# Increasing amount of sauce without sacrificing flavor



## gottagarnish (Jul 30, 2012)

After sauteing 8 chicken cutlets, I make a relatively thin Marsala sauce from the brown bits and fat left in the pan. I would like to increase the amount of sauce I can produce.  Although I don't normally add a roux, I've tried adding a small amount (1 tbsp each, butter and flour) just to give me more base for the additional amount of Marsala and reduced chicken broth I want to use.  I believe this method decreases the flavor, so I'm wondering if there is a better way.  I have several dishes that need more sauce than my basic recipe supports.


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## french fries (Sep 5, 2008)

Don't use a roux. Use more chicken stock, and reduce to desired consistency.


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## koukouvagia (Apr 3, 2008)

Why does it decrease flavor?  Doesn't butter add more flavor?  I agree with FF though that you need to reduce more after adding more chicken stock.  Chicken stock will give you more flavor, don't try to make up the flavor with the wine.

Often when I want to thicken the sauce a little bit without adding flour I add a few breadcrumbs, they do they job well.


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## gottagarnish (Jul 30, 2012)

Thanks to both of you for your responses.  My question may have been misleading, and may even be a no-brainer.  What I really want is just more sauce...not particularly trying to thicken it.  To make the sauce, I was using the remains of the fat left in the pan, along with the brown bits and some residual flour from the chicken.  Now I want to increase the amount of sauce and was assuming that I could add some Marsala and reduced chicken broth in the same proportions, but thought I should also increase the proportion of the flavor base (butter and flour...or maybe just fat), without frying more chicken.


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## berndy (Sep 18, 2010)

What you need is to add  more  ready made brown sauce. You can go the classical way and make a demi-glace as restaurants do ,or use any kind of brown sauce or gravy you have on hand at home.

I always have some brown sauce in my freezer. Whenever I make a roasted chicken I will make as much sauce as I can get out of it and freeze the amount not used for later . A large chicken easyly will give me a pint and a half of sauce .I also save any other sauce from a pork roast or a pot-roast that is not eaten with the meal itself in my freezer. And when I do roast a whole turkey on Thanksgiving or Christmas there is always extra gravy left for later use.


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## gottagarnish (Jul 30, 2012)

Thanks.  I've never made demi-glace but know if takes a lot of time.  May give it a try, since I rarely have more sauce than I really need.


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## berndy (Sep 18, 2010)

a canned gravy if properly doctored up with shallots and garlic might do fine for you


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## gottagarnish (Jul 30, 2012)

Thanks, again.  I'm also wondering if maybe reducing chicken (or beef) broth, together with an equal(or maybe lessor) amount of vegetable broth might be worth a try?  Think so?


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## ordo (Mar 19, 2009)

In your place i would go berndy's first advice. Learn to make brown sauce, demi-glace and latter glace de viande. It's time consuming but will solve a lot of your sauce needs.


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## berndy (Sep 18, 2010)

Reducing broth alone will only give you some kind of almost glace de viande like concentrate. NOW if you add this concentrate to a can of Cream of Chicken along with caramelized onions and a bit of caramel color you might get something of a light brown cream-like looking sauce with a slight meaty taste you could use.


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## chefedb (Apr 3, 2010)

Forget vege stock, its chicken dish stick with chicken stock . If you dredged the cutlets in flour the sauce should be thick already. Add a bit more stck then butter a bit more wine if you want let it simmer a bit .Don't add roux or fake canned gravy . You are doing it correctly stick with your way

maybe a touch more salt and freash pepper and let cook a bit more, it will almost form a Demi.

    A Glace D Viand requires hours of cooking and reduction . a 10 gallon pot of stock cooked down (simmered)  to maybe a  pint of geletinous glace for about 16 hours  is the real thing. It was the original soup base and it had no chemicals.


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## gottagarnish (Jul 30, 2012)

Thanks for all of your comments.  At the risk of asking for too much detail and trying your patience...just one final question: 

If I want to increase the amount of sauce by 25%, one way, according to one suggestion, would be to simply add 25% more butter, stock and wine, and cream, proportionally, to what I'm using now, OR based on another suggestion, I could increase them all by 25%, plus a tablespoon (or so) of glace to give it even more richness.  The glace would be making up for the missing richness of the original brown bits or fond. I'm assuming that the glace doesn't actually replace anything, since its addition doesn't do much to increase the volume I'm looking for.   

Feel like I'm obsessing over something that should be very simple. Hope I'm on the right track.


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## french fries (Sep 5, 2008)

I would simply use more stock, butter, wine and cream proportionally. But if you want more meat flavor, then just use more stock - not more butter/wine/cream. 

Glace is reduced stock, so it will affect both the flavor (strong reduced meat flavor) and the consistency of your sauce. Glace+water = stock. Reduced stock = glace. Personally I never use glace, I just use stock that I reduce until I get the desired consistency. Sometimes I buy glace de viande - then I'll dilute with water to demi-glace consistency and use in my sauce. Since I'm already at the demi-glace consistency I don't need much reducing to get to the desired sauce consistency. 

Hope that helps.


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## berndy (Sep 18, 2010)

I would go and  buy a pint of demi-glace from a restaurant, since this would be the most cost effective way to go.

 Bring your own container.

Even KFC sells gravy with their mashed potaoes. Their stuff sucks, but its better than what you are having at home now.


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## french fries (Sep 5, 2008)

I use the following product:


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## chefedb (Apr 3, 2010)

You would have to increase about 30% allowing for cooking off.  If you added  30% of eah your recipe would be off ,as original formula was not 25% of each ingredient added together. I would add it by taste till I got results I wanted. Then write that down and use it all the time


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## flipflopgirl (Jun 27, 2012)

Just an aside... if you are planning on using premade stock from the grocery try to find a low sodium brand.

Reducing the liquid in stock will leave you with a greater salt to liquid ratio.

Hmmm salt lick gravy.

mimi


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## boar_d_laze (Feb 13, 2008)

> If I want to increase the amount of sauce by 25%, one way, according to one suggestion, would be to simply add 25% more butter, stock and wine, and cream, proportionally, to what I'm using now, OR based on another suggestion, I could increase them all by 25%, plus a tablespoon (or so) of glace to give it even more richness. The glace would be making up for the missing richness of the original brown bits or fond. I'm assuming that the glace doesn't actually replace anything, since its addition doesn't do much to increase the volume I'm looking for.


Yes. Pretty much.

I'm disposed to quibble over the word "richness," because I associate that with mouthfeel and I don't think the relative amount of jus lie or demi will do much in that direction; but it will certainly give you a better rounded and more intense flavor and move the profile in much the same direction as fond. Fond also brings a sweetness which is a product of the Maillard reaction. You won't get that from an ordinary chicken demi, or jus lie, but will get at least some from one based on roasted chicken.

The More than Gourmet products FrenchFries recommends are probably excellent for your purposes. I think you can get them more cheaply from commercial suppliers in commercial sizes (tubs) than in individual packets from Amazon but that's something you'll have to search for yourself.

I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to achieve, how long you plan on holding, etc., but would avoid any starch thickening with a Marsala/cream sauce. Your best bet in terms of getting some extra chicken goodness into your stretched sauce is a combination of reduction and the addition of either More than Gourmet Jus Lie (20X stock reduction), or More than Gourmet Fond (40X stock reduction).

BDL


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## chefedb (Apr 3, 2010)

Commercially  Knorr,Minor and Custom make half way decent Demi 's.. It is not the same Knorr as you buy in a supermart.


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## french fries (Sep 5, 2008)

flipflopgirl said:


> if you are planning on using premade stock from the grocery try to find a low sodium brand.


In my experience premade stock from the grocery store just doesn't have any body to it, so even reduced it will not give you the desired consistency. 


chefedb said:


> It is not the same Knorr as you buy in a supermart.


... which is basically just sodium... (here are the first ingredients listed: Salt, monosodium glutamate, hydrolyzed soy/corn/wheat gluten protein, hydrogenated cottonseed oil, beef fat....)


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## flipflopgirl (Jun 27, 2012)

Store bought stock is better than no stock at all, no?

mimi


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## quetex (Oct 3, 2010)

Just an at home cook here that loves to cook regularly. Have tried for some time to get more chicken flavor in my bbq contest meats. Many good suggestions on this forum, thanks to all, do lurk and read to learn more than comment. Just my own experiences here. Have used the Campbells soup chicken broths and the beef broths and consume. Do not like them on their own but have found that if I make some of my own stock at home in small portions and then use that to doctor the canned stuff it works out pretty good. Certainly a ten gallon pot reduced would be better but not all of us are at restaurants moving high volumes of meats. I just like to kick up my food at home and my competition meats too. As already stated, store stuff is better than nothing. Have tried pretty much everything on the grocery store shelves, canned, cubed, powdered ect., and really prefer the Campbells and the Swanson, prefer Swanson on the chicken and Campbells on the beef. Have always wondered why there is not a pork broth or consume though. Lately what I have been doing is cutting out the back bones and wing tips off the chickens when i cook at home and freezing them till I have enough to make a small batch of stock of broth which ever you prefer to call it and then I freeze that in cubes for use later.

Placed my order this morning of several bases and sauces this morning from the website below to find out for myself if they are even better than store bought.

http://www.soupbase.com/


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## quetex (Oct 3, 2010)

berndy said:


> What you need is to add more ready made brown sauce. You can go the classical way and make a demi-glace as restaurants do ,or use any kind of brown sauce or gravy you have on hand at home.
> 
> I always have some brown sauce in my freezer. Whenever I make a roasted chicken I will make as much sauce as I can get out of it and freeze the amount not used for later . A large chicken easyly will give me a pint and a half of sauce .I also save any other sauce from a pork roast or a pot-roast that is not eaten with the meal itself in my freezer. And when I do roast a whole turkey on Thanksgiving or Christmas there is always extra gravy left for later use.


Chef would you please elaborate a bit more on your process to get a pint and a half of sauce from one chicken? Do you add wine or ?? to the pan to get all that amount?

thanks


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## berndy (Sep 18, 2010)

QUETEX said:


> Chef would you please elaborate a bit more on your process to get a pint and a half of sauce from one chicken? Do you add wine or ?? to the pan to get all that amount?
> 
> thanks


I will try and tell you how I do it.

You start with a large 6 pounds (or largere) Roaster.The day before, I will remove all visible fat from the cavity opening and also any fat from the neck opening,then after washing the chicken I soak this bird in the juice of 2 lemons and salt it inside and on the outside and let it rest and absorb the lemon and the salt overnight

The next day you have to wash off all of the soaking lemon-salt mixture ,pat it dry and let the chicken come to room temperature.

While the chicken warms up I start with preparing some mirepoix ; one cup of first washed,then chopped peeled onions ,one cup of washed peeled chopped carrots and one cup of washed and carefully peeled celery ( If the celery is not peeled first you will have celery strings in your gravy since I use all of the mirepoix pureed in my food processor to thicken the sauce..Now the mirepoix is carefully and slowly browned in about a quater cup of olive oil in a sautee pan.

To this cooked mirepoix I add 6 whole cloves of garlic and 6 whole green onions (scallions)the white part included , coarsly chopped along with 6 mediun roma tomatoes halved and all of this goes in the bottom of my large roasting pan. The now dry whole chicken goes in on top and is going to be seasoned with seasoning salt and my own mignonette-pepper(Its only half white pepper-corns and half black peppper-corns mixed together in my pepper mill. Before the pan goes into the 375 F pre-warmed oven I pour 1 cup of home-made salt-free chicken stock into the roasting pan and add a hand full of fresh thyme around the bird . For the next 45 minutes or so I leave the oven alone. Only when I start to smell something I will check on the bird. By then its time to stard basting every 20 minutes,3 timesat least. It it also time now to check the temperature of the bird and it might have to be covered with some foil should the skin get too dark before the chicken if done at 165 F .Once I get the needed temperature reading I add another cup of my chicken stock and the after 10 more minutes in the oven remove the chicken and let it rest in a seperate dish covered to keep warm and to collect any more juices dripping from the bird .

All the cooked mirepoix and the rest of the juices from the roasting pan along with the collected juices from the resting bird goes into my food processor ( Minus the thyme leaves which must be removed first ) to be pureed, the I bring it all to a boil and thicken it a bit with a flour-water slurry as needed (I use my own home-made oat flour).You will have just about a bit over 3 cups of finished sauce . If the color is too light I do add a small amount of caramel color.(Home-made of course) Most of the time I do not have to correct the seasoning since the basting washed away enough salt and pepper into the sauce

I know it is time consuming, but if wou want a good result you do have to invest some time into it.


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## quetex (Oct 3, 2010)

Thank you very much, I do agree with you that its time consuming but like yourself do find it to be superior overall. My family pretty much spends all day sundays in the kitchen, we love it.


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## berndy (Sep 18, 2010)

I love to cook and never tried to use any shortcuts just to save timeI

 I know I could cook a chicken in less time, but it just would not taste the same . I would not get the amount of gravy I love so much and would not enjoy my work as much as I do .

Forgot to mention that if you follow my instructions there most likely might be some excess chiken fat that you should skim off the top of the sauce.


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