You are really going to love this post if you are like me and tired of the rising cost of white pasta sauces. The jars keep getting smaller while the price keeps getting bigger, it's gotten where it takes two jars to adequately cover your dish. It's even getting harder to see them put them on sale when the same brand red pasta sauces go on sale. When they do if you aren't standing there the minute they go on sale good luck getting any, if you do happen to catch a jar it's usually not your favorite.
I've never been a Suzy bake queen. More so I think due to the fact my mom couldn't read so she wasn't one to get out a recipe book. I never recall a holiday baking cookies, cakes or other deserts as a kid, my dad, who didn't fair much better in reading, used to quip she didn't know how to boil water when I meant her. So there's no secret family sauce recipes, no how to make a great gravy, nothing of that sort. When I had kids it was by trial and error and I could tell some dozies. One of my most outstanding accomplishments was making banana bread you could have played football with. It'd knocked the best of them out cold if they'd got hit with it. I finally mastered the art of baking but until the Food Network came along I was never that creative at cooking. Still making great gravy or sauces still escaped me, no matter how hard I tried it never turned out the way it was described on those shows. So imagine my glee when upon the frustration of rising inflation I found the most simple, cost effective perfect way to make sauces. I could hardly believe it was that simple but it has worked perfectly each time I've tried it.
You hear them on those shows tell you to make a rue with some butter and flour? Well there's actually a formula for that. I've dubbed it the four step formula. It's not the ingredients that make it a four step it's the thickness, or how thin you want your sauce. Another trick? Don't add your favoring until the end. Here's the formula listed from the thinnest of sauce desired to the thickest.
1 tablespoon of butter 1 tablespoon of flour 1 cup of water (thinnest)
2 tablespoons of butter 2 tablespoons of flour 1 cup of water
3 tablespoons of butter 3 tablespoons of flour 1 cup of water
4 tablespoons of butter 4 tablespoons of flour 1 cup of water (thickest)
The first one listed will make the thinnest sauce and each proceeding one will make it thicker. Of course you'll have to play with it like I did to determine which one makes a gravy the consistency that you like. The first one will make a really thin gravy and the last one will make a super thick gravy. Now if you need more than one cup of gravy or sauce you will double that amount from that group you decide to use. If you want two cups of thin sauce you will use 2 tablespoons of butter 2 tablespoons of flour and 2 cup of water, if you want three cups of thin sauce you will use 3 tablespoons of butter, 3 tablespoons of flour and 3 cups of water, so forth and so on. It is absolutely fail proof. You just have to play with it and determine which consistency fits best with what you are trying to achieve, a sauce or a gravy.
Here's how you start. You melt the butter in a sauce pan, add in your flour, than your water...but you can, as I have experimented, favor that water with bouillon cubes if you like first. More about that in a moment. You let the butter and flour simmer together for a few minutes while constantly stirring it around, this supposedly takes out the flour flavor. Than you just add in your water. Salt and pepper it to your liking. That will make you a standard no thrills type sauce or gravy. If you desire to make a parmesan sauce after it thickens up you add a quarter cup grated parmesan cheese for each cup made. If you want to just make a chicken or beef gravy you just take your water first before adding it and drop in some bouillon cubes until they dissolve. If you want to heighten the flavor a bit more drop in a couple teaspoons of drippings from the pan you cooked your meat in into the sauce when finished.
Like this last weekend I did a Emeril Lagasse recipe that originally calls for a pork pot roast and used a pork loin instead, you take the meat and you cut slits in it, you pour tabasco sauce or other hot sauce down into the slits as you are making them, than you take cloves of garlic and stuff them down in the slits. You rub some oil over the roast, coat it with Emeril's Essence, (ingredients easily found on the web to mix), brown it on all sides in a pan that sit it on top of sweet potatoes in a roaster, add one inch of water (which I will use a beef bouillon cube to first as it gives the potatoes more flavor) and cook the required amount of time. I alternate russet and sweet potatoes because not everyone likes sweet potatoes, I also sprinkle chopped garlic and onions over the potatoes. When I made the gravy for this dish I used a bouillon cube in the water first before adding it to the rue, after it thickened I took a slotted spoon and dish out all that garlic and onion from the drippings and put them in my gravy. It was so delicious.
Tonight I made a wonderful tasting sauce using leftover cream cheese I had in the refrigerator. I did the second one listed above because I knew the cream cheese would add thickness to my sauce. I made two cups of sauce, so for one cup of water I added a chicken flavor bouillon cube to it, I didn't want it to come out to chicken flavored but also not overwhelming cream cheese either so that's why I only added it to one cup of the water. Look at all that sauce, you won't get that out of a jar of Ragu, and once it melts and blends with the shredded cheese in the dish it was perfect.
You can get so creative with this it's unreal, at least to the unaccomplished cook. At the end you can add any flavoring of your choice, be it parmesan, garlic, basil, onion, thyme, whatever you desire. Long gone are the days of hunting down a bargain for a white pasta sauce in this inflationary world and the best part is you can add as much flavor as you like as long as you familiarize yourself with what consistency level will get you where you want to be with it.