in heaven.
03:30 And I'm just gonna let this stir
03:31 until it starts to get lightly brown.
03:33 And the fat from the pancetta is gonna flavor our oil
03:36 and flavor our sauce.
03:38 So our pancetta is starting to get light brown.
03:40 I'm gonna add my onions at this point.
03:42 I have garlic as well,
03:43 but I don't wanna add my garlic at the same time.
03:46 Onions have more liquid.
03:47 They take a little longer to cook.
03:49 And if I add my onions and garlic at the same time,
03:51 the garlic gets burnt before the onions
03:53 start to kind of get brown.
03:55 Salt draws out moisture in the onions
03:57 and will let them cook down a little bit quicker.
03:59 At this point, my onions are getting lightly light brown.
04:01 It's time to add the garlic.
04:03 So the pancetta and the onions
04:04 cooked for about seven to 10 minutes.
04:07 Not that long.
04:08 It's on medium heat.
04:09 And the garlic's probably gonna cook
04:10 for about five or six, not that much.
04:12 We just wanna lay those base flavors down
04:15 and have them kind of mellow out.
04:16 It's time to add my tomatoes.
04:18 I rinsed to get most of the tomato off.
04:20 The tomatoes and the tomato paste are fairly thick.
04:23 So the water is there to slow down the cooking process.
04:25 It's gonna let our sauce cook over a longer time
04:28 and not over reduce.
04:30 Now, some people don't traditionally
04:31 like to add tomato paste.
04:32 I like tomato paste.
04:33 It gives a good texture.
04:35 The bay leaf is just a really nice
04:37 kind of herbal background.
04:38 Basil actually helps your sauce get a little sweeter
04:40 and add some sweetness.
04:42 The onions add sweetness.
04:43 The basil adds sweetness.
04:45 The long cooking time adds sweetness.
04:47 Black pepper, lots of it.
04:49 And nice pinch of salt.
04:50 We can always re-season later.
04:52 So everything's in there.
04:53 We're gonna let it come to a simmer.
04:55 I don't put the lid on tight.
04:56 I'm gonna leave a little bit of space here.
04:59 So no splatter.
05:00 It's gonna allow for a little evaporation,
05:02 but not too quickly, and we're good to go.
05:05 The sauce is gonna reduce.
05:06 The flavors are gonna concentrate.
05:07 And that's what's gonna give us
05:08 that nice, robust finished product.
05:11 My sauce has been on a low simmer for about two hours.
05:14 Ooh, look at that.
05:15 You can see that we've got some reduction there.
05:17 Look at it.
05:18 It's reduced.
05:19 It's changed color.
05:20 It's not bright red.
05:21 It's a little more brick red now.
05:23 Yeah.
05:25 It's tomatoey.
05:26 We can taste that pork in there.
05:27 It's got a nice kind of deep, rich, concentrated flavor.
05:30 And that's what I want.
05:32 I think this will go really nice with a bowl of spaghetti.
05:35 It is time to give this a taste.
05:36 The sauce is like deep and rich.
05:40 Come on.
05:41 You can't beat that bowl of spaghetti.
05:43 And there you have it.
05:44 My tomato sauce, deep, rich, delicious.
05:47 [upbeat music]
05:50 What exactly is a brown sauce?
05:51 I like to tell people in its most basic form,
05:54 it's kind of like a gravy, right?
05:56 It's stock, it's vegetables, it's meat and bones,
05:59 and then you thicken it with a roux.
06:01 This sauce is super versatile
06:02 and you can use it in a lot of different recipes.
06:04 And we kind of start by building layers of flavor.
06:07 I'm gonna put some vegetable oil in my pot
06:09 and I'm going to add my chicken bones.
06:12 Remember, we're trying to build layers of flavor here.
06:15 I'm gonna brown my bones
06:16 and then I'm gonna brown my vegetables
06:18 and then I'll brown my tomato paste
06:20 just to give this a nice, deep, rich brown flavor.
06:23 I'll probably just use about one onion.
06:25 Whenever I do onions, I always add a little bit of salt
06:27 to get some of the moisture out of the onion.
06:29 My onions are starting to get caramelized.
06:31 I can start to add my aromatic vegetables
06:33 like carrots and celery.
06:35 When we get to the finished sauce, we wanna taste chicken.
06:38 We wanna taste those nice, roasty brown notes.
06:41 One of the things here that I like to look out for
06:43 is some brown crustiness on the bottom of this pot.
06:45 That's called the fond, F-O-N-D.
06:48 And we want that.
06:49 We don't want it to burn, we want it to be nice and brown.
06:51 So you wanna continue to stir till we get some nice flavor.
06:54 Everything in the pot's getting to know each other.
06:56 I'm gonna add my tomato paste at this point.
06:58 It's gonna give our sauce a little body.
07:00 It's gonna add a little bit of sweetness to our sauce.
07:03 But most importantly, it's gonna help
07:04 with that nice brown caramel color.
07:06 We lightly brown as we go.
07:08 I'm using brown chicken stock here.
07:10 If you don't have brown chicken stock,
07:12 you can either make that at home
07:13 or you can just use regular chicken stock.
07:15 We'll let it simmer away happily,
07:17 getting some flavor for about 30 minutes.
07:19 And then we'll move on to the next step
07:20 of building the sauce.
07:22 My sauce has been happily bubbling away
07:23 for about 30 minutes.
07:25 If you look at it,
07:25 my chicken bones are starting to break down,
07:27 my vegetables have gotten really soft.
07:30 Oh, it's nice.
07:32 So far it tastes really good,
07:34 but I want it to be a little deeper, a little richer.
07:36 And the way that I'm gonna do that
07:37 is I'm gonna thicken it with a roux.
07:39 We're gonna start out with a pan and some unsalted butter.
07:44 I want the butter to melt.
07:45 And then when I put the flour in,
07:46 we'll get it nice and brown.
07:47 Add our flour to it.
07:49 Brown butter, brown flour,
07:50 it gives us a nice nutty kind of toasty background.
07:53 With a roux, usually it's equal amounts by weight.
07:55 So right now our roux looks good,
07:57 kind of peanut buttery.
07:59 It smells nice and nutty.
08:01 It's gonna go right into our stock.
08:02 You can see that it's starting to get some texture
08:06 from that roux, and I love that, right?
08:08 Leave it alone now, let it simmer away happily.
08:10 We're gonna move over here and make a sachet.
08:13 Thyme, some parsley stems, a bay leaf, and some peppercorns.
08:18 Whatever you want to not have to search around for spices
08:21 in your sauce or stock, make a sachet.
08:23 It's a little bit of cheesecloth.
08:26 I make it into kind of like a burrito.
08:28 And I have a lot of twine here.
08:30 Get it tied off.
08:31 You can dunk it in like it's a tea bag
08:33 and just let it sit in there.
08:35 Everything's in the pot.
08:36 It only needs one more thing, and that's thyme.
08:39 So we're gonna let it go for about an hour,
08:40 and then we're gonna come back and see how it tastes.
08:43 Look at it, it's brown, it's rich.
08:45 And that's what I want, it's gonna be so good.
08:47 First thing I'm gonna do is take out this sachet,
08:50 and then you can just discard.
08:52 And now we're gonna strain it
08:53 to get all the bits and pieces out.
08:54 We want this to be a nice, clear sauce.
08:56 I'm just gonna kind of move it lightly,
08:58 just so that the sauce drips through.
09:00 It is beautiful, right?
09:02 It's clear, it's thick,
09:04 it's got some beautiful brown, roasty color to it.
09:07 Get me a straw.
09:08 It's plated up with a really nice piece of roast chicken.
09:11 It's time to taste.
09:13 [upbeat music]
09:15 What I love about this sauce
09:16 is that it's delicious by itself,
09:18 but it's also a good start
09:19 for a lot of different types of sauces.
09:21 It gives you a lot of versatility
09:23 if you just start with this basic sauce.
09:25 [upbeat music]
09:28 Pesto is one of those sauces
09:29 that you can swap a lot of stuff out, right?
09:31 If I don't have basil, I'll use arugula.
09:34 If I don't have Parmesan, I use pecorino.
09:36 So it's a very versatile sauce,
09:38 you can do a lot of different things with it.
09:39 And depending on where you are in Italy,
09:41 you'll see different versions of this.
09:43 I'm using a food processor today.
09:44 You can use a mortar and pestle,
09:46 which is super traditional, or a blender if you want.
09:48 Mortar and pestle's a little on the chunkier side,
09:50 whereas a blender makes it a little too smooth.
09:53 But I find that the food processor
09:54 gets me the best texture.
09:56 I'm gonna add some Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.
09:59 I'm gonna add some pecorino.
10:00 Couple of cloves of garlic.
10:02 Walnuts are in there.
10:03 Now, traditionally, we are going to use a pine nut for this.
10:06 Walnuts might not be traditional,
10:08 but I like them better here.
10:09 And it's a great approximation of the pine nut.
10:11 Walnuts are a little cheaper, a little easier to find.
10:14 You use them in a lot more recipes than just pesto.
10:17 Some salt and pepper as well.
10:19 And then we're going to add some oil.
10:21 We don't want this to be wet.
10:23 We want it to hold together as a paste.
10:25 This nice, kind of spreadable, thick consistency
10:28 is where I want it.
10:29 It's really good.
10:31 One of the things I like to serve pesto with is gnocchi.
10:34 And that's what I got here, and it's time to taste.
10:37 That sauce.
10:38 Madonna mia, it's good.
10:40 And that is my pesto served with a little bit of gnocchi.
10:43 It's fresh, it's delicious, it's easy.
10:45 You can't go wrong.
10:46 Make yourself some pesto.
10:47 [upbeat music]
10:51 If you've ever been to brunch and you've had Eggs Benedict,
10:53 you've had Hollandaise sauce.
10:55 But what is it?
10:56 Most people probably don't even know what goes in it.
10:58 So I'm gonna demystify that for you today.
11:00 It's super simple with a little bit of technique.
11:03 First thing I wanna do is separate my eggs.
11:06 I just wanna use the yolks.
11:07 So just separate your whites from your yolks.
11:10 What I'm gonna add to my yolks right now
11:11 is a little bit of water, a little bit of lemon juice.
11:13 When I squeeze my lemons,
11:15 I always put this cut side against my hand,
11:17 and I give it a squeeze,
11:18 and you can see that it runs down my finger.
11:20 Start out with some salt and pepper.
11:22 So now we take this whole assembly
11:24 and we put it on our double boiler.
11:26 A double boiler is for gentle cooking.
11:27 You can melt chocolate like this as well.
11:30 But for the most part, we just want nice, gentle heat.
11:33 But the last thing we want is scrambled eggs.
11:36 And if I see that it's cooking a little too quick,
11:38 I can take it off the flame,
11:40 let it cool for a second or two,
11:43 and then go back on.
11:44 I know it's ready to add the butter
11:45 when I see that my bubbles are really small
11:48 and my yolks have gotten really thick.
11:50 So you can see that we're getting a nice ribbon there,
11:52 and that's what I'm looking for.
11:54 Take my towel.
11:55 I'm just gonna put it over the pot.
11:56 So this not only holds my bowl in there and keeps it stable,
12:00 it also keeps my sauce warm, right?
12:02 We're just gonna whisk in our butter
12:04 and drizzle it in slowly.
12:06 This is an emulsified sauce.
12:08 You're putting two things together
12:09 that don't normally go together.
12:11 Basically, oil and water.
12:12 If you do it all at once,
12:13 it's basically scrambled eggs floating around in butter,
12:16 and we don't want that.
12:18 I have some milk solids here and butter fat.
12:20 Traditionally, people will clarify their butter
12:22 where they're just using the fat of the butter.
12:25 But the milk solids, to me, have a little flavor,
12:26 and I want some of that flavor in there.
12:28 Whisk so that we keep some air in there.
12:30 We want it to be a nice, light, creamy sauce.
12:33 All right, butter is in.
12:35 Let's taste it for seasoning.
12:36 A little more pepper, just a pinch of salt,
12:41 and a little fresh lemon juice, and we'll be good.
12:43 The sauce is so good,
12:44 I need to find something to put this on stat.
12:46 I luckily found a nice plate of steamed asparagus
12:49 to put my hollandaise sauce on.
12:50 The great thing about this sauce is that it's buttery,
12:54 a little lemony, light and fluffy, and delicious.
12:57 And it goes well with so many different things.
12:59 We made five sauces today.
13:01 We made bechamel, tomato sauce, brown sauce,
13:03 pesto, and hollandaise.
13:05 And if you can make these five sauces and get these down,
13:08 there's nothing you can't do in the kitchen.
13:10 you